Healthcare in Children’s Media

Contributions by Anna Bugajska, Dayna Campbell, Dallas Ducar, Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, Melanie Goss, Joseph Holloway, Jeremy Johnston, Manjushri Karthikeyan, Jenise Katalina, Sarah Layzell, Naomi Lesley, Anna Macdonald, Vanessa E. Martínez-Renuncio, Nichole Mayweather-Banks, Madison Miner, Dawn Sardella-Ayres, Farriba Schulz, Carrie Spencer, Antje Tannen, Valerie A. Ubbes, and B.J. Woodstein

Healthcare in Children’s Media, edited by Naomi Lesley and Sarah Layzell, is a collection of essays and interviews from scholars, activists, and practitioners grappling with crucial questions about representations of healthcare systems, both formal and informal, in children’s media. The volume focuses on systems of healthcare rather than individual narratives of illness. It examines how children are socialized into knowledge about healthcare. Essays explore critiques of existing systems embedded in children’s literature, analyze how children’s books might be used for health literacy education, and examine children’s film and television for visions of alternative systems and solutions to ethical dilemmas.

Contributors in Healthcare in Children’s Media draw upon interdisciplinary approaches including disability studies, gender studies, public health, bibliotherapy, and posthumanism. Essays examine care systems in the US, the UK, Germany, India, and Iran, and also offer a breadth of historical perspective ranging from the turn of the twentieth century through our present times and into projections of future bioethical and posthuman dilemmas. This volume adds fresh works to archives of health literacy books, with analytic perspectives on race and disability that medical writers might not consider.

Naomi Lesley is professor of English at Holyoke Community College. She is author of Fictions of Integration: American Children’s Literature and the Legacies of Brown v. Board of Education. Her previous research has focused on issues of race, education, and citizenship. Sarah Layzell is a writer and editor. Their research has focused on economics in children’s literature and sports in children’s literature. Layzell is author of the children’s novel, Cottonopolis.