Childrens+Literature

Childrens Literature
This is a story about a young girl named Betsy who has Autism. When she begins school she becomes very isolated due to her disease and how it makes her react to others. Teachers do what they can to get her to break out of her "bubble". They try giving her animals, toys, and attention but nothing works. One day a dove flies into the room Betsy is in and she responds to it. All of a sudden she begins to laugh and as time goes on she begins to react positivity to other children and eventually saying her first word. This story introduces an interesting concept of using animals to help people recover from various disabilities. First I would have them explain what about the dove could have made it appealing to Betsy. Then I would have the students look into how animals have helped real life people recuperate from various disabilities. I would ask them if they think treatments like this are worth pursuing and maybe these occasions are more miracles than medicine.
 * The Flight of a Dove by Alexander Day**

This book is about a young boy named Jamie who is mute. Everything else about him is normal except that he will not speak. The town and family he grows up with is very accommodating. They do their best to work around Jamie's disability and for the most part they get along fine. Until the day comes for the annual Christmas pageant that Jamie's class must do. He is given the role of the Shepard since it does not require any talking. After the pageant a young couple come by Jamie's house and his father puts them up in the family stable for the night. The women of the couple gives birth that night and Jamie speaks his first words to that child and its parents. Jamie faces a number of challenges being unable to talk and i would like to see my class understand that better. The power of speech is something we take for granted sometimes. i would have my class see if they can go for a day without talking and see how hard their average day would be without speech. I would ask them to go through the day and then write about the challenges and see if there was anything that was especially difficult without begin able to speak.
 * A Certain Small Shepard by Rebecca Caudill**

This is a real life testament about a young girl named Leslie, who as a baby contacted meningitis and received severe brain damage. The damage caused her to become mentally retarded and lose some of her hearing. This book is about her life and how she gets by. The pictures in it are all of her and her friends and family. I would use this book as a jumping off point to see if any of our classmates have met or have had any sort of interaction with people who are mentally retarded. They can share with the class what they learned from them and how even with their disability they still act like everyone else. Lesile like talking to her friends, sports and has a family, she even goes to normal classrooms.
 * Lesile's Story by Martha McNey**

While this book is defiantly something I would teach only in high school, the story itself is still important. Ben is a teenage boy who suffers from cerebral palsy and loves movies. He meets a girl named Colleen and the book is mainly about his friendship with her and the lessons he learns from that. This book I would only give to high school students do to the nature of the material and some of the things Ben and Colleen do. Ben despite his abnormality suffers from a lot of things the average teenager goes through. He is constantly rebelling against his grandmother, he wants to do his own thing and doesn't want any one to fell sorry for him. I would use this book to talk about change and how hard it is a make it despite clear evidence for it sometimes. My students would talk about the changes they can make to themselves and their behavior and explain how difficult the process might be.
 * Stoner and Spaz by** **Ron Koertge**

This story is about a young girl named Edith whose mother passes away and she is forced to move in with her sister and her husband. Edith suffers from epilepsy. She is initially happy about living with her sister, believing that now her sister wants he, but as time goes on she begins to miss her mother more and more. She eventually learns to live with her condition and grows comfortable with her new family. One of the ways I would teach is balk is talk about what life was like back in the late 19th, early 20th century. Medicine and our knowledge of certain medical conditions, like epilepsy was very limited back then. I would have the students research what medicine was like back then and find out what were the treatments for something like epilepsy or other brain disorders back then.
 * Edith Herself by Ellen Howard**