Elizabeth Gerlach, BEN'S ADVENTURES

Elizabeth Gerlach, BEN'S ADVENTURES

Elizabeth: Then I was driving in my car one day and I thought it would be really cool to do a children's book to create a legacy for us or for [Ben] or give tribute to him and show a kid in a wheelchair. You didn't really, at the time, see a ton of picture books that showed all types of people, all types of kids with different needs or different abilities. I thought that would be really cool to represent, in my way, a kid in a wheelchair that had different needs. I didn't want the books to be about disability, just to be about how he lives in a wheelchair. I wanted it to be about a child that was a kid even though he was in a wheelchair. He could have friends. He could have dreams. He could enjoy his life. He could have fun. The premise of my books is that it's Ben's Adventures. Ben's in a wheelchair. He dreams up all of these fun instances.