[4] Even though society has included more diverse characters with disabilities, this representation must be handled with care to avoid promoting existing negative stereotypes.
[4] Professor Ian Davidson and colleagues analyzed the depiction of disabled characters in a collection of 19th children's literature from the Toronto Public Library.
[5] The researchers found certain common characteristics of disability representation in 19th-century children's literature: disabled characters rarely appeared as individuals, but are usually depicted as impersonal groups and reduced to five oversimplified categories: the diseased or extremely sick, the "crippled" and "deformed", the blind, the "deaf" or "mute", and the broad category of the "insane" or 'mad".
[7] Dr. Vivian Yenika-Agbaw found that in these fairy tales, the relationship between disabled and non-disabled characters was defined by power imbalances.
Most often they were not included in stories and when they were, many negative stereotypes prevailed, such as characters who were pitiful or pathetic, evil or superheroes, or a burden and incapable of fully participating in the events of everyday life.
Barbara Holland Baskin and Karen H. Harris conducted influential research into the portrayal of disability in children and youth literature in the late 1970s.
Today, disability in juvenile literature is a standard topic included in bibliographies, research, criticism, and review sources.
The protagonist, Deenie, faces the challenges brought by having to wear a body brace during her treatment, which impacts her perceptions of herself and those of her family and fellow students.
Deenie does not overcome the disability by the end of the story, nor is she defeated by it; the conclusion more realistically shows her continuing to face challenges and learning to adjust to them.
A trend in current juvenile fiction is the portrayal of characters with "hidden disabilities" that have become more common diagnoses in recent decades.
Examples include Petra Mathers' Sophie and Lou (1991), about extreme shyness that is an emotional and social disability, and Caroline Janover's The Worst Speller in Jr. High (1995) about a boy with dyslexia.