Happy Ever Afters - disability awareness in children's storybooks - based on the book Happy Ever Afters.
DICSEY Example - an easy reader
Celebrate 150 years of Public Libraries in the UK !
The Librarian and the Robbers written by Margaret Mahy and illustrated by Quentin Blake
1981 Puffin Books ISBN 0-14-031261, a two story presentation with The Great Piratical Rumbustification.
An amusing and lively easy reader in which Miss Laburnum the Librarian is kidnapped by robbers who know the City Council will pay for her return to the Library. They catch Raging Measles and Miss Laburnum reads to them, introducing books to them for the first time. They abandon their kidnap plot, and when the Chief Robber risks capture by visiting the library, Miss Laburnum saves him by cataloguing, reserving and issuing him to herself.
This shows DICSEY elements Disability, Image, Society and Enable. It can be used to look at the difference between illness and disability, stereotypes of librarians and robbers, how community services are paid for and different ways of accessing books.
If needed, a quick link to 'An Introduction to the DICSEY Code' is here.
The Chief robber did not catch Raging Measles
Question: Why? Answer: He'd had it before and it protected him from another attack. This is the basis of immunisation, which can protect us from many infectious diseases. Infectious diseases make us ill and disabled for a short time until our bodies recover, but they can also cause damage which our bodies cannot repair. This can leave permanent disability after the illness has gone, such as damage to sight by measles. Disability is not the same as illness and it is not infectious.
The robbers haven't been taught to read and can't get to the Library.
Question: What other ways are there to enjoy stories? Answer: They could tell stories to each other, listen to stories on audiotape, watch them in drama or feel them in Braille or raised text. There are stories everywhere, in books, newspapers and magazines, on radio, TV, video, films, in theatres, and on computers through CDs or the Internet. They can be in different formats to enable people with different needs to enjoy them, such as Large print, Braille, Moon, in Sign Language, in pictures, or in different verbal and written languages.
The robbers become librarians.
Question: Why did they look strange? Answer: An image of librarians is that they are quiet, tidy and orderly, not wild with 'wiry whiskers'. This is a stereotype, an idea that does not tell us all there is to know about somebody, which can prevent some people feeling at ease in libraries, just as stereotypes of disabled people can prevent others being confident about disability.
Who pays for public libraries?
Answer: Everyone who pays taxes to their local councils. In the United Kingdom, a law was passed in 1850 that allowed councils to add a halfpenny (old money!) to everybody's rates (local taxes). This enabled them to pay for the library buildings, books and the librarian's pay. Laws are passed by society, through their Governments, that allow taxes to be collected to pay for all the community services like schools, hospitals, roads, police and defence, and to pay for basic benefits for those who cannot work to earn money for themselves.
Readers of this edition could also look at The Great Piratical Rumbustification, another enjoyable story which could be used to discuss DICSEY elements of Disability, Image, Control and Enable. Try it! Use the Happy Ever Afters book as a guide, details here.
Above all, let children enjoy the story!
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© K. Saunders 2000/2001