Exploring Dementia in Children’s Literature: An Interactive Exhibition

It is estimated that 55 million people live with dementia around the world, a number that could triple by 2050 (Alzheimer’s Society, 2023). Dementia is a degenerative disease that affects cognitive and emotional abilities and ultimately leads to a total loss of executive functions. Given its prevalence, children are more likely to personally know someone with dementia and may assist with caregiving (Hamill, 2012). Familiarising children with dementia and teaching them about the condition through literature is essential to reduce societal stigma and discrimination and to achieve “dementia-friendly societies” (WHO, 2023). While dozens of children’s books about dementia have been published in English since the 1980s, particularly storybooks (Sakai, 2014), most of them adopt an ageist perspective that maintains stigma (Caldwell et al., 2021), and there is very little scholarship about the way these books portray the disease and how readers respond. An exhibition on the representation of dementia in contemporary children’s literature was organised in 2023 in Worcester, UK, to bridge a gap between academic research and the general public. Thirteen picturebooks, middle-grade books, and Young Adult books in English were selected. A thematic analysis was conducted to identify ten ways of addressing dementia, which were then used as the basis of an interactive and hands-on exhibition.