Zoom!

Zoom on over to the library, your local bookseller or Scholastic Canada and pick up a copy of the wonderful Fast Friends by Heather M. O’Connor and Claudia Dávila.

In Fast Friends Tyson is always fast, sometimes creating chaos where he zooms. When a new student joins his class he is fascinated. She doesn’t talk and uses a slick red wheelchair that looks just like the picture of a race car he drew. Everyone is always being very slow and careful around Suze but Tyson can see that she is a racer.

Heather M. O’Connor wrote this story as a dedication to her real life Suze and her siblings and the students at the school who were “just fast enough” while her daughter was in attendance. Her approach to the story is very matter of fact which I really love. This is not a book that discusses at great length Suze’s disability and the challenges she faces. Suze is a regular kid who just does some things a little differently from the other children in her class. Suze is faster than Tyson eating her lunch because she eats it through a tube. Suze loves books and Tyson loves reading to her. When the children walk with her too slow around the schoolyard, it makes her fall asleep. She laughs big belly laughs when she gets to be fast.

While not Own Voices, Fast Friends is a book that is desperately needed in our schools and our libraries. There is a serious lack of books featuring disability in the Canadian children’s publishing landscape and that needs to change. It is important that children read and learn from the stories of those with a disability to learn that they may have different ways of communicating or getting around town but there are still children who at their heart want to play, have fun, be with friends and zoom around. It can be challenging knowing how to approach talking about disability with young children so books like Fast Friends are so incredibly important to foster understanding and empathy.