Did the ALA pick the best 4 children’s books about disabilities this year?

by Beth Finke

Four children’s books about disabilities have been honored this month by the American Library Association (ALA) as “outstanding books that portray emotional, mental, or physical disability experiences.” The four books awarded with a 2016 Schneider Family Award are:

1. Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Sean Qualls and Laurie Thompson. Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah’s true story was also turned into a film called Emmanuel’s Gift, which was narrated by Oprah Winfrey.
2. Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. This book by the author of One for the Murphys teaches readers that “everybody is smart in different ways.”
3. The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. A story set during World War II about a nine-year-old named Ada who has never left her one-room apartment.
4. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13Bby Teresa Toten. A novel for young adults about teens dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder, this book also won the Governor General’s Award in Canada.

Schneider Family Book Awards are given out on an annual basis to books that best portray some aspect of living with a disability (or that of a friend or family member). The disability in the winning story can be a physical, mental or emotional one, as long as the book emphasizes the artistic expression of the disability experience for children and/or adolescent audiences.

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

What is your biggest challenge of the day?

by Beth Finke

Beth at the elementary school giving a talk

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I started our new year of elementary school visits in a big way: we took a commuter train to Elmhurst (The Chicago suburb where I grew up) and gave a presentation to 250 kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders. All. At. Once.

Whitney usually leads me to the train station in downtown Chicago on her own, but when my gem of a husband, Mike, said he’d accompany us to the train that morning, I had five reasons to swallow my pride and accept his generous offer.

1. Freezing temperatures — if Whitney and I found ourselves lost or turned around for just a few minutes, we might have ended up with frostbite!
2. Snowy slippery sidewalks
3. Salt (Mike can spot it on the roads and help us avoid those areas so it doesn’t end up in Whit’s paws)
4. The train we needed to catch left at 7:40 a.m., which meant we’d be approaching the train station precisely when commuters were getting off trains and rushing to work
5. And oh, yeah. I still have a cast on my broken left hand.

Whitney at my side while I give my talk to 250 kids

The kids at Lincoln School were sweet, polite, and very curious. The Q & A part of the presentation was entertaining, as always. A sampling of their questions:

• What does your dog like to chase?
• How can you tie your shoes if you can’t see them?
• How long did it take you to learn to read and write Braille??
• How do you write if you can’t see?
• Do you shop by yourself?
• Can you write cursive?
• Does Whitney ever slip on the ice?
• Does your dog keep you safe from other things?
• Do you always have to say your dogs name before you tell her what to do?

To answer that last question, I picked up Whitney’s harness and told the kids that when you’re training at the Seeing Eye school they teach you to always say your dog’s name before giving them a command. “If I just say the word ‘right’ like I just did there, Whitney doesn’t even notice, but if I say, ‘Whitney, right’….” I had to stop talking right there, mid-sentence. Whitney had immediately flipped right and was guiding us toward the hallway! “I guess the Seeing Eye knows what they’re doing,” I said with a laugh. The kids laughed right along. Whitney was a big hit.

To me, the most thoughtful question from the kids was this one: “What is your biggest challenge of the day?”

My days have been particularly challenging lately with this cast on my hand, but my husband Mike and other friends and co-workers here at Easter Seals National Headquarters have made my one-handed days far less challenging than they would have been otherwise. Huge thanks to all of them. With any luck I should have this *&)#! cast off my hand by this Wednesday. I have my fingers crossed — the ones on my right hand, at least.

Keeping disability news coverage alive

by Beth Finke

A Disability Culture class from Chicago’s DePaul University used to take a field trip to my apartment once a semester to get a glimpse, so to speak, of what it’s like to be blind and live in a big city. The class was taught by Karen Meyer, who is deaf. She can read lips, and I learned to use a lot of gestures and always face her when we talked.

In addition to teaching at DePaul, Karen was a reporter for Chicago’s ABC 7 (WLS-TV) News until she retired. DePaul classes stopped coming over every semester when Karen retired from there, too, and moved to sunny California. Knowing how unusual it is for a TV news show (whether local or nationwide) to ask a reporter to focus on disability issues, I pretty much assumed ABC-7 would discontinue its disability beat altogether.

I’m happy to say I was wrong. ABC 7 in Chicago has kept their disability beat, giving it to special projects producer Sylvia L. Jones and Hosea Sanders, a prime-time anchor at the station.

In a story in the Columbia Journalism Review this month, Jennifer Graves, the president and news director for ABC 7 said that they had a long history of serving the disability community through Karen’s reporting, and they want it to continue. “Karen Meyer blazed the trail for that kind of reporting,” she said. “When she retired, we felt it was important to continue to tell those stories.”

Neither Jones or Sanders has a disability, and Jones acknowledged she reports from a “position of ignorance.” She says she won’t pretend to be an expert, but she understands full well there is a community out here that needs to be heard. From the Columbia Journalism Review:

Being on the beat has changed how Jones sees the world, she said, making her more attuned to the subtle ways people with disabilities face discrimination. “I definitely look at the world through a different lens,” she said.

Kudos to ABC 7 in Chicago for staying with the beat. As they say in the broadcasting biz…stay tuned.

Does your local news cover disability issues? Do they do it well? Let us know in the comments section below.

To Don’t List: 5 things parents of kids with special needs should NOT do this year

by Beth Finke

School is back in session after the holidays, and things are slowly getting back to “normal” – whatever that is, right? Rather than burdening parents with a list of things to add to their to-do lists for the new year, this seems the ideal time to remind parents to avoid the traps they can fall into when raising kids with special needs.

This “to-don’t” list originally appeared on the Friendship Circle Special Needs Resource blog by Rivka Caroline. I hope it does exactly what this guest blogger intended it to do: help parents of children with special needs breathe easier, live more calmly and feel more taken care of.

A ‘To-Don’t’ List For Special Needs Parents: The Classic Cheat Sheet

Caring for our children with special needs is often a full-time job, which leaves little time and energy for the wholesome nurturing of ourselves; the tired, overworked and undernourished special needs parents. I’m talking chocolate, caffeine, shopping; whatever you need to get you through the day.

As a veteran special needs mom of a 10 year old, I know that there is no shortage of items on your to do list. Therefore, I propose a list of “To- Don’ts” that hopefully will help you breathe easier, live more calmly and feel more taken care of.

Here are the five classic lessons I have learned (often the hard way) that should be on your ‘To-Don’t’ list at all times:

1. Don’t Burn the Midnight Oil
Sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

After a long day of running to therapy appointments, dealing with meltdowns, negotiating bedtime plea bargains or just being a special needs parent, it can feel like a hero’s victory when you finally reach the touchdown of a quiet house and sleeping children.
Then you want to start your day because it’s, once and for all, peaceful!
Logical? Yes! Practical? No!

Sleep deprivation is an actual form of torture and while 1:00 am may seem like the perfect time to check your email, rearrange the den or clear that pile of clutter by the front door, it’s just not a good plan. Stop that! Run yourself a relaxing bath, curl up with a good book and/or go to sleep.

If you do need to burn the midnight oil once in awhile, combine it with an afternoon nap on the following day. Just don’t do it every night, for goodness sake!

2. Don’t Make Dr. Google Your Best Friend
Googling your child’s symptoms will not empower you or give you useful tools. It will destroy your soul and give you nightmares. If you really want to network, join a Facebook support group. There is more wisdom, camaraderie and hope in these groups than you can ever dream of finding on one of those random websites.

3. Don’t Try and Be Normal Every Day
Some days you are just going to be weird.
Life is challenging enough without the added emotional load of a child with special needs. Some days you are going to rock it and some days you are going to be awkward. Your job is to constantly be aware of what ‘hat’ you are wearing so that on off days, you don’t crush your friend, your kid’s teacher or the person in front of you at Starbucks who can’t decide if he wants chocolate or cinnamon.

4. Don’t Become that Toxic Friend
Don’t become that person who has no empathy left once she becomes a mom of a child with special needs.

Yes, you may have had the equivalent of an emotional amputation, but that doesn’t mean that your friend with a different injury has no pain. On really rough days, you may not be able to access a whole bunch of empathy. You always have the right to ignore the phone and call the person back later. However, on most days, you should be able to hear a good friend’s troubles without turning into a psycho.

If you are really struggling with this issue, perhaps invest in a few therapy sessions before you ruin relationships with all those you hold dear.

5. Don’t Ignore Your Spouse
You don’t want to know the statistics of how many marriages of parents that have children with special needs fall by the wayside (don’t Google, see #2). Make sure that you schedule date night at least twice a month and the coordinate babysitting in advance.

Do not make this a family business meeting about your children. You can do that another time. Have fun, laugh, bond and connect with another. This is honestly the best gift you can give yourselves and your child with special needs.

Easter Seals on the State of the Union Address

by Randall Rutta, President and CEO

“Real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job.” —President Obama

Easter Seals couldn’t agree more with this statement by President Obama in last night’s State of the Union Address.

One essential element in real opportunity is high-quality early education. Easter Seals, the nation’s leading provider of inclusive early education, where children with and without disabilities learn and grow together, is a proud partner for millions of families of young children. We know all young children have great potential, and with the rights supports as early in life as possible, they will lead meaningful and productive lives of their choosing, contributing to their communities.

We hope all policy makers will embrace early education as a priority. Parents need information about the progress their child is making in all areas of development – whether language, physical or social-emotional development. Early identification of developmental delays or disabilities can make the difference between a life of independence and a life of dependence. That’s why we offer a free online screening tool to help guide parents through life’s earliest milestones.

Easter Seals thanks President Obama for his continued advocacy on behalf of our nation’s youngest children. We will continue to work with policy makers from all political parties at all levels of government to ensure all children get a great start in life.

Review of Autism in Love documentary, and how to watch it now

by Erin Hawley

Last night’s airing of Autism in Love on PBS comes at a time when reality-based documentaries about people with disabilities are hot. Like Born This Way, The Undateables, and Little Couple, this show aimed to portray the joys, struggles, and commonalities people with disabilities encounter throughout their lives. Autism in Love, more specifically, was about the lives of four adults with autism and their quests toward romantic love and acceptance.

The program follows three stories: Lenny, a single guy from Los Angeles; Lindsey and Dave, a couple from Washington, DC; and Stephen, a recent widow from Saint Paul, Minnesota. What struck me, initially, was the simple nature of the documentary. There is light music played throughout, but the focus is really the words and body language of the cast, with occasional contributions from their parents. The camera and audio linger long after they answer questions posed to them off camera. This allows the viewer a chance to see how these individuals process and respond to conversation. At times, more is said when silence fills the screen, and I found that very powerful – it allows the viewer to connect to the person, to see how they communicate through expression rather than words. A strong theme in Autism in Love is the different ways we connect to each other, and how those ways are equally important in forming relationships.

Parts of this show are difficult to watch – namely Lenny’s story. He struggles to find acceptance of himself, and wants to be with a woman who is not independent; he feels they are “above” him. You can see he is angry both with his situation (single, living at home) and his diagnosis. Lenny wants to be a “normal, regular person,” and feels alone and trapped in his life. This part was the most raw, and shows exactly why acceptance and breaking down stigmatization of autism is so important. We also had Stephen’s heartbreaking story, being married 17 years and his wife dying from ovarian cancer.

Lindsey and Dave both have autism, and have been dating for eight years. They fall on different areas on the spectrum, and their relationship is built on that mutual understanding of each other’s autism and routines. While Lindsey often finds it hard to communicate with Dave, they have their own ways of making it work. I admittedly shed a tear at the end, but I won’t say why!

The only problems I had with the program were its lack of diversity and the inclusion of the parents’ voices. I wish we could have heard from couples from different cultural backgrounds. And while I think it is important to include parents in the conversation on disability (or here, autism), their interviews in Autism in Love felt unnecessary. By including them in this documentary, it momentarily shifted the focus away from what I wanted to hear – the stories of these engaging individuals told in their own voices and mannerisms.

Autism in Love is a wonderful documentary that looks at the different ways individuals with autism build relationships. It was truthful, and didn’t sugar-coat anything; there was no unnecessary use of the word “inspirational” here, and I think that was intentional. Heartbreak and happiness are universal emotions when it comes to love; but for many individuals with disabilities, that road is bumpy, filled with potholes imposed by a society that continually shuns difference. We face challenges within ourselves as well, and self-acceptance is one of those hurdles. Autism in Love allows its viewers to see the real lives of adults living with autism, centering their voices and shattering stereotypes. I highly recommend watching it!

You can find it on iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, and the PBS website. Please let us know what you thought in the comments below!

Related Content:

Also check our Easter Seals love and relationships (with disbaility in the mix) collection at easterseals.com/love.

See the latest autism statistics by state.

Find Easter Seals resources for living with autism at all stages of life and learn what is autism.

I hope my dictation device doesn’t get me fired!

by Beth Finke

There’s ice on the sidewalks here in Chicago. I fell. Broke bones in my left hand. Ouch!

Not easy typing or editing blog posts with one hand in a cast, but my colleagues — along with my manager Jackie — have stepped in and really helped out. Thank you all.

I’ve already written a post here about how people who have visual impairments can use Siri to send text messages and make calls on iPhones. Now, while those fingers in my left hand recover, I’ve started toying around with another dictation feature on my iPhone: the microphone on the keyboard.

Sorry, Itzhak, no offense intended.

So far, for me, dictating long emails and text messages using the microphone has been more accurate than using Siri. Don’t get me wrong, though. The microphone still comes up with some mischievous typos.

Or would those be “talkos?”

By far the most embarrassing dictation mistake came when I wrote Jackie, my boss here at Easter Seals, to tell her I was going to hear Itzhak Perlman give a presentation about disability and the arts in downtown Chicago on Wednesday. I suggested I might write a post about that event for the Easter Seals blog. The message she received? It identified the renowned violinist and conductor as “It sucked.”

Jackie has a good sense of humor, but odds are that she will not welcome me dictating posts to the Easter Seals blog any time soon!

And odds are you blog readers will not welcome a blog post where I just talk on and on and on, either, but if, after reading all this, you are still interested in giving dictation a try, here’s how :

1. Go to Settings.
2. Swipe until you get to “General.”
3. Swipe to Siri, and then turn Siri on. (Even if you don’t want to use Siri at all, you need to turn it on for any speech recognition to work.)

From now on, any time you see the small microphone icon next to the spacebar on the iOS keyboard, dictation is available. . . Tap anyplace you can type text, and then tap the microphone icon to start dictating. When you’re finished, tap “Done,” and…viola!

Oops. I meant, “voila!”

Sigh.

If you are blind and use the speech synthesizer VoiceOver (like I do), listen for the space bar on any keyboard that appears, and swipe left once. You’ll hear the word “dictate.” That’s where the microphone is. Double tap there to start dictation, and then two-finger double-tap to finish.

For everyone, sighted or not, if you want to include punctuation in your dictation, all you need to do is say “exclamation mark” or “period” or “comma” and so on. You can say “new line” to dictate a return character, and “new paragraph” to add two returns. Best of all: if you are using the microphone rather than Siri, you can always go back to the QWERTY keyboard to fix typos or add a word or line the old-fashioned way.

Now only if I’d taken the time to do that when I wrote to Jackie and told her the violinist sucked…!

Your resolution is to eat more ice cream for a good cause

by Beth Finke

We’re six days into the new year — time to throw those resolutions out the window! You can enjoy some ice cream without feeling guilty by supporting Easter Seals at your local Friendly’s restaurant. This year’s campaign runs January 11 through February 13 featuring your favorite Valentine’s Day Cards good for five free Kids Cones or a coupon book with a $1 donation to Easter Seals.

All the way up to Valentine’s Day, you can support Easter Seals programs for kids every time you visit a Friendly’s restaurant and donate $1 to Easter Seals. You’ll be rewarded with a sheet of Valentine Cards that can be redeemed at Friendly’s for 5 free Kids Cones or a coupon book.

Funds raised in Friendly’s Cones for Kids program support Easter Seals Children’s Programs in all Friendly’s markets. Friendly’s successful campaign for Easter Seals is an annual tradition where guests and employees across the restaurant chain help change the lives of thousands of children of all abilities through their efforts. The campaign has raised nearly $29 million to date — more than $300,000 in 2015 alone — to benefit Easter Seals programs across the region.

So go ahead and enjoy some ice cream at a Friendly’s restaurant near you. Every time you and your family visit Friendly’s between January 11 and Valentine’s Day, you can help support essential Easter Seals programs in your community. Schedule your ice cream out now!

Learn more about Easter Seals partnership with Friendly’s.

Find other ways you can support Easter Seals in 2016 right here.

Bringing people with autism into the election dialogue

by Katy Beh Neas

This election year, Americans have the unique opportunity to influence the future of our great country as citizens go to the polls to elect the next President of the United States. With primary season just weeks away, our potential future leaders are now sharing their roadmaps for the next four years—shaping the policies and causes they believe to be most valuable to our country’s future success.

Today, one candidate proposed an initiative that brings the issues and concerns of individuals with autism into the election dialogue. We are very pleased to see the needs of children and adults with autism emerge as a presidential campaign issue in 2016, and hope candidates of both parties will make the needs of all people with disabilities, including those with autism, a national priority.

Easterseals, the nation’s leading provider of autism services, is a proud partner for millions of families living with autism. We know individuals with autism can and do lead meaningful lives—our clients are proof of just that.

We’re especially proud to see policy leaders concur with our priority on early intervention. Through the advocacy of public leaders like our 2016 candidates, we can change the national conversation on early childhood development. Early identification of autism and other developmental disabilities can make the difference between a life of independence and a life of dependence.  That’s why we offer a free online screening tool to help guide parents through life’s earliest milestones.

From a local perspective, you can learn about support available to people with autism in your community by checking out our updated autism state profiles. We publish these reports each year to give policy leaders, organizations, clients and supporters an idea of the services, resources and laws that affect people with autism in every state.

Stay tuned for more information and coverage of the presidential election from Easterseals this year.

Book review of A Snicker in Magic

by Elsa Remak

Here’s another book review by our public relations and social media intern Allison Mulder with her look at how authors approach disability in their stories.

by Allison Mulder

Until I started reading A Snicker of Magic, I had no idea it featured a character with a disability.

Possibly because author Natalie Lloyd doesn’t depict the disability as a huge, interruptive, “inspiring” moral lesson for the main character. Instead, she presents the disability as totally normal.

In A Snicker of Magic, Felicity Juniper Pickle’s mother moves their family back to her old hometown, Midnight Gulch, TN, a town with only faint traces left of the wonders that used to thrive there — “snickers” of leftover magic. One of these traces is Felicity’s ability to see words hovering around her, given off by people and places — “words people are thinking about, or words they want. Some words glow, and some dance. Some have wings, and some have zebra stripes.”

In another case, Felicity’s friend Jonah Pickett hints at having a certain “know-how” for what people will need — though it’s not clear whether this is true magic or just his innate thoughtfulness. Jonah also uses a wheelchair. Why? We’re never told.

Jonah’s disability is depicted with a light touch — sometimes so light that it almost risks the reader forgetting about it. But subtle lines bring us back — a line about getting on and off the bus, for instance — just long enough to remind us before moving on with the story.

I like the way A Snicker of Magic aspires to help normalize his disability. Felicity is never terribly taken aback by the wheelchair. It never turns into some heavy-handed after-school special. There’s even a line where she asks Jonah, “How do you play hockey?”

Jonah starts to answer, “I play my own way…I can’t stand up to hit the puck, obviously, but I can—”

“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “I mean that it’s too hot here. There’s no lake frozen enough to skate on.”

I feel like this tiny exchange says a lot about what Jonah is used to people asking. It hints that his disability is something that affects him every day, to the point that he expects questions to center on his disability, not his feelings. Through Natalie Lloyd’s adept writing, readers learn that Jonah’s disability is not the only thing about his character that’s important. Jonah has a wheelchair. But he also has a father away in the military. He has secret responsibilities helping people in town as an anonymous do-gooder, the Beedle. He has a know-how. He’s a fully fleshed-out character, and I think this would be a great read for someone who wants to see disabilities portrayed without that being the sole focus. Present, though perhaps not explored in great detail.

It’s also a ridiculously cute book, which I enjoyed a lot.
For a taste — or maybe a “snicker” — of the novel, Natalie Lloyd recently wrote a Thanksgiving short story about Jonah that you can read for free. Enjoy!

And if you have any thoughts about how to strike the balance between normalized portrayals of disability or more detailed descriptions of the experience, please share in the comments!