Children’s literature is an area which does not have sharp limits, requires explanation afterward, and involves matters of debates.

Children’s literature is an area which does not have sharp limits, requires explanation afterward, and involves matters of debates. Unfortunately, it is a field that only the ones who are interested in this or come across it by chance because of their departments or adults after becoming parents are curious about it. Factors such as considering only a particular age range for children literature, having an attitude as “only children read children’s books” and children meet with children’s book only after starting school impoverishes children literature. However, children’s literature has a great importance in education and public awareness and if aforementioned factors are reshaped with a conscious view, it may be effective to create a new critical culture about children’s books.

Some facts like universities which has not children’s literature courses in literature departments, the idea of only people who study Preschool Education and Children Development Department has to know children’s literature, academic studies on children’s literature which are only on the examination of textbooks and its pedagogic aspects indicate the weakness of this field. Another factor which shows how much we underestimate the children’ books is the tendency to follow Instagram mother pages or bookstagram pages. It is a fact that social media contributed to develop a popular interest in children books. Yet, this interest does not include critical thinking, preoccupying ideas on how children’s books should be, the necessity of children’ book being uncensored, there are other books that show children realities of life other than rose colored lives. It only goes as far as advertisement or sponsor oriented writings of publishers, books and authors.

At this point, Ayfer Gürdal Ünal’s MA thesis, Disability in Turkish Children Literature: 1969-2009, which was also published as a book, has a particular importance for academic studies in children’s literature. The reason is that she investigates disability which is a subject that has only a few works on, with some narrations that she was able to reach by criticizing them with sociocultural theories and models.

This work, which received 2011 Oğuz Tansel Çocuk Yazını award, has subtitles such as; definition of disability in Turkey and the world, models of disability, sociocultural theories, being a disabled person in Turkey, the definition of children’s literature and the disabled child, the representation of disabled people in Turkish Children’s literature. Ayfer Gürdal starts her research with one of the oldest works on disability she could find, Kemalettin Tuğcu’s Garip (1969). Thereafter, she focuses on forty works including nineteen novels, fourteen short stories, five tales and two illustrated books which were written until 2009. In these narrations, “considering forty years’ period, it can be alleged that there is a slow change in disabled people’s relations with family, school, friends and external environment” (Gürdal, 147). In this period, “the understanding of approaching the disabled person as ‘filth’, ‘blemish’, ‘shame’ for the family starts to change. Families that gets training in order to communicate with their child (The Girl with Rollerskate) or families who are proud of their sportsman disabled child (Record Holder Wheelchair) are apparent in recent years” (147). On the other hand, it is a striking example that the fact of “this situation is still not a common matter and there are still families who hide their disabled children” is considered through children’s literature works (The Girl with Rollerskate, Rooster Man and Pirate).

Ayfer Gürdal focuses on how disabled type is embraced in writings and how disabled was treated in areas like family, society, language and ideology in her work. In her own words;

This thesis evaluates how disabled people are represented in children’s literature between the years of 1969-2009 and explores the changes in perception of disability. Even though the findings are not at the desired level yet, but it proves a change from passive to active in the disabled image. The image changes from “poor crippled” who watches his/her playing friends on the street, to an active disabled person who is included in public life. While the disabled were expressed as someone “incomplete” or “faulty” in early writings, nowadays they are perceived as “different” people. (11)

In this case, Gürdal brings an interdisciplinary dimension to her work by benefiting from Michel Foucault’s “Bio-power and Obedient Bodies” approach.

As a result, this work demonstrates how to exceed the limits on children’s literature which was placed in a narrow model by being evaluated only from the perspective of values education or pedagogic aspects. Ayfer Gürdal reveals critical reading and the richness of interdisciplinary study in her study which will leave its mark in children’s literature and she presents a good example of a good work to the researchers who are interested in this area.

Bibliography

Ünal, Ayfer Gürdal. Türk Çocuk Edebiyatında Engellilik: 1969-2009. İstanbul: Evrensel Basım Yayın, 2011.