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Narrative Progression and Characters with Disabilities in Children’s Picturebooks

Neithardt, Leigh Anne, Neithardt
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1674-4296
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500310695900109

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
Children with disabilities began to appear with increasing frequency as characters in children’s books following the United States Congress’s passage in 1975 of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the precursor to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Researchers have done important work over the past forty years by examining these books while thinking about the effects that this literature can have on its readers and their understanding of disability and disabled people, addressing elements including characters, plot, and representations of specific disabilities, pointing out problematic tropes and titles. In this dissertation, I built on this research and brought together concepts in rhetorical narrative theory, specifically narrative progression, and disability studies in order to offer an even more in-depth analysis of the designs and effects of this corpus of children’s books. By engaging in a close reading of 178 picturebooks featuring disabled characters from a rhetorical narrative theory approach, my research illuminated how the rhetorical choices that an author makes in both her text and illustrations have consequences for the way that disability is presented to her readers. Specifically, my dissertation undertook a two-step analysis of those rhetorical choices. The first step was to read the books on their own terms and the second was to assess those terms through the lens of disability studies. Each of my five chapters examined the use of one kind of narrative progression, centered around one or more disabled characters—and occasionally non-disabled characters— attending to how this progression situated its readers ethically and affectively. Each chapter also assessed the potential effects, positive and negative, on the reader’s understanding of disability, its contexts, and its consequences. I argued that readers need to be more cognizant of authorial purpose, because while many authors attempt to create narratives about disabled characters that conform to readers’ desires for endings to be upbeat and for characters to have their problems resolved, the lived experience of disability is more complex. I felt that it was also necessary to highlight work that individual authors and illustrators are doing well, and areas that need to be examined further. Applying a disability studies perspective to these narratives allowed for a close examination of five different types of narrative progressions that were experienced by a reader familiar with concepts of disability studies. These progressions differed in some ways from each other and from the progressions that authors were interested in their audiences experiencing. These analyses contributed to the two larger goals of the dissertation: (1) demonstrating the value of attending to authorial purposes and readerly dynamics; and (2) and providing a model for more nuanced discussions of the achievements and limitations of these books.
Barbara Kiefer (Advisor)
James Phelan (Committee Member)
Amy Shuman (Committee Member)
349 p.
American Literature; Asian Literature; British and Irish Literature; Canadian Literature; Early Childhood Education; Education; Language Arts; Literature; Special Education; Teaching
disabilities; disability; disability studies; narrative theory; rhetorical narrative theory; narrative progression; picturebooks; picture books; childrens literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Neithardt, Neithardt, L. A. (2017). Narrative Progression and Characters with Disabilities in Children’s Picturebooks [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500310695900109

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Neithardt, Neithardt, Leigh. Narrative Progression and Characters with Disabilities in Children’s Picturebooks. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500310695900109.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Neithardt, Neithardt, Leigh. "Narrative Progression and Characters with Disabilities in Children’s Picturebooks." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500310695900109

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1500310695900109
795
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.