This list was initially compiled in honor of the 2023 Disability Pride Festival in celebration of its 10th anniversary. It features some of the newest titles to join our collections and centers voices of people with disabilities for all ages.
Picture Books for Kids
With hilarious, charming text by Keah Brown and exuberant illustrations by Sharee Miller, Sam's Super Seats celebrates the beauty of self-love, the power of rest, and the necessity of accessible seating in public spaces.
Ali loves to dance, sing, and act. But she had never thought of putting on her own show until her neighbor asks, 'Why wait?' Immediately energized, Ali gets to work. There's so much to do before showtime--choosing the right musical, auditions, rehearsal, costume and set design--but Ali can do anything with her family and friends. When a storm threatens to undo all their hard work, Ali must use her imagination and adapt so the show can go on.
Meet fifteen remarkable athletes who use adaptive equipment in this beautiful and truth-telling picture book. A downhill skier whose blindness has sharpened her communication skills. An adaptive surfer who shreds waves while sitting down. A young man who excels at wheelchair motocross--but struggles with math. Tenacious tells their stories and more, revealing the daily joys and challenges of life as an athlete with disabilities.
A bold and colorful exploration of all the ways that people navigate through the spaces around them, and a celebration of the relationships we build along the way. We Move Together follows a mixed-ability group of kids as they creatively negotiate everyday barriers, and find joy and connection in disability culture and community. A perfect tool for families, schools, and libraries to facilitate conversations about disability, accessibility, social justice, and community building. Includes a kid-friendly glossary.
Sam is fascinated by her new neighbors and their ability to talk with their hands, and when she meets Mai, she starts to learn Filipino sign language so they can communicate. Includes dictionary of Philippine signs.
Sometimes everything is too much! Too loud, too bright, and all too overwhelming. Writing from her own experience with sensory processing disorder, Jolene Gutiérrez's compassionate picture book explores the struggles of a sensorily sensitive child and how they settle themselves. Joined by Angel Chang's beautiful illustrations, young readers will learn that it's OK if some days are too much.
Chapter Books and Graphic Novels for Kids
Starting middle school is hard enough when you don't know anyone; it's even harder when you're shy. A contemporary middle-grade graphic novel for fans of Guts and Real Friends about how dealing with anxiety and OCD can affect everyday life. As long as Maggie rolls the right number, nothing can go wrong... right? Maggie just wants to get through her first year of middle school. But between finding the best after-school clubs, trying to make friends, and avoiding the rumored monster on school grounds, she's having a tough time... so she might need a little help from her twenty-sided dice. But what happens if Maggie rolls the wrong number? A touching middle-grade graphic novel that explores the complexity of anxiety, OCD, and learning to trust yourself and the world around you.
This title is also available in ebook format.
Struggling with ADHD, loneliness, and connecting with his divorced father who would rather see him embrace sports instead of cooking, sixth-grader Elliott finds an unlikely friend in popular, perfect Maribel when the two are paired in a school-wide contest.
Twelve-year-old Al, short for Alison, navigates an overprotective mother, growing apart from her best friend, and her first girl crush, all while her recent Crohn's diagnosis puts a knot in her stomach.
Follows thirteen-year-old neurodivergent Maudie during an eventful summer in California with her father, where she struggles with whether to share a terrible secret about life with her mom and stepdad. Recommended for ages 10 and up.
Books for Teens
In 1655 sixteen-year-old Tania is the daughter of a retired musketeer, but she is afflicted with extreme vertigo and subject to frequent falls; when her father is murdered she finds that he has arranged for her to attend Madame de Treville's newly formed Académie des Mariées in Paris, which, it turns out, is less a school for would-be wives, than a fencing academy for girls--and so Tania begins her training to be a new kind of musketeer, and to get revenge for her father. Includes an author’s note about her personal experience with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).
At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome — a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it.
While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement. Ariel explores beauty and identity in her young-adult memoir about resilience, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life, and yourself, back together time and time again.
This title is also available in audio CD, ebook, and e-audiobook formats.
A pun-filled YA contemporary romance, The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar finds a teenage girl competing in a televised baking competition, with contestants including her ex-girlfriend and a potential new crush – perfect for fans of The Great British Bake Off and She Drives Me Crazy!
This title is also available in ebook and eaudiobook formats.
The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy.
This title is also available as an ebook.
This anthology explores disability in fictional tales told from the viewpoint of disabled characters, written by disabled creators. With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.
Seventeen-year-old Lilah, who wears hearing aids, returns to a summer camp for the Deaf and Blind as a counselor, eager to improve her ASL and find her place in the community, but she did not expect to also find romance along the way.
This title is also available in ebook format.
Adult Fiction
The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both at the same time. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.
This title is also available in large print, ebook, and eaudiobook formats.
As a gay man with cerebral palsy, Elliot has always searched for the one, and he thought he found that person in Gus, his doting boyfriend. And yet, he can't seem to stop cheating. Elliot falls into a rabbit hole of sex, drinking, and addiction, and ultimately learns that the person he truly needs to learn to accept is himself. As incisive commentary on gay life today, a heart centered, laugh out loud exploration of self and a rare insight into life as a person with disabilities who refuses to be a victim, critics and readers alike will fall in love with this story.
This title is also available in ebook format.
Emerging from a life-threatening illness, a fiercely organized but unfulfilled computer geek recruits a mysterious artist to help her establish meaning in her life, before finding herself engaged in reckless but thrilling activities.
This title is also available in audio CD, Playaway, large-print, ebook, and eaudiobook formats.
Mara Tagarelli is, professionally, the head of a multimillion-dollar AIDS foundation; personally, she is a committed martial artist. But her life has turned inside out like a sock. She can't rely on family, her body is letting her down, and friends and colleagues are turning away--they treat her like a victim. She needs to break that narrative: build her own community, learn new strengths, and fight. But what do you do when you find out that the story you've been told, the story you'vetold yourself, is not true? How can you fight if you can't trust your body? Who can you rely on if those around you don't have your best interests at heart, and the systems designed to help do more harm than good? Mara makes a decision and acts, but her actions unleash monsters aimed squarely at the heart of her new community. This is fiction from the front lines, incandescent and urgent, a narrative juggernaut that rips through sentiment to expose the savagery of America's treatment of the disabled and chronically ill. But So Lucky also blazes with hope and a ferocious love of self, of the life that becomes possible when we stop believing lies.
A neurodivergent, hyperlexic book editor, Jo Jones, taking possession of a possibly haunted family estate in North Yorkshire, finds herself at the center of a murder investigation when the groundskeeper is found dead and a family portrait goes missing, and to clear her name, she must unearth the town's secrets-and her own.
Adult Nonfiction & Memoir
Tiffany Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have far too often been "othered" and rendered invisible. As the Asian American daughter of immigrants, living with PTSD and a permanent arm injury sustained at age nine, Yu is well aware of the intersections of identity that affect us all. She navigated the male-dominated world of corporate finance as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before founding Diversability, an award-winning community business run by disabled people building disability pride, power, and leadership. Organized from the personal to the professional, the domestic to the political, the Me to the We to the Us, The Anti-Ableist Manifesto frames context for conversations, breaks down the language of ableism, identifies microaggressions, and proposes real actions that lead to genuine and authentic allyship.
Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong's Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
With clear, fresh, and light-hearted prose, these essays explore everything from Brown's relationship with her able-bodied identical twin (called 'the pretty one' by friends) to navigating romance; her deep affinity for all things pop culture--and her disappointment with the media's distorted view of disability; and her declaration of self-love with the viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute. By 'smashing stigmas, empowering her community, and celebrating herself' (Teen Vogue), Brown and The Pretty One aims to expand the conversation about disability and inspire self-love for people of all backgrounds".
In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability, broadly construed, have been and continue to be incorporated into Black activism, from the 1970s to the present. In so doing, she establishes a new lineage for disability politics, one that allows the work of contemporary Black disability justice activists to be central. Aiming to speak to both academic and activist audiences, Black Disability Politics identifies common qualities of Black disability politics and provides praxis-based approaches for enacting these politics in contemporary social justice work. Using the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women's Health Project alongside interviews with contemporary Black disabled cultural workers, Schalk argues that the work of Black disability politics not only exist, but are essential to the future of Black liberation movements.
Disabled journalist Ben Mattlin weaves together interviews and reportage to introduce a cavalcade of individuals, ideas, and events to trace the generation that came of age after the ADA reshaped America, and how it is influencing the future.
One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism--from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington--Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.
This title is also available in ebook and eaudiobook formats.
The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage.
This title is also available in audio CD and eaudiobook formats.
This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum. It's also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language.
Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu's rousing memoir about being both profoundly disabled and profoundly successful without trading one for the other. By his early twenties, he had rocketed through every boundary put in front of him-a queer, Black wheelchair user-challenging bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige. Born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his physical mobility, Eddie was told that he wouldn't live beyond age five. But using his razor-sharp mind and grit, Eddie became the first-ever disabled African awarded a full scholarship to the prestigious Oxford University for a master's degree in public policy, a remarkable feat worthy of a toast. But beyond the challenges that students face-making it to class on time, managing steamy crushes, and being student body president-Eddie faced obstacles as a disabled individual that often go unnoticed and unaddressed, namely a revolving door of care aides. Saddled with the burden of raising money to cover his most basic needs: a care aide, financial aid, and disability accommodations, Eddie writes about his fight for financial aid and his continued advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities. Written with his one good finger, Eddie's vibrant prose delivers a clarion call to underdogs everywhere to stop climbing mountains and start moving them instead.
This title is also available in audio CD format.
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous, inspirational, or angelic. She longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Here she writes about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit. Taussig reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. She shows how disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. This title is the 2024 UW-Madison Go Big Read!
This title is also available in ebook, eaudiobook, and audio CD formats.
Adult Graphic Novels
In late 2004, Vivian Chong's life was changed forever when a rare skin disease, TEN (Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis), left her with scar tissue that would eventually blind her. As she was losing her sight, she put down as many drawings on paper as she could to document the experience. In Dancing After TEN, Chong teams up with cartoonist Georgia Webber -- whose graphic autobiography, Dumb, chronicled her own disability -- to trace her journey out of the darkness and into the spotlight. Chong now expresses her art through singing, stand-up, drumming, running, and dancing. This graphic novel is an inspirational tale and a powerful work of graphic medicine.
Judith is barely out of her teens when a tumor begins pressing on her brain, ushering in a new world of seizures, memory gaps, and loss of self. Suddenly, the sentence of her normal life has been interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that may never close. Based on the real experiences of cartoonist Élodie Durand, Parenthesis is a gripping testament of struggle, fragility, acceptance, and transformation which was deservedly awarded the Revelation Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
From artist and curator Bex Ollerton comes an anthology featuring comics from thirty autistic creators about their experiences of living in a world that doesn't always understand or accept them. Sensory: Life on the Spectrum contains illustrated explorations of everything from life pre-diagnosis to tips on how to explain autism to someone who isn't autistic, to suggestions for how to soothe yourself when you're feeling overstimulated. With unique, vibrant comic-style illustrations and the emotional depth and vulnerability of memoir, this book depicts these varied experiences with the kind of insight that only those who have lived them can have.