and Swann.9 With its big double-page spreads slapped full of paint, the ‘gooey, gloppy, mucky’ magnificence of mud is generously celebrated in Mud. The narrative shows a child getting stuck right in as soon as the ground thaws after winter, squishing the mud between his clasped hands so that it oozes between his fingers. Delicious! He’s barefoot, too.
For older children who don’t want to get stains on their Converse, it’s time for a dose of Tarzan – punchy prose, breathless storylines and the acknowledgement of the deep desire lurking within us all to swing through the trees on a vine.10 The stories begin with Tarzan’s birth in the east African jungle, where his parents have been shipwrecked. When they die, he’s adopted by a tribe of great apes – in particular a she-ape named Kala, who takes pity on the scrawny, hairless monkey. As we watch this simian boy grow up, desperately trying to be part of his clan but slowly discovering what sets him apart, we’re treated to Burroughs’s musings on what it means to be a savage versus a civilised human being. Tarzan’s relationship to dirt lies at the heart of the exciting overlap. At night he sleeps embraced by the hairy Kala, and in the day he covers himself with the large, enveloping leaves of the ‘elephant’s ear’. His ablutions are jungle-drawn, of course, so Kala cleans his wounds with her tongue, and he swims in the river whenever he wants to see the colour of his skin again. In adolescence he has a moment of shame when, catching sight of his reflection in the river, he is shocked by his tiny nose and general hairlessness; and to make himself look more like his playmates, he cakes himself in mud. It’s too itchy to keep on for long, but we can see that mud is his friend and it makes him feel better for a while. Encourage children to revel in the clean dirt of the great outdoors, discover their own inner beast, and worry about what’s under their nails only when they come in from the jungle for tea.
disability, coping with
Perhaps no group has been as inadequately or as cruelly represented in children’s literature as those with physical or mental disabilities. Thankfully this situation is now changing, with disabled characters starting to appear in leading roles with the same range of personality characteristics as we’d expect in non-disabled characters. For children coping with a disability and those in their peer group, Susan Laughs offers the all-embracing message that someone with a disability is no different from anyone else in any other respect. Like all children, Susan laughs, sings, swims and enjoys a piggy-back ride from time to time – as well as feeling all the usual emotions. It’s only on the very last page that we discover she uses a wheelchair as well.
Michael Foreman’s Seal Surfer, with its beautiful illustrations of the coast, focuses on the things that a disabled boy can do, rather than the things he can’t. We never know exactly what his disability is, except that he uses a wheelchair and sometimes crutches. We do know that he’s freer and happier in the water than on land. Lying on his tummy on his board, the boy spends whole days riding the waves with his friends.
One day, he and his grandfather witness a seal pup being born. As the boy watches the pup grow up, a special bond forms between them – and when he gets into trouble in the water, the seal comes to his rescue. The final image of the boy, now grown himself and sitting by the sea with his own grandchildren, is full of optimism. Give this to children with a disability to inspire them to find the medium in which they excel.
An ancient, fairy-inhabited oak tree at the end of someone’s garden may not seem a likely setting for a Young Adult story featuring disability issues, but Knife – the first in the Faery Rebels series – tackles the subject in a bold, refreshing way. The ‘oaken folk’ have been steadily depleted of their magical powers and vitality over the last few hundred years as a result of a virus known as ‘the silence’. They do their best to avoid humans too, believing them to be an additional threat to their survival, but when Knife – a young and feisty hunter fairy – notices a young man moving around the garden in a large silver throne on wheels, she’s intrigued. She discovers that Paul was all set for a brilliant career as a rower before losing the use of his legs in an accident; and when he attempts to drown himself in the pond, Knife temporarily assumes human form so that she can drag him to safety.
Paul doesn’t thank her at first – he had wanted to be left to die. But as he and Knife get to know one another, enjoying conversations about art and creativity, he begins to appreciate life again. They even discover an intriguing form of interspecies love. The segues from fantasy to reality are handled well; as is the deft dismissal of the tired trope that those with disabilities may be more likely to see their lives as not worth living. When faced with the choice of regaining his full mobility but losing the love of Knife in the process, Paul chooses to remain disabled. That having a perfectly functioning body is not a pre-requisite for happiness is the joyous message, here declared convincingly and without sentimentality.
Accidents of Nature offers a harder-hitting exploration of what it’s like to be disabled, through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Jean. Jean, who has cerebral palsy, arrives at Camp Courage in her wheelchair, dropped off by her loving parents. Her mum and dad have always contrived to keep things as ‘normal’ for Jean as they can, making light of her disability and ignoring it whenever possible. But at the ten-day camp she meets Sara, who has a very different approach. Sara calls the place ‘Crip Camp’, and she names Jean ‘Spazzo’. Suddenly it is as if Jean has been awakened from a dream: how can she be truly herself if she doesn’t embrace her difference?
Together, she and Sara plot to overthrow the regime at the camp, calling on all the ‘crips’ to come together and ‘stomp out normalcy’. When they take over the talent contest, the camp coordinators are horrified, and the ‘norms’ in the audience – the mums and dads and sisters and brothers – squirm with discomfort. But for the girls their political coup is a triumph. By reclaiming these pejorative terms, they’ve helped to remove their slur. Jean is left elated and, for the first time, proud of her differences.
SEE ALSO: different, feeling • frustration • understood, not feeling
disappointment
Most childhoods are littered with disappointments: closed ice-cream shops, no-show playmates, the wrong birthday present, or none at all (see: presents). Often there’s nothing to be done except swallow the disappointment and move on. The story-within-the-story in Zen Shorts – featuring Stillwater, the giant Zen panda11 – will help.
Michael, the eldest of the three siblings who live next door to Stillwater, worries about climbing trees. Quite reasonably, he suggests it would be bad to fall out and break a limb. ‘Maybe,’ is Stillwater’s unexpected reply. In explanation, the panda delivers – in ‘a slight panda accent’12 – a Zen fable about a peasant farmer. When his horse runs away, the farmer’s neighbours bemoan it as terribly bad luck. ‘Maybe,’
