A few tips on writing believable disabled characters.

So if you read my rant on the portrayal of disabled characters in middle grade fiction last week, you may have been left with the impression that it was safest not to write a disabled character at all. Sorry about that! Of course you should write MG characters with real believable disabilities who kick A and take names. We need more of those!

I realize that some of the tropes I described last week come, originally, from a place of compassion. An author thinks about the disability that s/he's given the character. And maybe as soon as s/he thinks about it, s/he wants to solve the problem for the character. And the easiest ways to do that are to deliver a miracle cure (trope #4) or a superpower (trope #5) or to pretend that the disability doesn't really matter (trope #6).

But a writer's job is to dig deeper.

Acknowledge that the disability is part of your character's life, probably a permanent part, and that it presents challenges which the character lives with every day. Show us that the character's life is good and meaningful.

Here are a few ideas.

Ask yourself how the character's disability affects the story

If your disabled character is the protagonist, what is different for him/her because of the disability? How does it change the challenges s/he faces? How does it change the ways s/he deals with the challenges? If the disability were removed, would the story change at all? (If the answer is "no", consider scrapping the disability.... or working on it some more.)

If the disabled character is not the protagonist, make sure s/he has a story arc of his/her own. S/he shouldn't be there just to teach the protagonist compassion, or to make the protagonist feel grateful not to be disabled.

Remember the "able" in "disabled"

What can your character do? What's s/he good at? The character needs the same complexities as a non-disabled character-- flaws, good qualities, the works. Hopes, dreams, things that annoy the hell out of her. And like the rest of us, s/he should have a special talent or two... one not related to the disability, please. She might be ace at manipulating a wheelchair in tight spaces, but consider making her ace at factoring quadrinomials as well. Or make him a train buff with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the US freight-rail system which proves useful when push comes to shove. Whatever suits the story.

Research your character's disability

The external manifestation of a character's disability usually occurs to us fairly quickly. The character has a visual or hearing impairment, or wears a leg brace, or has one arm, or uses a wheelchair. But what caused the disability? A genetic syndrome, a disease, an accident?

Is the disability you've given the character one that actually exists? (It's surprising how often this comes up!)

What are the less-visible aspects of the genetic syndrome, disease, accident, etc? What treatment was required, is required now, will be required? Is this going to get better in the future? Or worse?

When you're researching the disability, you may discover things that you wish weren't true. Resist the urge to change the facts. You don't have to use all the facts in your story... but don't rewrite science.

Once you've done your research, of course, you should treat it like any other research you do for fiction, ie apply it with a very light touch. After all, if your readers wanted to read a treatise on osteogenesis imperfecta (or the Battle of Agincourt, or gemstone cutting) they'd go do the same research you did. Remember, the story is king.

Research is a vassal.

Try it yourself

Avoid the common authorly tendency to have characters scale Mount Everest in a wheelchair. (That's only a slight exaggeration.) To give yourself a sense of what your character will and won't be doing, try it yourself. When an author has experimented with wearing a blindfold or earplugs, or using crutches or a wheelchair, or avoiding using his/her hands, the details come through much more clearly and realistically in the book.

Experiment with due regard for your own safety and that of others! Don't walk around upstairs with your eyes closed, or try to cross streets in a wheelchair if you're not a skilled operator of same.

When you use this experience in your writing, be sure to think about whether your character's disability is new or old. If new, the character is likely to have the same difficulties and reactions that you had. But if it's old, the character will be used to some things and may not give them much thought. S/he may be skilled at tasks you found difficult (like carrying a cup of hot tea while on crutches) but stymied by others (like taking said cup of hot tea up a spiral staircase).

Consider the Mechanics

Humans make many things, and the things humans make are generally imperfect. Leg braces chafe, break and malfunction. They also weigh several pounds. Prostheses can cause sores and ulcers. Wheelchairs are as subject to breakdowns and damage as are other conveyances.

Figure out which aids your character uses, and research them. Make sure you consider the aid in the context of your story's setting. Will your character move easily on a ship, a sandy beach, a steep cliff, an icy lake? If your setting is historic, what aids would your character have used during your novel's time period?

Sensitive Language

Whether you're writing a disabled character or not, be aware of words and terms that are outdated and/or offensive. Such words and terms should be avoided in the authorial voice. If they're used in dialogue, they should be dealt with as an issue.

These include:

- cripple, crippled, and crippling (including figurative use, eg "A crippling blow" or "The crippled ship limped into port")

- retard, retarded (including figurative use, eg "A retarded idea")

- former medical terms that have become insults, eg mongoloid and spastic (also avoid "spaz")

- slang nicknames, eg "Pegleg"

- Disabilities used in a figurative sense. ("What a lame excuse," "He's blind to her faults." )

- "confined to a wheelchair" (a wheelchair is not a cell)

Consider the social aspects of the disability

Your character's interactions with others will be affected by the disability. The ways in which people-- children and adults-- react to disabilities are myriad, many-faceted, and bizarre. You may have seen and experienced this in your own life. If not, watch for it.

I started out to write a long list of examples here, but I've gone on long enough, and it will be more useful to you as a writer to make your own observations.

(In R.J. Palacio's Wonder, the social aspects of the protagonist's disability are the main focus of the novel. And kids love it.)

Anyway. I hope the above will prove useful to writers who want to write stories with well-rounded, multi-faceted characters with disabilities. Please do! We need more of them.

What's this disabled character doing in this MG novel? Probably about what they were doing in 1910.

Hello. I want to share a few thoughts about the portrayal of characters with disabilities in middle grade novels. There's the good:

• Mary in the Little House books. While there's usually little for diversity advocates to cheer about in this series, Mary's blindness is very matter-of-fact and realistic. It affects her life and her family's lives. And it doesn't ruin them.
• Wonder by RJ Palacio. What can I say that hasn't been said already?
• Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell. A MG fantasy – yes, a fantasy!-- in which a protagonist with a disability goes on a journey of discovery without encountering a miracle cure.

And then there's the not-so-good. Below are six tropes that encompass many of the portrayals of disabled characters in MG fiction. Each of them can be found in recent work as well as older books, though I'm only going to name older books.

I've given each trope a cute name even though they're not really very cute.

1. Paging Dr. Strangelove

In these books, the disabled character is a villain. His/her mind is as twisted as his/her body, get it? In case you don't, sometimes it's spelled out. Blech. In one MG book I read, there was an attempt to soften this (I think?) by having the villain turn out to be faking his disability. The image remains.

A venerable example of disability-conflated-with-badness is The Secret Garden (1910). When Mary arrives from India, she's sickly and unlikable. As she becomes more physically able, she turns into a better person. Then she arranges the same transformation for her bedridden cousin Colin. The message is clear.

2. God Bless Us, Every One

Like Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, the disabled character in some MG books is only there to gauge the protagonist's moral growth.

3. Exit Little Eva

In the 19^th century, one of the primary tasks of children in books was to die, preferably after a long illness and some edifying moral reflections. Although a few of these kids' books are still in print, like The Birds' Christmas Carol (1887), this one has mostly, er, died out.

Zombie-like, though, this trope rises again in the form of the character-too-badly-injured-to-survive. He tends to show up in action, pursuit, and battle scenes. He gets one injury, and then another, and things proceed to the point where he would be disabled were he to survive. So instead he's provided with yet another injury that enables him to die heroically. Sigh. As soon as the disabling injury was delivered, you knew this character was toast.

4. It's A Miracle!

The protagonist has a disability, but it's cured by the end of the book, often as a reward for something the protagonist has accomplished. While this is essentially what happens in The Secret Garden, and appears in rather bizarre form at the end of Johnny Tremain, it's also very common in fantasy novels.

5. He's Blind, But He Sees So Much More Than We Do
In these books, the character's disability is an undisguised blessing. It gives him/her powers that the abled characters can only dream of. If the protagonist in one of these books had a brain injury, it would be more likely to result in telepathy than in seizures.

This sort of book is satirized in the play Butterflies Are Free as "Little Donny Dark". In the Little Donny Dark books written by the protagonist's mother, the blind boy has no trouble flying a plane, because his other senses are so highly developed.

6. You'll Find My Disability on Page 16

These are books in which the protagonist has a disability which does not affect his/her life in any way. It might be a disability that, in real life, would take some serious managing (new skills to learn, trips to specialists, hospital stays, etc). The book, however, will mention the disability only once. Neither the protagonist nor the reader ever has to think about it again.
 

Oh dear. I hope my rant hasn't scared writers off from including disabled characters in their MG novels. Because we need more, not fewer. We need fully developed, complex characters whose disability is one aspect of their lives, one that matters but doesn't mean there's less for us to know and find out about the character. In a future post, I'll talk about some approaches for writers.

Middle Grade: Time to Lose the C-word

In the past two months, I've been blasted out of five (5) recent children's books by the C-word.

There I was, reading along, having a grand time, when all of a sudden...BAM. C-word. I'm knocked out of the story and cast adrift, the words on the page sifting meaninglessly past a brain now completely preoccupied with wondering why the author –with whom I'd been getting along swimmingly up till then-- suddenly decided to descend into hate speech.

But don't picture me reading these books. Picture a child in a wheelchair. A little boy with a leg-brace. A girl on crutches. Picture them reading the books. All of a sudden they're smacked right in the eyes with a line something like this:

He was a cripple.

I hadn't known she was crippled.

Why would anyone hurt a cripple?

Why indeed? But the child reader has been called this name on the school playground. And yes, of course it hurt.

(By the way, the above-- and below-- are not direct quotes from the books. I'm not naming and shaming. Just hoping for change.)

Does it matter how the word is presented? Whether it's in quotes or not? Marginally. Only marginally. Remember, the target readers are children, with a child's level of discernment.

Anyway, in four of the five books, the word occurred at least once without quotes.

In two of them, it was used in the authorial voice to describe a person with a physical disability.

In two, it was used to describe hypothetical people, "cripples" in the abstract.

In three, it was used as a figure of speech.

A crippling blow.

The ship was crippled.

(If you're thinking that adds up to seven: Yeah. Three of the five books used the word repeatedly.)

I think most people would probably be okay with the figurative use. I'm not. For those people to whom a word has fangs, it has fangs even when it's used figuratively. If you think about other hate speech in this context, you'll see what I mean.

It would also probably be okay with most people (including me) if the word was discussed, if the fact that it's hateful and hurtful, and/or how a character is affected by the word, was the author's point.

It's never discussed.

We didn't use the C-word for years, because we understood that it was insulting and hateful. Now apparently we think it's edgy.

The C-word, by the way, does not have fangs for all people with mobility-related disabilities. Those who react most negatively to it, I think, are those who were already physically disabled in elementary school.

But these are middle grade books. They're for people in elementary school.

So please, can we stop calling them names?





 
update 8/12/14: Two days later...now I've read the word in six (6) recent middle grade books.

Walter Dean Myers and the World We've Lost

Walter Dean Myers died today. With this sudden loss, his much-read New York Times opinion piece from this past March takes on the character of a final charge to the kidlit community. One I hope we will fulfill.

What I thought when I first read the piece (from a perspective, of course, that began some 30 years after that of Mr. Myers) was this:

It wasn't always like this.

Here's a book from my shelves. If memory serves (it occasionally does) my brother bought it for the cover price of 1.50 at The Book Worm, a shop around 15 miles from our home. We bought books there sometimes, when we were in funds-- books by Walter Dean Myers, and S.E. Hinton, and John D. Fitzgerald, and Mildred Taylor. The books were all, like this one, modest in size and presentation. The Potterquake was still far in the future, and the children's book market wasn't anywhere near as competitive as it is now.

Hold onto that last thought. It's important.

In this long ago world, computers were vast objects that filled an entire room, and nothing went "beep" except automobile horns. Local volunteer firemen used to take all us village kids on long, long night rides atop the fire trucks and we were allowed to put out the streetlamps with the searchlights. Kids roamed freely in the fields and forests; no one expected anyone so patently annoying as us to be kidnapped.

The kids in Walter Dean Myers's books explored just like us, only in Harlem. That interested us. We climbed about in barns; Myers's characters roamed abandoned buildings. We rode our bikes down the steepest hills we could find; Myers's characters did wheelies. Harlem was a different world-- but these characters were fully relatable.

It had clearly never occurred to anybody at The Book Worm that the kids in a nearly all-white community wouldn't want to read books about kids in Harlem. As you can tell from the cover, it also hadn't occurred to anyone at Avon Books that since the majority of American children were white, black children ought to be kept off book covers. There can certainly have been no idea that the books were somehow Special Interest, rather than mainstream. The Book Worm was about the size of the average motel room, with no shelf space for Special Interest.

In his New York Times piece this past March, Myers wrote:

"...This was exactly what I wanted to do when I wrote about poor inner-city children — to make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially, in their own eyes. I need to make them feel as if they are part of America’s dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and that they are wanted in this country."

I can only speak to the first part of Myers's wish. Mission accomplished. We ate these books with a spoon. Any suggestion that we shouldn't, or wouldn't, or couldn't have done so would have had to come to us from adults. No adults obliged.

We grew up. The Myers books got tucked onto a shelf with many others. The Potterquake came along and shook the children's book world to its core. And the annual output of children's books tripled.

The number of children, however, did not.

Suddenly the children's book world got more competitive. It became necessary to find an edge wherever one could. Covers became a matter of intense study and scrutiny-- what would attract readers? What would repel them?

At some point, someone somewhere seems to have decided, based on who knows what data or theory or madness, that a protagonist of color on the cover would not attract readers. (Begging the question: Which readers?)

There followed a period of several years during which African-American characters-- and, to a lesser extent, other characters of color-- vanished from the covers of children's books. Books that had a protagonist of color would show something non-human on the cover-- a symbol, a building, a monster, anything! Or the protagonist would appear in silhouette. Or, in what quickly came to be known as whitewashing, the protagonist would be shown on the cover but would have mysteriously lost melanin.

I see signs that this is dying out. I still think we have a long way to go before we progress to the point we were at in 1977. But I think that we've passed our nadir, and we're on an upward climb. Characters of color are reappearing on book covers, and some of them are even African-American.

We can do better, though. We can do so much better.

Let's do it for Walter Dean Myers.

On Writing A Fantasy Protagonist of Color

There's a difference between 1. writing a protagonist who is a person of color and 2. writing the experience of being a person of color.

#2 is difficult for an author who doesn't share the same cultural background as the character. Take the marvelous scene in Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 where the narrator, Kenny, recounts the family's reaction to the older brother, Byron, straightening his hair. Few white writers would have had the knowledge necessary to write that scene-- the undertones of the act, and the parents' outrage, come as a surprise to most non-African-American readers. This is the kind of deep cultural knowledge that isn't available to the outside observer.

#1, on the other hand, is what readers have in mind when they ask why more protagonists can't just be people of color, without it being a big deal.

In fantasy, they can. And easily. Especially in second-world fantasy.

In second-world fantasy, there is usually no stigma attached to varieties of pigmentation. (Hey, that's why it's called fantasy). As for cultural knowledge-- well, the writer is inventing the culture as part of the world-building. Hence any writer can dye a protagonist any color.

The weird thing is... well, I did it. And sometimes people try to convince me I didn't.

Here's the cover of Jinx. It shows a dark-skinned boy in an obviously-enchanted forest near an obviously-enchanted castle.

What's weird is that often people look at the cover and see a white boy.

 Do you? I don't. I've probably spent more time staring at this cover than anyone. Jinx doesn't look exactly as I picture him, but I don't draw well enough to show him exactly as I picture him, so that's a moot point. His picture certainly matches his description in the book. When people try to convince me Jinx is white, I direct them to the description, and they read it and agree that yeah, it does sound like he's not white.

Well. Ultimately a character exists somewhere in the space between the words a writer types and the image that forms in the reader's mind. I hope that for some readers, at least, my characters will look the way I see them. Sometimes Jinx shows up on lists of books with protagonists of color, and that makes me happy. Sometimes he's left off the lists, because Jinx's color isn't the point of the story.

 The same seems to be true of a handful of other middle grade novels that have come out in the last year or two. It would be nice to think that we're getting to a place where a non-white protagonist will be too ordinary to notice. Unfortunately, recent events suggest we're not getting to that place. Not yet.

What Is Middle Grade?

Every middle grade author seems to get this question:

"Should my kid read your book?"

Of course the correct response to this is "Yes, yes, absolutely! Buy it at once. In fact, just to be on the safe side, buy a copy for every room in the house."

But really, we just don't know. We're not sure what you're asking.

Recently someone phrased the question in a way that made the issue clearer to me. "Would my kid like your books? You said you write middle grade. She's in 3rd grade. Is that middle grade? She reads at a 9th grade level, though."

Now I understand the question.

The "middle grade" label hasn't been around that long, and it's not clear to most people what it means. It's not clear to me, come to that. The books tend to have grade levels or age levels stamped on the jacket flap, leaving both children and adults with the impression that "middle grade" is a measure of reading difficulty.

I think that it is not.

Most middle grade novels are not easier to read than most adult novels. In fact, they may be harder. However, they are not too hard for most upper elementary children. Neither are most adult novels too hard for them, come to that. The Hobbit has a higher lexile level (whatever that is) than Cry, the Beloved Country.

Vaguely, the age levels on the book jacket might suggest interest level. But the suggestion is not exclusive. I hear from a lot of adults who read my books.

So I thought maybe what the parent was really asking was just what "middle grade" means. And here's the definition of middle grade fiction I came up with.

In a middle grade novel:

• There may be some swearing, but it's usually limited and/or not spelled out on the page.
• Romance may happen, but it's not the focus. There will be no sex scenes.
• Bad things may happen, but despair is never permanent. Ultimately it turns out that life is worth living.

That's not a full and exact definition, of course. Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny is middle grade under that definition. (A book I loved at age ten, by the way.) But it's the best I can come up with right now.

Every time I try to add something to it, I either think of exceptions or realize that I'm trying to impose my own preferences.

After writing this definition, I started googling to see what other people think "middle grade" means. And I'm afraid I disagree with a lot of them. Here's what I think middle grade is not:

• It's not a reading level.
• It's not written with simplified sentence structure, easier vocabulary, or lower expectations for plot and character development.
• The plot is not external-rather-than-internal. It can be either; it can be both.
• It does not necessarily feature a protagonist who is between 8 and 13 years of age.

Anyway. My definition may be so much blather. But it's what I've got for the moment.

100 Books You Should Read...

... if you're exactly like me.

After grumbling about amazon's list of 100 books everyone should read, I sat down to compose my own list.

I followed amazon's apparent rule of just one book (or series) per writer. Otherwise this would be largely a list of books by Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett and Dr. Seuss.

I set another rule for myself: There are no books on the list by authors I know personally.

Anyway, the following list contains hardly anything from the adult or juvenile literary canon. There are no books that I was required to read in public school, and only one that I read for a college course. The list is made up of books that I personally found to be at least three of the following:

• fascinating
• fun
• funny
• life-affirming
• well-written
• full of information that I didn't know
• memorable
• worth multiple rereads

They're books I've recommended to people. So, without further ado, here's a list of books you're guaranteed to enjoy... if you're exactly like me. :-)

1. A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs: Reminscences of My Life in Camp With the 33^rd Colored Troops, Late 1^st South Carolina Volunteers by Susie King Taylor
2. A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti [poems]
3. A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss
4. A House for the Season series by Marion Chesney [Regency romance]
5. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
7. A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska by Hannah Breece
8. A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
9. America at 1750, a Social Portrait by Richard Hofstadter
10. America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines by Gail Collins
11. An A to Z of Georgian London by John Rocque & Ralph Hyde [atlas]
12. And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
13. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books by Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang¹
14. Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber
15. As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of 18^th Century Americans by Stephanie Grauman Wolf
16. Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
17. Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
18. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
19. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willem
21. Down the Common: A Year in the Life of a Medieval Woman by Ann Baer
22. Dr. Goat by Georgiana
23. Earl's Too Cool For Me by Leah Komaiko
24. Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key²
25. Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce
26. "Fire, Fire!" Said Mrs. McGuire by Bill Martin
27. The Golden Gazette: News from the [California] Newspapers of 1848-1857 by Dudley T. Ross
28. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
29. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
30. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
31. Having Our Say by the Delaney Sisters
32. I Can't Said The Ant by Polly Cameron
33. I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss
34. I Hate English by Ellen Levine
35. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
36. If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow by Cooper Edens
37. In Search of the Birth of Jesus by Paul William Roberts
38. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself by Harriet Ann Jacobs
39. Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
40. Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Erickson
41. Journey by Aaron Becker
42. Just Us Women by Jeanette Caines
43. Katherine by Anya Seton
44. Life in a Medieval Castle by Frances and Joseph Gies
45. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
46. Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind by Carol Hollinger
47. May I Bring a Friend? by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
48. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
49. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
50. Mother Earth Father Sky by Sue Harrison
51. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
52. One Monday Morning by Uri Shulevitz
53. Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side by Rose Cohen
54. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
55. People by Peter Spier
56. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
57. Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia by Teresa Crisp Williams et al
58. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
59. Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer
60. Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
61. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
62. Roots by Alex Haley
63. Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
64. Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw
65. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
66. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City by Shane White
67. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
68. Speak Softly, and Carry a Beagle by Charles Schultz
69. Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years of Pogo by Walt Kelly
70. The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island by Hergé
71. The Aran Islands by J.M. Synge
72. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
73. The Five Gospels, by Robert W. Funk et al
74. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
75. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
76. The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
77. The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis
78. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones
79. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith
80. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by herself
81. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
82. The Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak
83. The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage by Carol Lynn Yellin & Janann Sherman
84. The Prospering by Elizabeth George Speare
85. The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W.E.B. Du Bois
86. The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck: A Journey Through the Himalayas and Down the Brahmaputra by Rory Nugent
87. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
88. The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
89. The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
90. The Winged Watchman by Hilda Van Stockum
91. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
92. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
93. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
94. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
95. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
96. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
97. Watership Down by Richard Adams
98. When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
99. Women in England c. 1275-1525: Documentary Sources by P.J.P. Goldberg 
    100. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel

1As my mother always says, "This women's lib thing wasn't about nothing, you know."

2Key wrote several other middle grade fantasies, all worth reading

100 Must-Read Books by... some people.

Sigh. Amazon has just released a list of 100 books everyone should read. Of course I started out counting how many I'd read. But I quickly became distracted, as I scrolled through the rows of book covers, by how few of the books were by female authors.

So I ended up counting the male authors on the list. Seventy of the books are by men.

I want to acknowledge that progress has been made. Traditionally, lists of this kind contain only a handful of books by women. Or none.

There are also five (5) books on the list by black writers.

Now, here are a few books by women and/or black writers that are not on the list although most bookish people have probably read most of them:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (probably not qualified because she's already on the list once)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Roots by Alex Haley

Just off the top of my head.

There are 22 children's books on the list (thanks, Sarah!) of which 15 are by men. I won't bother to list those books by women that could have been included, because it's my impression most children's books are by women. But here are a few by African-American writers that surely qualify for a literary to-do list:

The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Oh, and a whole host of picture books by Donald Crews or Pat Cummings.

Anyway. These (not so) minor quibbles aside, let me get back to my original count. I find I've read 36 of the 100 books on the list. Of those, I liked 16 and loved 3. There are also 6 books on the list that I tried to read but gave up on. But that's not the authors' fault. It's this darn ADD.