Of Pirates and Inclusion

Years ago, when our daughters were tiny, my husband stopped at at Barnes & Noble around this time of year; in the window, he saw a display of picture books featuring Black protagonists. He went in, purchased a number of books, and brought them home.  At the time, we had been deliberate about curating a library that featured girls as the main characters.  We recall even now being surprised at how many picture books about animals gendered those animals: the boy animals got adventures; the girl animals stayed home. So we sought books with girls who were the stars of stories, but Seth’s epiphany on 86th street galvanized us. What we read to our daughters had to mirror our own values, our own city.  We needed books with lots and lots of characters who were not white, so we sought them out.

 My mentor, Jenn Stratton, and I, speak every three weeks.  She is on a mission and I am her adjutant! Children’s books, she explains, rarely show characters with physical disabilities and even more rarely show parents with physical disabilities. There has been some progress. Who doesn’t like the feel good story of a champion athlete who triumph from a wheelchair or another books about how Helen Keller beat the odds, but what Jenn helps me understand is that there are very few books in which the disability, itself, is not the main event.  I begin to scrutinize our children’s book library. Characters who are amputees?  One.  Captain Hook. Jenn confirms that in her experience the only amputees who show up in picture books are pirates—and pirate villains to be exact.  She shares with me a Power Point she did recently (linked here).  I am staggered. How could I never have noticed this?

 When it was time for our daughters to go to nursery school in Manhattan, we wanted them to go to Merricat’s Castle—a neighborhood nursery program that mainstreamed children with special needs—physical and emotional—with children from the Upper East Side. Here is how they describe their approach, one rich in love:  For nearly half a century, our school has served as a national model for inclusionary education. We have brought together children from different economic and cultural backgrounds, children with disabilities, children who are seriously ill, and typically developing children from our neighborhood. Children with special needs are loved for their strengths. Merricat’s provides a unique opportunity for children to understand and appreciate diversity in the truest sense. At its simplest, we provide an opportunity for over 100 children to enrich one another’s lives by playing and learning together, ultimately assisting everyone to develop all of their abilities. Merricat’s is an inclusive space that is enormously enriching for children as they make immeasurable gains in patience, love, tenderness, and humanity.

 Miranda and Cordelia both grew up with classmates who were wheelchair-bound or who used crutches to navigate.  They were familiar with children undergoing or recovering from cancer treatment not having hair.  They knew not to stare but to accept. At three, they had learned about empathy. 

Once, when our son was young, he drew away in fear from a child at a rest stop who was in a wheelchair. I chided Atticus gently, reminding him there was no reason to be afraid, but his sisters sighed, “Mom, he didn’t have Merricat’s.”  True.  By the time he went to nursery school, we lived in Cleveland.  Now, a child in the school I lead uses a wheelchair. I am proud to lead a school that is also focused on inclusion and am so aware of what all children gain by being around others who are like and not like them.

I told Jenn about our little Laurel girl. In turn, Jenn shared her hope to publish a picture book that features disabled children and parents—fast—so that the little girl in my school and other children will see more people of all kinds of abilities in picture books—a common choice rather than an unusual one.

Last week, I went up to the art studio, where Upper School students were working on individual projects. One student was drawing on her I-pad. Somehow, we got to the topic of the book she is writing and illustrating. 

 “Don’t draw any of the pirates as amputees, okay?” I entreated.

 “Umm. Okay, Ms. Klotz,” she nodded, puzzled.

 I launched into a diatribe about pirate amputees in books, how that’s the only version of an amputee we show to children, how we must do better.  She nodded, patient.

 “My pirate’s a bad-ass, Ms. Klotz. And she’s a girl and she’s a force for good, but I do have an amputee, and he’s a hero, too,” she added.

 I grinned. Yesterday. I shared the story with Jenn in an email. My internship, it seems, is spilling into every moment of my life.