Critical Review: Someone Special Just Like You

Someone Special Just Like You
By Tricia Brown

Brown, Tricia. Someone Special Just Like You. New York: Henry Holt And Company,

1984.

“In dispelling the fear of the unknown and showing our common needs for physical affection, community, skills, and independence, this book should do much to help the disabled [child] gain independence from other children” (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books). I read the book Someone Special, Just like You by Tricia Brown. This quote was written on the back cover of the book. Brown is an outsider yet she wrote this book because of a little girl in her son’s class who had a disability. She wanted to find a book “to help him understand that we should accept one another for the love we have to share with the world and not judge on the basis of physical appearances or limitations” (Brown, 1995). She soon found out that none existed. She originally wrote this book for preschoolers hoping that they will learn to accept other classmates with disabilities. However, Brown soon realized that her book was not only about children with disabilities, but about all of us. “Everyone has their own disability, and each of us is someone special” (Brown, 1995).
This picture book contains photographs taken by Fran Ortiz which shows pictures of children with all types of disabilities. Throughout the book, there was a boy who was visually impaired climbing through a tunnel, and a girl who was using a walker walking down a hallway. There was a boy who was hearing impaired playing an instrument and a girl with leg braces blowing bubbles and sliding down a slide. There was a little boy with Down Syndrome swimming in the pool and playing with toys. There was a boy in a wheel chair at school who was talking to his classmates that were sitting on a bench. There was another picture of a little boy using sign language, and making art projects.
The point of all these pictures was to show children that may not have a disability that other children with disabilities can still do many things that any little kid loves to do. There was minimal text on each page because the main focus was on the pictures. The text just explained the pictures. For example, on the page with the picture of the girl going down the slide with her leg braces it said, “I like to go down the slide like everyone else.” Brown was showing her young readers through her pictures that all kids love to play with toys, take naps, dance, play the piano, brush their teeth, go to a museum, smell pretty flowers, eat ice cream, etc. Even though a child might be in a wheel chair, or have a hearing impairment, they still want to be looked at as being a normal child. They don’t let their disability get in their way, so other kids need to be able to accept them for who they are.