Reflection of the Text Set

After reading and reviewing Mama Zooms, The Alphabet War, and The Deaf Musicians, I feel that I learned a lot about literature depicting people with disabilities. There are many ways to approach writing about a person with a disability, and I feel that all three of these books took a different approach.

At first I was going to try to find three books that all focused on the same disability; however, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to read books that discussed a variety of disabilities. Ultimately, I chose one book about a physical disability, one book about a learning disability, and one book about a hearing impairment. Mama Zooms was written in a way in which the mother’s physical disability was looked at as being positive. If it wasn’t for her wheelchair, her and her son would not have been able to do all of the fun things that they did together. In contrast to that, The Alphabet War focused a lot on the struggles of a child with Dyslexia. Although he ultimately became successful in school, his frustrations and negative emotions were readily displayed throughout the text. The Deaf Musicians took a totally different perspective on disabilities. It showed that when you have a disability, you don’t have to miss out on things that you want to do. For example, even though Lee lost his hearing, he was still able to pursue his love for music.

When having a set of books that involve characters with disabilities, I think it is important to include multiple perspectives on the subject. These three books do a good job of that. Each book shows a character reacting differently to a disability, which is very realistic. People react very differently to disabilities, and I think that should be addressed in the literature that is presented to them.