There is a pool of books available across the world addressing the needs of special children. Some of the well-known ones include the likes of Susan Laughs, Special Way by Arlene Maguire. Just because by Rebecca Elliott and many more. But, in India to be frank, being differently abled is a taboo even now. Though the fog is clearing and parents are coming to terms with the fact around kids with specials needs, the work repertoire that is available abroad is even today a rare sight in India.
But, there are people who are well aware of the need of books for this huge chunk of children that amounts to over 2 million between the age group of 0 to 6 years. Obviously, the population is more in rural India compared to urban India mainly due to lack of infrastructure. One such initiative by the Tata Trust is the Parag initiative. The objective of this project is to work with Indian authors and publish books on children with special needs. As per one of the project heads, their objective was not only to work around creating books for kids with special needs but in a way that it feels as if the books are for any other child on earth. They had apparently read some books, which depicted kids with special needs in a heroic manner and whatever they do as magical is what they did not want. They wanted to share good stories but not emphasizing on disabilities. The Parag project also happened to create a contest for the same alongside wherein they received over 120 entries and published four out of them. Their criteria on judging the books was primarily the entertainment value besides that these stories are not judgmental about children with special needs. The author of the book Simply Nanju, Zainab Sulaiman said that the trend was slowly seeping in peoples mind and more authors are coming out with stories that are about children with special needs but not with the tag of being special.
Here are snippets into few books published by Duckbill publishers around children with special needs
Simply Nanju – Authored by Zainab Sulaiman, this book is a story of a little boy called Nanju with spinal defect. He studies in a school for children with special needs and is on a mission to find out who in his school are trying to steal and tear pages from notebooks for class toppers. So, though this story weaves around a boy with special needs is about handling bullying and pressures from peers as school like another normal school.
Vibhuti Cat –Written by Shikhandin, this book is about a boy called Magesh who talks less due to communication skills issues but is focused and good at art. How he carves out his own path through art and particularly drawing pictures of cats.
These are just two examples
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*Sourced from the Internet
