Disability in Kidlit is dedicated to discussing the portrayal of disability in middle grade and young adult literature. We publish articles, reviews, interviews, and discussions, examining this topic from various angles–but always from the disabled perspective.
We believe that a thoughtful portrayal of disability requires more than memorizing a list of symptoms; we hope that sharing people’s thoughts on their day-to-day experiences, pet peeves, and existing characters, will help our readers learn about the realities of disability, which are often different from what we see in popular media.
Our goals:
- To help readers, booksellers, librarians, and educators find good portrayals of disability in YA/MG, both by recommending books via reviews and by offering them the tools to judge these books for themselves.
- To help writers create more authentic, accurate, and respectful disabled characters.
- To help agents and editors recognize problematic portrayals of disability and steer their authors in the right direction.
- To help publishers share their books with disabled characters to our readers, who are passionate about quality portrayals of disability.
- To give people from the disability community a place to discuss the books they loved, liked, and loathed.
Disability in Kidlit publishes a new post every first and third Friday of the month. We feature guest contributors from both the YA/MG and disability communities–readers, writers, bloggers, activists, and more. We don’t have a fixed cast of contributors. Many people send in a single article, while others return every few months. Although we aim to present a wide range of perspectives and experiences, all our contributors and editors identify as disabled. Nothing about us without us, as the disability rights saying goes!
You can find us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Goodreads. We hope you’ll stick around!
For questions, please contact the editors at disabilityinkidlit@gmail.com.
Kody Keplinger is the author of three young adult novels (The DUFF, Shut Out, A Midsummer’s Nightmare) and a middle grade novel (The Swift Boys & Me). She was born legally blind and, at age eight, diagnosed with a condition known as Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis, which leaves her with poor light perception and tunnel vision. In 2013 she got her first guide dog, a German shepherd named Corey, from Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation. She currently lives in NYC, where she writes full time.
A lifelong Amsterdammer, Corinne Duyvis spends her days writing speculative kidlit. She enjoys brutal martial arts and gets her geek on whenever possible. Find her on Twitter or Tumblr. Corinne is a team member of We Need Diverse Books, and was diagnosed with autism at 14 and ADD at 23.
Her YA fantasy novel Otherbound released from Amulet Books/ABRAMS in the summer of 2014; it has received four starred reviews and is a Junior Library Guild selection.
Kayla Whaley is a graduate of the 2014 Clarion Writers’ Workshop. She puts her Master’s in Public Administration to use working with the Atlanta Young Writers’ Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging middle and high school writers. She writes MG and YA, primarily fantastical in nature. You can follow her on Twitter.
Kayla was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy III, a neuromuscular disease, and uses a power wheelchair.
Disability in Kidlit 