Gina’s Wheels by M. H. Bishop

Abstract

Bishop, Mary Harelkin. Gina’s Wheels. Regina, SK: DriverWorks Ink, 2014. Print.

While this is a picture book and the protagonist is just entering kindergarten, the language is quite a high reading level and the text dense.  It is definitely a book that needs an adult reader. 

The artwork in this book is simple and unsophisticated, but will engage small children with the work.  Illustrator Diane Greenhorn does resort to the visual cliché of diversity in the classroom, including the obligatory red-head, blonde, African American, brown-skinned children and child with a hijab, although kindergarten-aged Muslim girls are often not covered.

The messages that the book conveys are complex.  It is about a child, Gina, who encounters Métis Paralympian Colette Bourgonje, who has a wheelchair.  Gina is sufficiently moved by the meeting that she goes home and for several weeks does everything while sitting in a stroller, to understand the experience of being in a wheelchair.  When she enters kindergarten and meets a child in a wheelchair, her experience helps her befriend the child.

While the book does a good job of presenting how to interact with a disabled person, the concept of the Paralympics and the integration of a disabled child into school, it does not present the things that Gina had to do to adapt to life seated in a stroller.  As is often the case when the able-bodied write about the disabled, rather than from the disabled person’s perspective, the reader does not learn much more about life as a disabled person.  However, the book does present disability in a positive light and also shows Bourgonje as a role model.  It also presents Gina as a role model of a child demonstrating understanding and empathy and Gina’s Mom as a role model as a parent who is positive about disability and supportive of her child’s exploratory learning.   

Because there are few children’s books about disability, and fewer still about disabled Indigenous people, this book is recommended with reservations for public library and elementary school libraries.

Recommended with reservation:  2 stars out of 4
Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell

Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.