Emily Perl Kingsley Poetry

Emily Perl Kingsley is an American writer best known for her work on Sesame Street, where she was a writer from 1970 until her retirement in 2015. She is a prominent advocate for disability inclusion in media, inspired by her son Jason, who was born with Down syndrome in 1974. Kingsley wrote Welcome to Holland (1987), a widely recognized essay that metaphorically describes parenting a child with a disability. She also wrote Kids Like These, an award-winning television film. Throughout her career, she won 23 Daytime Emmy Awards and played a crucial role in expanding disability representation in children’s television and literature.

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Welcome To Holland

‘Welcome to Holland’ by Emily Perl Kingsley is an essay that looks at life with a disabled child, using a travel metaphor to show how the unexpected can yield positive experiences.

This is perhaps the most well-known example of Emily Perl Kingsley's work. The author is writing from her own personal experience of raising a child with Down Syndrome, and she does her best to try and make people understand what this experience is like. The author uses an informal, easy-to-understand, style, which she may have learned from her time working on Sesame Street. Much of her work has dealt with disabilities, and this is a very good example of this.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this……

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