Disabled children’s privacy matters | Bad representation isn’t better than none

By Lucy and James Catchpole

Just Ask! But don’t. Please. Speaking as disabled people in children’s publishing – this picture book means well, but is misguided.

The idea “it’s always best to ask” when it comes to disability is not new – its the norm. We hear it a lot.

Even as an adult, it’s always disarming when a stranger approaches to ask about your disability. Because generally, we don’t ask strangers about their bodies, their medical history. We consider that private. Something you might discuss with friends. Unless you’re disabled…

Do we expect disabled children to break off their games to answer ‘bone cancer’ or ‘I didn’t get enough oxygen at birth’?

Disabled children have to work out, on top of everything else, how to answer these questions. Do they break off from playing with their friends to say “bone cancer” or “I didn’t get enough oxygen at birth”?

Do they ignore the question, say “I don’t want to talk about that” or “I’m just disabled”? It’s a delicate thing to work out – with parents and trusted adults.

But this book sweeps all that away – no, the world can and should “just ask”. And so it’s your job to “just answer”. However private or traumatic it feels.

To be fair, a few lines in the book hint at this: “sometimes my friends don’t feel ready to explain”. But there’s still an obligation: “speaking up keeps me healthy”.

At the core of this book is the (rightly beloved, I know) author’s personal experience with Type 1 diabetes. It’s important to acknowledge that.

And also that a substantial number of disabled people feel very differently.

Edit: in fact, in 2023 we built a whole website full of quotes from disabled adults about this.

Disabled child characters have been used for teachable moments since Charles Dickens’s Tiny Tim. It’s time we moved on. We know there’s very little out there in kidlit when it comes to disability, but bad representation is not better than none.

Full disclosure: James has written a picture book himself on the same subject, with a very different message – it’s called What Happened to You? (2021). It revolves around questions too, but from a disabled child’s perspective.

bad representation is not better than none

We need to centre disabled children in stories. And, for that matter, disabled readers. We don’t feel the experience of disabled children has really been centred in this picture book. Are the imagined readers disabled children? To whom is Just Ask! really addressed?

Some related reading and viewing:

• Read lots of other disabled adults’ perspectives on intrusive questions whathappenedtoyou.co.uk
• Why ‘anything is better than staring’ doesn’t really make sense – by Lucy & James: Asking questions is NOT the opposite of staring at a disabled person
• Disability in a kids’ book? Seem a bit problematic? Imagine reading it to a disabled child – by Lucy and James
• NO representation is better than bad representation – by Lucy and James
• James talks about Just Ask! in a YouTube video below – recorded in spring 2020: Don’t Just Ask | The bestselling picture book we think gets disability wrong for disabled kids