Scholarly Article: Learning Disabilities in Children’s and Adolescent literature: How are character Portrayed?

Prater, Mary Anne. "Learning Disabilites in Children's and adolescent Literature: How are Characters Portrayed." Learing Disability Quarterly 26(2003): 47-62.

This article is about a study held about books printed before 2001 that are considered to have learning disabilities content. Before 2001 only 90 books were found to thoroughly portray learning disabled characters. Out of these 90 books about 75% were stories of growth and also 75% were about students with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The article also goes into detail about how they categorized the books and provides a list of the 90 books accepted for the study.

This article really shows that there are not enough books that portray learning disabled characters. This fact is very interesting because more and more children today are being diagnosed with learning disabilities. This article is very helpful for teachers to realize and classify good pieces of literature about learning disabled. The article is a good read for educators and parents/guardians alike. This is because people need to realize that groups are still being under represented in literature and someone needs to do something about this so that students do not feel discriminated against nor feel like an outcast in our growing melting pot of a society.