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Recently our blogger Yamile wrote about including diversity in our books for children. One of her great points was to make the character of ethnicity the hero or heroine rather than the sidekick.

I'd like to continue with that topic as I am currently working on a picture book to help young children understand how to approach people with physical disabilities.

There aren't a lot of books that include differently abled leads, but (UCW's own) Julie Daines' book, "Unraveled" offers young readers a heroine whose legs are crippled. Daines said that she wanted to provide a love story without the perfect princess-type heroine.

Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more heroes and heroines with such issues. Not only does it increase understanding of diversity in readership, but in the most clinical of writing terms, it can be very useful to the drama of the story as it adds another layer of difficulty with which the character must contend.

Another tough, but useful, subject is long-term illness in children.

Lupus is a topic dear to my heart (in the interest of full disclosure, I am the board chair of the Lupus Foundation of America, Utah Chapter). And I get to interact with some of our youth who are dealing with this disease. They are bright, enthusiastic, and overburdened--trying to balance the regular social interactions and school with fatigue and other health-related complications.

Lupus causes flares and remissions of widely variable time frames--sometimes within the same day. This is difficult for a lot of adults to understand. But kids are often labeled by their peers as "fakers"; symptoms ebb and wane, affecting different parts of the body at different times, and fatigue is always lurking in the background.

So, while I add a rousing cheer to Yamile's great post and remind you, our UCW blog readers, to consider diversity of all kinds in your lead characters, allow me one latitude (I promise to only take the blog sideways ONCE this year):

Tomorrow is the Walk to End Lupus Now in Salt Lake City's Liberty Park.
I invite you to join us. Walk. People watch. And see some really heroic characters.
www.utahlupus.org

Hey rgz,

As I was down with a lupus flare this last September to April, I read many books on peace and comfort. This one rose above the stack with its devotions of encouragement for those living with chronic illness.

In The God of All Comfort, by Judy Gann, my own feelings were confirmed, and then I was lifted by truth. A simple example is loneliness. As illness continues, friends and family must resume their normal lives, so there are extended periods of being alone for the chronically ill. Gann quotes Henri Nouwen:

"To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into the garden of solitude."

Short examples of Gann's own suffering, along with a few others living with illness, are followed by truthful reminders, prayers, and quotes. The work itself is a comfort in the reminder of God's comfort.

If you or your loved one live with physical difficulty, find solace in The God of All Comfort.

The God of All Comfort
by Judy Gann
Living Ink Books

TweetThe Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz Koyama Press I have a complicated and knotty relationship with auto-bio comics, beset by apprehension and cynicism. There’s no doubt the genre produces some interesting material- Art Spiegelman, Seth, Robert Crumb, to name but a few, but more recently I’ve found a lot of it to be, quite frankly, boring. The [...]

Today is one of those days that reminds me, "Hey, stupid! You have lupus!" 

I'm in a fog, I'm exhausted, and I feel bad. What did I do? I did a little house cleaning yesterday. Bad idea.

The way I feel, though, has reminded me of the limitations I'm have with promoting a book. "Are you having any booksignings?" "Do you want to come to our school?" These are questions I wish I could say a resounding YES! to, but the truth is I can't do too much on a regular basis. So I haven't been as arduous about pursuing signings because there is just so little energy to go around. After last week's appearance at the NAEYC convention, I was exhausted. 

So today when I started beating myself up mentally for not wanting to call people, visit bookstores, send out mail, or update my web site, I remembered Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit. Laura suffers from CFS--chronic fatigue syndrome. I found this quote from 2001:

Right now my exhaustion is bad enough so I'm 100% housebound. 
I've only been out of the house three times since my book came out two months ago. 

Laura didn't do the book tour thing--she just couldn't. She fought her illness just to be able to finish her book--public appearances just weren't on the horizon. So I'll have to be happy for the things I can do. I'm blessed to have been able to get my book published and see it make children, their parents, and teachers smile.

MY NEIGHBOR
By
Gregory K.

My neighbor is a smiley face.
He has no legs, just floats in space.
So there’s one way to make him frown...
You simply turn him upside down.


(I'm posting an original poem-a-day through April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Links to this and other poems here on GottaBook (and there are lots of others, because poetry is NOT just for April) are collected over on the right of the blog under the headline "The Poems".)