Welcome to our Research Spotlight series, where we invite postgraduate researchers and early career researchers to submit short-form articles that sheds light on their research, highlighting fresh scholarship on underrepresented research areas in an effort to stay abreast with new voices in the humanities. In this article, Natasha Radford provides an overview of her research in children’s picturebooks and the importance of building an inclusive library for children.
Over the last 3 years, I have been researching the representation and reception of autistic characters in children’s picturebooks. This is a passion project, bourne out of frustration. Years of struggling to find suitable picturebooks to support my own autistic daughter (now aged 23), the children who I teach and the families who visit my bookshop, resulted in determination to improve the situation.
There is no doubt that stories are a pervasive force in our world. From the beginning of humanity stories have been told, first orally, passed down as part of a cultural heritage and then into print. Research from Speer, Reynolds, Swallow and Zacks (2009) summarises that when we read narratives, they ‘activate specific visual, motor, and conceptual features of activities while reading about analogous changes in activities in the context of a narrative’ (p995). To put it plainly, when we read and imagine what happens in a story, our brain activity replicates similar thinking as if the experience were truly taking place. Narrative texts have the ability to form a link between imagined experience and perceived reality.
Picturebooks influence the youngest of children; books are shared with newborns, as they ‘offer us what all good art offers us: greater consciousness – the opportunity, in other words, to be more human’ (Nodelman,1988, p206). A well-chosen picturebook can do so much good, from language development to a rounded understanding of the world.
As a bookseller, I am often asked to source books which cover sensitive topics, including autism. Autism can be emotive, both for children who are learning more about themselves, or someone that they know and for parents who find themselves at the beginning of what can be a daunting journey to diagnosis and beyond. Books help all readers, adults and children alike, to process challenging experiences. For autistic children, and their parents, such books are indispensable, as they offer a tangible connection to their own world of experiences.
The latest figures from the Department for Education suggesting that the number of autistic pupils continues to rise exponentially; there were 166,041 autistic pupils in schools in England in 2024. This is an increase of 8% since 2020. More than 70% of these pupils attend mainstream schools. With such high numbers of autistic children being educated within mainstream classrooms, the need for teachers to understand autism and develop classroom strategies that support all the children in their care, is greater than ever. Picturebooks play a major part in this process. It is imperative that the titles are accurate in their representation. What happens when searches for authentic representations of autism fail to locate meaningful examples? The stereotypes which occur in some books result in children becoming depreciated in society. This must change.
It is true that there are more picturebooks available now, than say 20 odd years ago, when I first started looking for such books. However, with no central resource available to see what’s on offer, it is often the case that online searches are relied upon. There are a wealth of book lists available, from researchers, bloggers and associations, all of which aim to provide a high-quality resource for parents and teachers. ‘Storied representations in picture books, when used by teachers or parents, infer an authority or reality as they instruct children in educational settings’ (Belcher, 2019, p108). Our choices are significant. We must ensure that the books we choose avoid stereotypes, and unrealistic representations, which can easily be taken at face value. The purpose of an inclusive library for children is to encounter authentic experiences and points of view that differ from their own. Such picturebooks should humanise, not derogate. It is damaging when characters with disabilities lack agency and are one dimensional, defined only in terms of a disability label. Unless you know someone (say an enthusiast, knowledgable bookseller!) who can act as your guide, it is almost impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff.
A multitude of our first encounters with literature include stereotyped characters in traditional fairytales. From sly dwarves to humpbacked witches, the physicality of disability has repeatedly been portrayed as an evil nature that the human condition can embody. We think nothing of these characters, many sanitised by Disney. As adults we share the stories and as children, we devour them. But when we look closely, they should make us feel uncomfortable. Books model behaviours and attitudes, often in a subliminal manner. There is a fine line here. A book should not be so didactic that it is a heavy-handed tale of morality. If we think back to fairytales of old, children were to be seen and not heard. Step out of line, and the consequences could be dire. Well-crafted, contemporary books with a moral thread, should contain a clear message that provoke discussion. Such conversations need to be taking place in educational settings and the home. By doing so, we are broadening children’s (and adults) understanding and acceptance of autism.
Picturebooks hold the key to building empathy, understanding and acceptance (of the self and others). They form a bridge between a child’s lived experience and the unknown. Just as books for adults transport us to other worlds, or reflect our own back at us, so too, do picturebooks.
Making choices between the picturebooks available is challenging. The books we choose must be more than a request to define labels through narrow representations. This is crucial, as many books which include disabled characters read like a manual for young children; they lack developed disabled characters, who have their own agency. Rather, the disabled characters are to be rescued or put up with. Such discourse is damaging, as it teaches disabled children that they are a burden, with a thinly veiled lesson to their non-disabled peers that they are somehow heroic for allowing disabled children into their world. Let’s make a conscious effort to move away from the saviour complex.
Belcher, E. C., Maich, K., & Hardy, M. (2019). Teachers as Zookeepers? How Picture Books Describe Classroom Management. Language and Literacy, 21(4), 1-20.
Department for Education, Special educational needs and disability: an analysis and summary of data sources (2024) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66bdc2de3effd5b79ba490fd/Special_educational_needs_and_disability_analysis_and_summary_of_data_sources_Aug24.pdf [Last accessed 2025]
Nodelman, P. (1988) Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Speer, N. K., Reynolds, J. R., Swallow, K. M., and Zacks, J. M.(2009) Reading stories activates neural representations of visual and motor experiences. Psychological Science, 20, 989–999.
Natasha Radford is a PhD student at Anglia Ruskin University.
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