Chair? Great. Wheels? Fabulous. Chair-on-wheels? Oh dear god no…

By Lucy Catchpole

Today’s International Wheelchair Day – it’s a celebration. A reaction against the bucketloads of stigma wheelchairs carry. So you’ll see lots of happy wheelchair photos on social media, including mine. The joy is real – and it is defiant.

Does any other piece of furniture, or tool, carry as many negative connotations as a wheelchair? Or so completely shift the way the world looks at you?

Chair? Great. Wheels? Fabulous. Chair-on-wheels? Oh dear god no.

This book I wrote – in the photo above – it’s a gentle, sweet book for young children. No big drama, no hardcore messages. Just a mother and child doing their thing. But it isn’t just that, is it? Because right on the front cover is a woman – a mother – in her wheelchair. And so this gentle story is automatically radical, too.

Poor innocent wheelchairs – there they sit, all metal and elegant circles. Nobody has a problem with chairs. And nobody has a problem with wheels, either. But put the two together…

Chair? Great. Wheels? Fabulous. Chair-on-wheels? Oh dear god no.

Recently, a friend told me her granny spotted a little toy wheelchair in her kids’ toybox – and was appalled. Why? Because it was bad luck.

The power of that! Somehow, this thing that’s an integral part of my life, that brings so much joy and freedom to me and my children, is so potent that even owning a tiny plastic replica is dangerous.

Is my friend’s grandmother an exception? Or just more… honest?

Wheelchairs are associated with the very worst of luck – with illness, misfortune and the end of life. (One day I’ll post a screenshot of the common google searches with my name when Mama Car was announced. It was… illuminating.)

We buy picture books for many, many reasons. We have feelings about the books we put in our children’s hands. And for lots of people, my book will be a hard no. Because it won’t make them feel good. How could it? When a representation of a wheelchair is almost a curse in itself?!

But really, holding up an innocent object as an emblem of bad luck just makes life 100 times harder for anyone who needs one – and everyone around them.

We write picture books for many, many reasons too. Maybe I wrote mine to show that disability isn’t misfortune, it’s another kind of normal. And, for a child, their mother’s wheelchair can be adored.

-Lucy Catchpole

Mama Car opens for pre-orders in the USA today – with a new cover

Mama Car is coming out this autumn in North America – with this new, green (hardback¹) cover on the left. And it opens for pre-orders today – on International Wheelchair Day. Which is so very fitting. If you’re in the UK, it’s already out – and available everywhere in the world through Blackwell’s.

The USA edition is a hardback! But the photo is of the slightly crumpled blads.

[Image descriptions

1. International Wheelchair Day
Text reads:
‘International Wheelchair Day’ in typewriter font, on a torn cream paper background.
The image is a mirror selfie – Lucy is wearing a pale peach linen dress, her old gold-ish velvet headband and a white cotton vintage Laura Ashley blouse. She’s holding a camera, and her children’s book “Mama Car” in her other hand. She’s smiling slightly, looking directly at the camera – it’s a mirror selfie, in her old battered white wooden mirror.

2. Chair-on-wheels? Oh dear god no
Text over a similar, zoomed out photo – faded so the text is legible, reads:
‘Nobody has a problem with chairs. Nobody has a problem with wheels.
But put the two together…
Chair? Great.
Wheels? Fabulous.
Chair-on-wheels?
Oh dear god no

3. A defiant celebration
‘That’s the reason for International Wheelchair Day.
A defiant celebration –
a reaction against the bucketloads of stigma and shame wheelchairs carry.’
A similar shot. You can just see the book Mama Car and the wheel of Lucy’s wheelchair in the image behind.

4. Wheelchairs can be joyful
Text reads: ‘Because wheelchairs can be joyful and magical and cosy – and so much more.’
A similar frame, closer in.

5. The stigma – a toy wheelchair
But the stigma is real.
Is a toy wheelchair –
dangerous? Bad luck?!’
Image is of a small Playmobil child-figure in a brightly coloured wheelchair.
Smaller words below in white read:
‘Yes. she looks harmless – BUT IS SHE..?’

6. Am I bad luck?
‘Is my book bad luck? Am I?!’
Photo is another frame similar to the first – I’m smiling and look slightly quizzical.

7. US pre-orders of Mama Car – and a cover reveal
Text reads: ‘If you dare to risk it –
US pre-orders open today!
Which is lovely timing for
International Wheelchair Day.
Mama Car is out in North America
this autumn, with this new cover.
Already out in the UK!’
A book portrait of the US edition of Mama Car – the pale green cover is clearer here. Cover shows a mother in her wheelchair with her young child on her lap. Illustrated by Karen George. It rests on a dark brown chest of drawers.

8.
‘Happy International Wheelchair Day everyone.
(Whether you buy my book or not 😉 ]

1. The USA edition is a hardback! But the photo is of the slightly rumpled pre-publication blads. ↩︎