The Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award - Part 1

The Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award

The Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award was initiated in 2000 to recognize authors, illustrators, and publishers of high quality fictional and biographical children, intermediate, and young adult books that appropriately portray individuals with developmental disabilities.

The award is a collaborative work by members of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and the Special Needs Project (a distributor of books related to disability issues). Every even year, an award is presented to an author and illustrator (if appropriate) of a children's picture book, an intermediate, and/or a young adult book that includes appropriate portrayals of individuals with developmental disabilities.

2012 Dolly Gray Award Winners:

Mockingbird
Kathryn Erskine
Disability: Asperger Syndrome
Publisher: Penguin
Reading age: 10 - 12

In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead, and her father cries a lot. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of “closure” in the dictionary, she realizes that is what she and her father need. In her search for Closure, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white--the world is full of colors--messy and beautiful, and it is through this discovery that she embarks on a road which leads her to find both healing and Closure.

Waiting for No One
Beverley Brenna
Disability: Asperger Syndrome
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Grade 8 Up

Taylor Jane Simon is an eighteen-year-old girl with Asperger’s Syndrome who has a refreshingly different view of the people she encounters and the life she wants to have. Young adult readers will identify with Taylor’s struggle for independence and self-control, and empathize as she outlines the ways—both positive and negative-- that her Asperger’s Syndrome affects her daily life. Connecting with a play by Samuel Beckett, Taylor explores a fear of solitary existence while reaching out to a world at times perplexing. Most important, Taylor wants to be seen as an individual, not as a stereotypical “person with special needs,” or a rare wild flower—images that haunt her from the past. A cameo performance by Taylor’s new gerbil -- Harold Pinter-- adds further emphasis to themes of existentialism and humour.