Reflection on Book Review

Overall, I felt like this project was beneficial for me as a future educator as it allowed me to venture out to try and find multicultural literature. Again I did my book review on Disabilities and being that Claire had had so many on the day we discussed mental and physical impairments, I assumed it would be no problem trying to find books. Apparently I was mistaken. I went to Barnes and Noble to find my books. After searching for a long time in the Children's section, I came across a little section labeled, "Books on Special Needs." There I found some children's books on different disabilities, but the majority were informational books for parents. It saddened me that these books are not integrated with the other children's books. To make sure, I went up to the help desk to see if maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. One of the employees was helping me and also found no luck. One of the managers passed by and so the person helping me asked him if he could help me. When I explained my situation, he seemed really appalled that I would ever fathom the idea that children's books on disabilities would ever be integrated in the Mainstream children's section. I guess that was my culture shock of how uninformed and how ignorant people are still going to be towards multicultural literature.

Specifically towards the assignment, reviewing the books gave me an opportunity to retain information on how to assess a book from TE348 and then to think more critically as to what message is the book trying to make: Is the book accurately portraying the topic it is depicting? Are there large generalizations? Are they many stereotypes? Could you see yourself using this book in your future classroom? Those were some of the many questions I answered while reviewing each book. I was satisfied with the books I chose to review. While I did not stick to one main disability (I was unable to do this due to lack of resources) I did find general themes towards disabilities and that while children with disabilities have differences, all people are different and everyone should respect that.

If I were to redo the books I chose for this project, I would try and find books representing different races and gender with disabilities. I did not even realize I had picked predominately depicting white males with disabilities until I got home. Helping children understand that people with disabilities can be from any culture, race, sex will help prevent further stereotyping. All of the books I chose depicted the specific disability in a positive light that will help children feel like having a disability should not change your perspective of him or her.

I did enjoy this project. It helped me understand how much harder I will have to work to find good multicultural literature and also ways of assessing the accuracy of the disability or topic being presented. I want to develop a multicultural community of learners and in order to do that, I need to continue to educate myself to find the best books out there.