Afia’s Blog Post

The topic of my blog post is the presence of international books on the topic of disability. I am a differently abled person myself so I wanted to see if I could find books that I could possibly read to my school aged children. I first searched on google using search terms such as “international children’s books”. Using those terms allowed me to see that there were a lot of books being written by American authors about international characters and topics. I tried to narrow my topic down in a few other ways before settling on the topic of different ways that children display their abilities.
When I searched for information regarding this topic, I was able to get more results featuring international authors. One of the links that I came across was a blog site about children with special needs called “Sipar”. As I read the blog, I started to understand that it was written by a supporter of an actual nonprofit in France that aims to provide resources to Cambodian refugees including children. After reading the blog post I searched the name Sipar that I found at the bottom of the blog post with their website and went to it. The blog post was about 4 books in a series called “Special Children” in a Cambodian city called Phnom Penh.
These books are children’s stories based on the lives of 4 Cambodian children that have different abilities. According to the blog:” Sipar director Hok Sothik said at the launch: “The books are about the true stories of four disabled children. We tried to relate the stories in a happy manner, disregarding the hardships of being disabled. They were born that way, it’s not their fault. “We want all people to accept their disabilities in a general sense and help [disabled people] gain access to education just like ‘normal’ people,” he said.
Although I disagree with the wording of the director’s intentions regarding the books, I am amazed by the fact that the stories are available to provide representation to all of the children of Cambodia. I disagree with the director creating books that “disregard the hardships that the children face.” I am amazed that these books are written in the Cambodian language because that provides greater access to the intended audience. The website is amazing and shows that this nonprofit- is still doing amazing work.

Citation:

Sipar Books. Sipar Books Website, 2014, http://sipar-books.com/. Accessed 23 March. 2019.