Author Talks of Teaching Kids About Disabilities
Picture Book Helps Kids Overcome Fear of Children With Disabilities
Mar 8, 2009
A desire to help people understand disabled people led Elisa Linovitz Snader and Kimberly Gewerth Robb to create The Wheelchair, a picture book about a boy who overcomes his fear of a girl in a wheelchair. Robb, who illustrated the book, also helped inspire the story through her own experiences with muscular dystrophy.
Today, Snader, an elementary school teacher, uses The Wheelchair to teach her students about children with disabilities, and hopes other teachers will use the book to help kids overcome their fear of children with disabilities.
Suite 101 spoke to Sander in a face-to-face interview on February 28, 2009 and learned more about her thoughts on teaching kids about disabilities. The following is an edited version of the interview.
Suite 101: Why did you want to write The Wheelchair?
Snader: I wanted something to help children overcome differences – so when they see people in wheelchairs or with any kind of disability, they won’t be scared of them and will get to know them and see they’re real people.
Suite 101: How did you team up with the book’s illustrator Kimberly Gewerth Robb?
Snader: Kimberly and I went to college together. She had muscular dystrophy – she could only move her arms from her elbows down – and she would tell me stories about how people would treat her because she was in a wheelchair. I was in a children’s lit class at the time, so I wrote the book and she did the illustrations.
Kimberly passed away a year ago. And when all the publishing companies turned it down because of the pictures, which were the most important part to me, I self-published the book and put it out in her memory.
Suite 101: What was it like getting your book published by AuthorHouse?
Snader: I like the AuthorHouse program because they did the cover where it still has Kimberly’s picture but they helped with the background to make it more colorful. AuthorHouse also prints on demand so you don’t have to pay for hundreds of books at a time, just the ones you need. And they also put it on all the bookstores’ websites. So that helps.
Suite 101: What responses do you get from kids when you read The Wheelchair?
Snader: The students love the book. Most schools now are doing inclusion in the classroom – the kids aren’t separated from disabled kids anymore – so it’s helpful for my kids to see what they’re going through.
Suite 101: You do educational activities with kids to teach them about disabilities other than being in a wheelchair. What are these activities like?
Snader: We’ll do activities with the kids to show what it’s like being blind or deaf. I’ll give out a sheet in sign language and teach the sign language alphabet and how to say words in sign language. I also have Braille books so I can show them what Braille feels like.
I send a list of educational activities teachers can do in their classrooms when people buy The Wheelchair.
Suite 101: What is the age range for this book?
Snader: The message is good for all age groups. We started reading the book in the Head Start room at our school and went all the way up to sixth grade. So the book and activities appeal to a whole span of ages.
Suite 101: Any plans for future books?
Snader: Everyone says I should write about my dog in a wheelchair – when he was a puppy we adopted him and found out he had spinal meningitis and had lost all feeling in his back legs. But he’s three years old now and in a wheelchair – you wouldn’t know it because he runs around like crazy!
Snader, Elisa Linovitz and Kimberly Gewerth Robb. The Wheelchair. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-4343-6234-6
Check out a learning disability simulation activity Elisa uses with her kids to help them understand what certain learning disabled people go through at Activity Lets Kids Understand Learning Disorders.
Visit Elisa Snader on her The Official Website of Elisa Snader.
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