By Jeanne Willis
Susan laughs, sings, swings and sulks like any child, and only on the last page do you see she uses a wheelchair.
Two short rhyming lines a page: Susan laughs, Susan sings, Susan rides, Susan swings. She's good, she's bad, she's happy, she's sad, exactly like every child your child knows. Not until the very last page do you see that Susan uses a wheelchair, and by then you already know her as just a child.
This is the gentlest possible way in, because it doesn't sit your child down to talk about disability at all. It just shows a girl being every kind of child, and saves the wheelchair for the last page, so the lesson lands without a single word about it: she was a regular child the whole time you were reading. For a very young child, that quiet reveal does more than any explanation could.