Al Capone Does My Shirt

While reading Al Capone Does My Shirt, I kept thinking does this book portray the person or the disability first. At the end of the book, I came up with the idea that the book portrays the person, Natalie, and then the disability, autism because Natalie is described in detail with what she likes to do and a very little about her disability. While working on my paper, the only question I could think of is does this book portray traits of autism as generalizations or stereotypes? I based the question of the Cortes' article but also used Claiming Disability by Linton and also The Joan K. Blaska Collection of Children’s Literature Featuring Characters with Disabilities or Chronic Illnesses by S. Williams, C. Inkster, and J. Blaska. These articles all give background to what Gennifer Choldenko had in mind when writing Al Capone Does My Shirt.

After turning in my paper, I thought of another question, does the book portray the person then the disability or the disability then the person?

Also, how does having a person with a disability in your family affect what you can do? Moose many times has to give things he likes to do up in order to take care of Natalie. But at the same time, he builds a really strong relationship with her.

I personally like this book and think that it gives readers a positive view of a person with autism. I also think that it is a great book to go back and talk about values with students, because Moose has things in his life that he wants to do but slowly, he sees whats more important. I would recommend this book to others who want to bring in an underrepresented genre into their classroom.