Books for younger readers featuring neurodivergent or otherwise "different" characters are more commonplace than they once were.
What We're Reading host Tammy Bobrowsky said she hopes more writers explore this territory, helping kids understand their family members, friends and themselves better.
"It's been such a wonderful thing to see representation across the board in children's books," Bobrowsky said. " ... A lot of children seem to respond really well to this, to see that there is a character just like them.
" ... Having that representation is so wonderful, it's so important and I hope that authors continue to do that."
Bobrowsky joined the Between You & Me podcast to share a recent conversation with Meg Eden Kuyatt, whose Good Different tells the story of seventh-grader Selah. Selah works hard to follow the rules for being normal. Like wearing her “normal person mask,” despite the feelings she keeps locked inside.
Eventually, Selah is given the language for how she feels when she learns she has autism.
Kuyatt is a poet, a writer and teaches writing. Like her character Selah, Kuyatt is also diagnosed on the autism spectrum and found writing to be an outlet.
“It was a really healing thing for me. To be able to just take time to slow down, go at my own pace, figure out what I was feeling. I started using that more and more as a tool.” Kuyatt said.
Good Different is written in verse, allowing Kuyatt to let the emotion come through, rather than focusing on narrative details.
Writing in verse “lets you get into the head of that emotion and really convey it in a way that readers can connect a lot more with,” said Kuyatt.
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