July is Disability Pride Month (celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in July 1990) so I thought I’d use the first Series Saturday post of the month to feature three books that, while not a “series” in the truest sense of the word, all focus on disability awareness and pride written by the same mother-son pair: Rosalie and Hunter Mastaler.
A little background is probably appropriate here. I created an Instagram account back in 2017. I didn’t do much with it for the first few years, but once I started posting more regularly, of course the platform started making recommendations about accounts to follow and started popping Reels and posts into my feed. Somewhere along the way, it started showing me posts by @mastalerpartyof5, many of which focused on the Mastalers’ son Hunter (then 11 or maybe early 12 years old) and his recommendations on how to approach a child who has a visible disability. Hunter is an amputee (missing one leg below the knee) and is also partially deaf. These posts were informative and also light-hearted, and I found myself paying more attention to how I reacted to seeing disabled people out in public and taking much of the Mastalers’ advice to heart. Following the Mastaler account led me to follow quite a few other accounts focused on disability awareness and inclusion.
In the past couple of years, mom Rosalie and son Hunter (now 14 years old) have written and published three books that take the message from their Instagram presence and expand upon it in print form. I highly recommend all three books.
Illustrated by Danelle Prestwich, Hunter’s Tall Tales is a children’s picture book based on Hunter’s real-live encounters with other children who would ask what happened to his leg and focus on that more than just wanting to play. The tall tales the fictional Hunter tells range from being half-robot to not eating enough veggies as a baby and having pet piranhas he forgot to feed. The stories, and the other kids’ reactions to them, are humorous and set the stage for Hunter encountering a boy whose first question is not “what happened to your leg,” but rather “what’s your name” followed by “can you play soccer?” The focus on who he is rather than “what’s wrong with him” changes Hunter’s mood and his entire day. The book makes a crucial point about inclusion and respect, in language young kids can understand and follow. Danelle Prestwich’s art is beautifully simple and expressive, especially in the characters’ eyes and body language.
With artwork by Brant Day, Represent! provides exactly what the title advertises: short biographies of 30 individuals who have been successful in their chosen endeavors despite, and often because of, their disabilities. In the introduction, Hunter and Rosalie both express their admiration for the people they profile, and how many have become Hunter’s heroes and inspirations. The folks profiled range from blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer, who has climbed all of the world’s seven highest mountains, to Iron Man triathlon athlete Chris Nikic, who has Down Syndrome, to deaf singer/songwriter Mandy Harvey, paraplegic Tony Award winner Ali Stoker, and more. What shines through each entry is the perseverance and commitment of each person to test, and surpass, the boundaries society would place on those who are blind, deaf, paralyzed or otherwise disabled. The authors say they had a challenging time whittling the book down to just 30 entries, and a second volume is planned. I was happy to see profiles of people I was already familiar with (like Ali Stoker, whose Tony Award win had me cheering and crying) alongside profiles of people I’m eager to learn more about.
The Mastalers’ most recent publication is Let the Games Begin, another children's picture book focused on the plethora of adaptive sports available to the disability community. The book gives a full-page spread to each sport, ranging from alpine skiing to beep baseball to sled hockey, wheelchair basketball and swimming (the latter two of which Hunter participates in; his wheelchair basketball team won a National Championship in June, and he made the all-tournament team). The art by Betty Yuku is bubbly and adorable. Each sport has fun text easy for younger kids to sound out and read, accompanied by more detailed text appropriate for older readers that explains the history of the sport and how it works.