Tolerable Start
3 stars
This book does something that the others don't: It actually engages with a disability. Sort of.
The titular character, Aaron, struggles with dyslexia (though this isn't made explicit in the text of the story—it's only made explicit in the author's note). In the illustrations, it shows a lot of the words as being backwards and doesn't really engage with common forms of dyslexia.
It also doesn't do much with the characters other than have Aaron work really hard to overcome his struggle without having any of the characters doing much to collectively work with him. I know it's a book with text, but it's still reinforcing literacy as an end-all-be-all skill. This isn't to say literacy isn't useful, but it should try to highlight that our hyperfocus on literacy as being a core necessity to exist and how there are people who will struggle with that.
Perhaps …
This book does something that the others don't: It actually engages with a disability. Sort of.
The titular character, Aaron, struggles with dyslexia (though this isn't made explicit in the text of the story—it's only made explicit in the author's note). In the illustrations, it shows a lot of the words as being backwards and doesn't really engage with common forms of dyslexia.
It also doesn't do much with the characters other than have Aaron work really hard to overcome his struggle without having any of the characters doing much to collectively work with him. I know it's a book with text, but it's still reinforcing literacy as an end-all-be-all skill. This isn't to say literacy isn't useful, but it should try to highlight that our hyperfocus on literacy as being a core necessity to exist and how there are people who will struggle with that.
Perhaps it's because I am dyslexic that I find it infuriating. Perhaps it's because I had to struggle to learn coping mechanisms in a world not designed for people like me, and I don't want to see others endure that when we could shift the way the world works. But I'm not a fan of these texts for kids and their desires to constantly push a "we can do anything we want to overcome everything" narrative when that's not something we need to do.
We could have a different world where we all work together collectively and use all of our skills together, which would help us a range of different skills! We could have a bunch of different tools... But we continually write narratives for children that are purely unimaginative and reinforce that everyone should do everything for themselves, that we should persevere with minimal assistance or with very few strategies... It's so uncreative.