As the song goes: "Children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way." This concept is especially significant in the area of disability studies. If children learn a disability rights model of understanding early on, the whole of society will be better for it. Interactions between all people will be on a more equal footing and, one hopes, negative stereotypes of disability won't be perpetuated in mass culture by future generations.

This is where children's literature and disability studies, the Winter 2004 theme issue, comes in. Many children are exposed to disability before they can even read, through picture books and being read to. This DSQ issue examines children's literature from a wide variety of perspectives, and we hope it will begin more discussion and research into the topic. (Most papers in this issue include authors' emails, and readers are encouraged to contact authors to discuss their papers with them.)

This DSQ contains 10 lengthy papers that investigate everything from disability in African American children's literature, to the experience of an author of youth literature in writing a book about a teen-aged burn survivor, to how disability has been presented in historic children's literature. The guest editors also collected eight shorter commentary-style papers on the topic of children's literature and disability studies, which they are calling Forum papers. These papers comment on topics such as the controversial book for youth, Stuck in Neutral, in which a father has to come to terms with his severely disabled son. In other Forum articles, writers with and without disabilities discuss trying to integrate realistic characters with disabilities into their work. Overall, this DSQ issue provides a multi-faceted look at a largely unexplored disability studies area. In fact, a Google search on "children's literature and disability studies" yields no links. Hopefully this DSQ issue will remedy that absence.

We thank the three guest editors for organizing this theme issue -- Kathy Saunders, a consultant for disability awareness in children's books and author of Happy Ever Afters, a storybook guide to teaching children about disability; Ann Dowker, University Research Lecturer, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford; and Jane Stemp, author of Waterbound (1995) and Secret Songs (1997) -- all three based in the United Kingdom. They did an excellent job of promoting their call for papers for this DSQ theme issue internationally in 2002. Their hard work has created an issue with papers from the UK, Australia, Canada, Spain, and the United States. So it is with thanks and pride that we present this noteworthy theme issue in DSQ.

Beyond the theme issue papers, we draw your attention to a stimulating set of reviews, edited by Katie LeBesco, which covers films as well as books -- assessed from a humanities/disability studies perspective. To round out this quarter's lively DSQ reading, we offer "News and notes" and even job announcements. As always, we welcome your comments and critiques, especially in the form of "Letters to the Editors" that we will publish as appropriate.

Beth Haller & Corinne Kirchner
Co-Editors