A cosy celebration of a mother’s wheelchair and the comfort it brings.

By Lucy Catchpole

This is a very personal book. When my children were little, they called my wheelchair the “mama car”. The actual car was “the big car”, and Daddy’s trike was the “dada car”. Which makes sense to a 2 year old – everything with wheels is a car.

As adults, the way we relate to wheelchairs is steeped in prejudice. When picture books have taken on wheelchairs, it’s often a direct reaction to that – look, it isn’t shameful! It’s actually cool and fast! And wheelchairs can indeed be very cool and fast – as we’ll all be reminded soon, with the Paralympics coming – and there is absolutely a place for books that celebrate that.

But children don’t see the shame, not at first anyway.

And as a disabled mother, this doesn’t reflect the way me or my children relate to my wheelchair.

Small children are unreasonably, irrationally proud of their parents, and my wheelchair is an extension of that. They sit in it, play under it, beautify it, occasionally injure themselves on it. It’s a centre of instant cosiness – a permanent lap, always there.

And why should it be surprising, that children don’t see the stigma? After all, it’s such an obvious, simple tool – literally a chair with wheels. Who doesn’t like a chair – and who doesn’t like wheels? But somehow, when you put the two together, you end up with something highly stigmatised. And when you use one, all sorts of presumptions are made about you. That can be a heavy burden to carry through the world.

Since I became disabled at nineteen, I’ve become used to navigating all the strange ways the world treats me. But for my children, I am as I am. There is no alternative world in which they were born to a non-disabled mother. Their love for my disabled body, and my wheelchair, was a wonderful shock.

For my children, with a wheelchair-using mother and amputee father, disability is normal.

I wrote this book quickly – it came out all at once. Perhaps that’s because I was already steeped in picture books and disability. I was there for every edit of What Happened to You? and co-wrote You’re So Amazing! with James. Those books were personal to him and his memories of being a disabled child.

And this book is personal to me. It comes directly from my experience as a disabled mother. Disabled parents exist – though we’ve not been very visible. When we first became parents 9 years ago, I don’t remember seeing any disabled parents on children’s tv. I’ve seen that change quickly over the past few years.

I hope this book is part of that change.

– Lucy Catchpole

Find out more about books we’ve written, here – books by Lucy and James.

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Edit 6th August 2024: A couple of lovely reviews, because I haven’t worked out where else to put them yet.

Mama Car is BookTrust’s August Bookmark book of the month. They’ve written a lovely review, saying: ‘Every child should have a copy of this deceptively simple and yet ground-breaking picture book’.

Louise Kinross and Ali Hughes in Canada have been ardent supporters of our books. Though it isn’t out in North America yet, Louise has written about Mama Car for the Holland Bloorview website: ‘Mama Car’ smashes disability stereotypes in a delightful way.

Also, a bit frustratingly, a placeholder bio made for me is dominating online – like on google books. So just for my own sense of trying to do something, this is the approved bio:

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