By Lucy & James Catchpole

Introducing our 6 favourite illustrated kids’ books featuring disability, picked by actual disabled people working in children’s publishing. (Ahem. Us.) We read a lot of books to find 6 that we’re truly happy to recommend.

We’ll be posting a full individual review of each book weekly here using the tag kidlitcripcrit reviews and on Instagram – watch this space.

Own voices books are marked *

(Titles lead to affiliate links for each book – we get a small percentage. Thank you!)

• El Deafo * An own voices author-illustrator graphic novel. Find our review here.
• This Beach Is Loud! * An own voices author-illustrator picture book. Our review here. (The book is only available at Amazon atm.)
• Frida Kahlo: Little People, Big Dreams Our review is here.
• A Kids Book About Disabilities * Own voices non-fiction. Read our review here.
• I Am Not A Label * An own voices anthology. Our review is here.
• Mama Zooms is sadly unavailable now. Our review is here.
• Can Bears Ski? * An own voices picture book – author & illustrator. (A late addition, as Mama Zooms is out of print. We rep the illustrator, so admit some bias!)

Our main, overarching criterion became this: if our girls were disabled, would we read them this book? This simplified things – a lot.

It’s enormously clarifying looking at books through this lens. Books that so nearly got it right – books we wanted to include – when we thought about it this way, got a clear no.

Our choices are subjective of course – we don’t claim to speak for all disabled people. And both our disabilities are visible and affect mobility. So that’s our bias.

But we’d really urge everyone to think about kids’ books and disability this way. Judging by the blurbs on Amazon – which often say ‘perfect for the sibling of a disabled child’ – most children’s books about disability aren’t written for disabled readers.

And if they’re not good enough a reflection of the disabled experience to read to disabled children… In the end, do we really want our non-disabled children reading them?

We tried to stick as closely to picture books as possible – we’ve included a couple which aren’t strictly picture books, but no novels.

We also prioritised own voices, and only considered books which centre disabled characters. Not because disabled secondary or incidental characters aren’t important, that wasn’t our focus.

It should go without saying, but we were looking for excellent books. We don’t believe we should be compromising on quality when it comes to representation.

If we haven’t included your favourite, there may well be a reason. We really have looked at most of what’s out there at the time of writing.

These are truly great books. Enjoy!

Individual reviews of all the books on our list

Incidentally, James has also written a picture book – What Happened to You? (Faber & Faber 2021). Which is definitely in this category, and by a disabled author. Read about it here.

– Lucy and James Catchpole

(First posted on instagram on the 8th August 2020)

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If you’d like to support what we do, the links on the book titles are to Blackwell’s – we make a small percentage on each order. There’s also Bookshop UK and Bookshop US – where you can buy most of the books on our KidLitCripCrit list.