Autism and Classical Myth: Live blogging IBBY’s books for disabled young people - part 1… IA uchus v chetvertom KRO (My special education class, grade 4)

Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Thursday 9 December 2021

Live blogging IBBY’s books for disabled young people - part 1… IA uchus v chetvertom KRO (My special education class, grade 4)

Live blogging IBBY’s books for disabled young people - part 1… IA uchus v chetvertom KRO (My special education class, grade 4)

Thanks to my Our Mythical Childhood colleagues, I have just found out about IBBY – the International Board on Books for Young People. And, more specifically, and in line with this blog’s topic, I have found out about their selection – annotated – of recent “outstanding books for young people with disabilities”.

As I write I am about to search for the key word ‘autism’ to see if anything comes up. And...

...There are 12 matches for ‘autism’ starting with a book, in Russian, a short novel from 2019 called – in the English translation which, I assume, is IBBY’s – My special education class, grade 4.

Full details: Belenkova, Kseniya (text) Khramtsov, Alexander (ill.)
IA uchus v chetvertom KRO (My special education class, grade 4), Moscow: Meshcheryakov, 2019 [88pp.] ISBN 978-5-00108-355-9

I’m now going to adapt ‘live tweeting’ with some ‘live blogging’ where I work though the matches. I’m not sure how many books will come up, so I don’t know how much there will be to blog on. I might well blog on one book at a time. I don’t know yet!

I’ll look up what ‘Grade 4’ means in the Russian education system. As an aside, first I shall mention the sense of curiosity and excitement I am feeling at the prospect of doing something I really need to do more – namely to learn more about non-anglophone works for children, especially when, as I have stressed in relation to the current autism and myth project, I very much hope to reach across borders, of various kinds.

The novel – from the evaluator’s summary – offers perspectives of several children in the class, each of whom considers their classmates to be “strange” (p.28 – all quotations will be from this page). The evaluator likes how the book focuses on each child as an individual: “each one” they say “is unique and deserves to be heard.” The focus is, I’m reading, the classroom, but I’m told too the book also deals with issues outside school including some difficult home situations.

I am not sure what ages of readers are intended. But at least I shall finally look up what “Grade 4” means. I put “Education in Russia” into the search engine – and, a bit worryingly, doing this threw up hits for Special Education in Russia, which I hadn’t asked for.

Ah – the “Grade 4’ seems to be a translation of the North American grade system, so refers to ages 9-10.

Oh I never said, as part of what looks to be the book’s emphasis on children as individuals before any disability, it is never said what the disabilities are though the evaluator says that “This would likely be autism along with other disabilities.” One follow up question I have, then, is how often do children know – around the world – that they are for example, neurodivergent or autistic, or have been diagnosed as such? If they are not told, what might it mean for them, at some later point, to learn of this?

Anyway, now to look for the next match – it’s for a book in Swedish again from 2019, called in the English translation This is My Life. I’ll blog about it after a break, during which I need to get on with a few other things…