Gina’s Wheels by M. H. Bishop
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20361/G24G8RAbstract
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
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).