A disability can strike a person at any age, young or old. Some people are born with it, and others get it later in life. Living with a disability can be challenging to explain to adults and even more so to children. Books made with this subject in mind can be an essential tool for teaching kids how to deal with a disability themselves or that it does not make people so different from each other.
“The Pirate of Kindergarten,” written by George Ella Lyon in 2010, is a book of this kind. It tells the story of Ginny, a kindergarten girl who has a particular condition: everything she sees, she sees in doubles. Understandably, it makes her life a little different from others. While other children can easily play with toys, read, and run around, Ginny often stumbles when it comes to simple things. When she tries to sit down at a class start, she often crashes into a chair; and when Ginny reads, she does it twice as letters and numbers repeat in her vision. Neither the girl nor her teacher understands why she does things this way, and only at the end of this colorful book the answer becomes clear: Ginny has double vision. At the end of this short story, she is prescribed glasses and patches so she can live and do things like any other child, and the story concludes (Lyon).
It tells about a not well-known disability, and it shows the importance of early screening: Ginny can get better with just patches and glasses. This story tells children what it is like to have double vision and gives them a tool to tell others if they have it. A charmingly simple and touching story, “The Pirate of Kindergarten” is a good read for both parents and children alike.
Works Cited
Lyon, George Ella. The pirate of kindergarten. Simon and Schuster, 2011.