Despite an increasingly positive portrayal of disabilities in
Newbery Award-winning books, they are not representative of the
nearly 7 million children with disabilities attending U.S.
public schools, say Brigham Young University special education
researchers. They published their study in the December issue of
Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
We are hoping that this will be a call to authors, said special
education professor Tina Dyches, one of the co-authors. Weve got
so many wonderful authors in the world, and we would love to see
more inclusive characterizations in high-quality books, where
kids with disabilities are being recognized for who they are and
not just for the limitations of their disabilities. Among the
concerning themes the researchers found are: • The
representation of characters with disabilities in Newbery books
is not proportionate to the current school population of
students with disabilities. • White school-age characters with
disabilities were overrepres