Professional Review

Pirofski, Kira. Strategies For Fostering Able-Bodied Children's Acceptance Of Disabled Peers. San Jose State University, California: 2002. Available at http://www.projectappleseed.org/aaceptance.html

This article reviews children at a young age, both disabled and able bodied. The children were asked who they were more likely to play with if given the chance to. Students who are able-bodied would usually pick the students that were also able-bodied, and the same was true when children looked at pictures of adults who were disabled, they would pick the adult who was able-bodied. The article goes on to state how this is attitude is no longer a barrier when it comes to able bodied and disabled. Later, the article talks about ways to include literature about people with disabilities and that if students are introduced to stories that include characters who have a disability that students started to be more accepting of people with disabilities.

The article says very little about what disabilities where shown in the pictures and why students picked the way they did. I found it interesting that we do not recognize that there are attitude barriers between students who have disabilities and students who are able bodied. I wonder how many teachers actually include reading stories to their classrooms that include the main characters having a disability. I really like looking at how we think change is going on and we are making progression to a more inclusive environments in the classroom and then research like this brings us back to looking at what else can be done so students are not be exclude and that everyone is being represented when you read in the classroom.

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.