From: angelica carpenter <angelica>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:13:10 -0700

Dear all,

 

The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson features two sisters whose bi-polar, alcoholic, but nevertheless loving mother tackles each problem in life by getting a new tattoo. The sisters cover for their mother because they know that involving social services will split up the family, but things get so bad that finally the younger girl does seek help.

 

In Harry Sue by Sue Stauffacher, the heroine's best friend is a boy who is paralyzed from the neck down after a diving accident. Terribly depressed, he has shut out the world but he changes over the course of the book and decides to take part in life after all, under new conditions which he is beginning to understand.

 

I think that Laura Ingalls Wilder does an excellent job of portraying Mary's blindness and how it affects the whole family in the Little House books. Of course the character of Mary is well established before she goes blind, so a child reader can understand that she is still the same person under different conditions.

 

And a Victorian story, The Little Lame Prince by Miss Mulock (Dinah Maria Mulok Craik) offers a hero who cannot walk. As a child, he is heir to a kingdom, but he gets locked up in a tower by his uncle, the evil Regent. He travels around his kingdom via a flying cloak given to him by his fairy godmother. Eventually he gets out of the tower and becomes king, but he is never able to walk.

 

Best wishes,

 

Angelica Carpenter, Curator

Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature

California State University, Fresno
Received on Wed 11 Oct 2006 01:13:10 PM CDT