South Florida couple writes children's book to explain wheelchair use after spinal cord injury

When Juan and Valeria Hernandez searched for a children's book to help explain why Juan uses a wheelchair to their toddler son, Luca, they could not find one on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.

So, the South Florida couple decided to write one themselves.

Their new book, "Why Does Daddy Use Wheels?", shows that father and son can still go on adventures together despite physical differences.

"We just wanted it to be like a book that portrayed a family like ours," said Juan Hernandez, a spinal cord injury survivor. "We wanted it to just be a book where the wheelchair is just simply how I move around, and the book kind of answers it simply for a toddler."

Hernandez suffered a spinal cord injury in 2021 during a diving accident, just weeks after proposing to Valeria. In 2023, he defied the odds by walking down the aisle at their wedding and dancing at their reception.

Three years later, the couple welcomed their second child, a daughter named Mila, born earlier this month around the same time their book was published.

According to the National Institutes of Health, about 18,000 new cases of spinal cord injuries occur annually in the United States, with roughly 300,000 people currently living with an SCI.

While written with families like theirs in mind, the couple hopes non-wheelchair-using families check it out to normalize discussions surrounding disabilities.

"I hope it normalizes having that conversation with your kids," Hernandez said. "Just being able to have a dialogue like, 'Yeah, that's a wheelchair. That's how he gets around. Some people move differently, and that's how he gets around.' That's what our book addresses."

The book, which is also available in Spanish, can be found on Amazon, where it hit No. 1 in the Children's Physical Disabilities category.