We Move Together

Product Information

In this session, the creators of We Move Together will do a reading from their picture book that includes an audio description of the illustrations and introduce participants to a couple of accessible art making sample activities found in the book’s accompanying learning guide. The creators will support a discussion about art, accessibility, and disability justice, and engage in a

Long before I ever conceived of becoming an academic, I wanted to write kids’ books. It’s been deeply gratifying to creatively work in this medium and for the book to reach so many people. The three of us as an author-illustrator team work so welltogether that I can imagine us doing it again.” Beginnings of We Move Together We all move through the world in different ways, and it’s so important to provide young readers with visible examples of the many assistive devices people with disabilities use on a daily basis. Normalizing characters with disabilities in children’s literature is such a great way to accomplish this goal, and We Move Together does it flawlessly." Johal’s exploration of his characters’ hidden lives is what is most exciting. He rightly subverts cultural stereotypes and his audience gains a deeper understanding as a result. What dark secrets does the local Indian’s cook have, who you thought was the most straightforward man around? What about his famous chef daughter, or her newly religious sister? The idea for We Move Togethercame to Fritsch and McGuire in 2017 when the pair were discussing books they were reading to their young children. Both Fritsch and McGuire lamented the difficulty they were having finding books taking up disability in ways relatable to children and, more generally, to the broader communities to which they belong. The detailed and charming illustrations in We Move Together show us a world of cooperation, equality, community, love and friendship, which I believe is a world we all would be happy to live in.”This stunning picture book highlights the way that people of all abilities can move together with a little ingenuity, a lot of community and a focus toward disability justice. Presented with a focus on diversity the book is written simply and powerfully in a way that even the youngest children will find relevant." This is not the only time someone is comparing their life to that of a family member. Take The Red River, which ends with mother, Renu and her son, Karan playing, and her feeling “how happy she was that he could be so loud, that he would never know quietness like she had.” This book contains 17 short stories, that are all set in the same neighbourhood in London. The stories follow different people but some have overlapping characters. Some characters and their stories intertwine with each other, too. Full of hope tempered with reality, this book leaves sunshine and rainbows behind in favor of honest, hard work. But work that happens together and that leaves room for moments of pause and appreciation and joy.

One stand-out story is "Chatpata: Kaam", with middle-aged Jagmeet remembering the forbidden love he had for his friend Hiten. Decades later, Jagmeet continues to struggle with his sexuality. This acute insight into people’s lives is not found in all the stories however, and that is a significant downfall, for this is what makes We Move. Johal is guilty of writing too much at times and saying too little, and in certain stories like The Piano and Freehold, it seems there is not much beyond the surface. We Move Together is a love letter to the next generation of disabled kids, and a provocation for their nondisabled peers to rethink an ableist society's assumptions about how our bodies should move, what they should look like, and how our brains should work ... This gorgeously illustrated book offers a powerful message rooted in the Disability Justice movement—we care for and love each other, and we move together, with nobody left behind."Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canadais the title of her forthcoming book, an edited collection thatexplores how disability is central to forms of criminalization and crime control in the Canadian context. With their help, the project developed into a story that reflects the power of moving together – sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes in celebration. Dr. Fritsch

One freshly published book is ‘ We Move Together’. It looks at the issue of disability from the point of view found in a quotation by Aurora Levins Morales and Patty Berne, which acts as a foreword: This book is for everyone! It is deceptively simple yet gets at many different contemporary issues – we hope it is an interesting read for all ages! Cory Silverberg, author of the brilliant What Makes A Baby said “If you have a body, you are going to want to read this book!” Alice Wong so generously called it “the book I’ve been waiting for!” and Lydia X.Z. Brown remarked that “it is a love letter to the next generation of disabled kids, and a provocation for their nondisabled peers to rethink an ableist society’s assumptions…” I’m a little late to the game, but that won’t stop me from sharing We Move Together by Kelly Fritsch and Anne McGuire with you all today. Released last month, this beautifully inclusive picture book focusing on disability justice is a perfect example of what Mutually Inclusive is all about. The Transformative Power of Moving Together - Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Skip to main content The Transformative Power of Moving TogetherWith all these projects on the go, there are no immediate plans for a second children's book. “But” says Fritsch, “it’s something we’re considering.”

We didn’t want a book that told the reader what to think or that didactically presented a lexicon. We wanted to create a book thatprovokedthe reader to look at the world differently and that would generate conversation and questions,” Fritsch says. The author-illustrator team created We Move Together from their unique and varying perspectives as disabled people, parents, disability activists, and disability studies scholars. Together, they pooled their creativity in response to their shared frustration in finding books to read with their own children and friends that showcase positive representations of disabled, D/deaf, and neurodiverse communities, or that engage with disability justice and challenge ableism.

From operaismo to 'autonomist Marxism'

Anne McGuire, Eduardo Trejos, and I began writing this book in 2017 after failing to find picture books that engage with disability culture and disability justice that we could read with our kids. So many books for kids that feature disabled characters are either about individually overcoming adversity or how despite having some kind of disability we’re all supposedly the same because of our shared humanity. These kinds of stories leave out the ways that ableism impacts disabled peoples’ lives and how experiences of ableism can definitely make us not all the same. They also frequently leave out the many joys of disability culture and community, how disability is more than just medical treatments or scientific understandings about our bodies. Many of these books had inaccurate depictions of what assistive devices or disabled people look like. And more often than not, the books that we found represent disability as anomalous or undesirable and these were not the kind of stories we wanted to read with our kids. Through these short stories, I learned quite a lot about the British South Asian Community, their traditions, culture, and past, present and future hopes. We Move Together" shows how a community comes together to help each other have more enriched and accessible lives; they solve problems such as mobility ramps, crosswalks with audible alarms and tactile pavement (curbs with bumps on the ramp), even swings that accommodate wheelchairs on the playground. There is a multitude of representation throughout this children's picture book showing wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, ASL (American Sign Language) classes for the deaf, as well as long white canes for the blind, canes for the elderly, assistance animals, and persons with sensory issues. We Move Togetheris a new picture book by a diverse team of authors (Kelly Fritsch, Anne McGuire, and Eduardo Trejos) who have come together to write a love letter to the disability community. It is, in a word, fantastic. It is empowering, it is interesting, it is understandable, it is relevant—I could go on all day about how much I love this book. Unfortunately, as I discovered to my dismay, it is entirely possible that the kids in your life will not love it as much as you do. Their formula is paying dividends, as they have already received a very enthusiastic response to We Move Together.