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Healthcare in Children's Media

Healthcare in Children's Media

Edited by Naomi Lesley & Sarah Layzell
Series: Children's Literature Association Series

Hardcover : 9781496857859, 326 pages, 6 b&w illustrations; 2 tables, April 2025
Paperback : 9781496857866, 326 pages, 6 b&w illustrations; 2 tables, April 2025

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Systemic Overview of Healthcare (and Its Absence in Media for Children)
Naomi Lesley and Sarah Layzell
Interview with Dallas Ducar, CEO of Transhealth, and Nichole Mayweather-Banks, LCSW, Founder of Changing FACES Counseling & Wellness, LLC
Naomi Lesley, Dallas Ducar, and Nichole Mayweather-Banks
Part 1: Healthcare in Contemporary Realism
Substance Use, Community Healing, and Care Gaps in Children’s Literature
Naomi Lesley
Conjoinment as/​and Inequality in Sarah Crossan’s One
Joseph Holloway
Mental Health and Masculine Silence in Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay
Jeremy Johnston
Part 2: Bibliotherapy and Health Literacy Books
An Interview with Anna Macdonald, Graphic Medicine Project Manager for Comics Youth
Sarah Layzell and Anna Macdonald
Dealing with Dementia: Patients and Their Caregivers in German Picturebooks
Farriba Schulz and Antje Tannen
Caregiving Children and Absent Medical Professionals: Hyperemesis Gravidarum in Picturebooks
B.J. Woodstein
Moving toward Literature-Based Dentistry to Boost Oral Health Literacy of Children: Interprofessional Partnerships between Dentists, Doctors, and Librarians
Valerie A. Ubbes, Madison Miner, and Manjushri Karthikeyan
Part 3: Storytelling Ethics and Speculative Care
An Interview with Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, Publisher for Talking Cub, about A Bend in Time: Writings by Children on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Sarah Layzell and Sudeshna Shome Ghosh
“Unviling” ALife: Ethical Choices of Healthcare Practitioners about Future Children
Anna Bugajska
Shifting Stories: Care Ethics and Masculinities in the Television Series Teen Wolf
Carrie Spencer
The Metaphor of Madness: Metaphor and Mental Illness in Contemporary YA Fiction
Melanie Goss
“No One Would Be Moved by Any Feeling Save Pity”: Children, Narrative, and Healthcare in Annie Fellows Johnston’s Little Colonel Series
Dawn Sardella-Ayres
Afterword: Women of Color Health Equity Collective Executive Board Discussion: Health Inequities and COVID-19
Vanessa E. Martínez-Renuncio, Dayna Campbell, and Jenise Katalina
About the Contributors
Index

The first full-length, multidisciplinary study examining representations of healthcare systems in children's media

Description

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.

Reviews

"Healthcare in Children's Media provides a valuable resource for clinicians, parents, patients, and others with a stake in matters of child and adolescent health."

- Anthony Wright, assistant professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University