Izzy is a nice girl. She’s pretty, popular, and smart. But one ride with a drunk driver changes her entire life. With one leg amputated, she must embrace a new life and find new friends who see her as more than a girl with a handicap. I liked Izzy so much, and it was thrilling to see her believably move on with her life. I see disabled young people with different eyes since reading Izzy’s story.

As someone who has always connected with animals, wild and domesticated, Song for a Whale was a story I could not put down.

Lynne Kelly’s middle grade novel about a deaf girl determined to help a whale who cannot communicate with its family is full of heart and compassion, and it kept me on my toes until the very end. I love stories with brave, unique, and realistic protagonists, and Iris was all of these things.

I appreciated the deaf representation, and the theme of family that is woven so beautifully into the plot. I could picture the whale, Blue 55, so perfectly, and the short chapters in the whale’s POV were the cherry on top of an already lovely story of courage and connection. 

Though it came out in the Summer of 2022, and had a headstart on the other books on my list, Just Care is in conversation with the rest of this list, and is just as relevant to our current moment, when we might agree that we have a crisis of care. Nishida shows that care dynamics exist within a brutal social order that determines who survives and who deteriorates. Along with the other books on this list, the research methods are creatively mixed here, with interviews, focus groups, and participant observation with care workers and people with disabilities. Just Care documents how people with disabilities work together to reimagine care. We are all enmeshed in a healthcare industry with giant cracks and fissures exposed by the pandemic, and in which we will all move between caregiving, receiving, or both. Read Just Care to better understand imbalances in care, as well… show more.

I was absolutely stunned when I read "Unspeakable Conversations" by Harriet McBryde Johnson, one of the many brilliant pieces included in this reader. My edition is from 2010, but new and updated editions have come out since. It explores questions of interdependency and independence, gender, the body, sexuality, biases in science and medicine, and physical disabilities, and investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities.

Becoming familiar with some disability theories has been invaluable to me. My capacity to read myself as disabled has grown and still fluctuates. To know that sharp minds have been working on this and that it isn’t only a private issue but a political and theoretical one, one that can be marked by joy and humor as well as grief, struggle, and hardship, is immensely helpful. 

I want to live inside Ross Montgomery’s head. It seems full of magical people and places, including a school janitor’s room filled with huge feuding civilizations! The story hops masterfully from the school janitor to the tyrannical Headmaster to the story’s brilliant ten-year-old protagonist Max, without missing a beat. Max is deaf, which doesn’t need to be an issue, if people can just make a few small accommodations to help him fit in. But, instead, the horrible Head treats him like some kind of strange school mascot, constantly singling him out for special attention.

Max and the Millions seamlessly combines action, mystery, struggles with hearing aids, and a warning about the abuse of power. All with a sense of the surreal that will have you sniggering throughout.

“Max was hiding in a cupboard
He usually hid in the toilets, but they’d all exploded that morning – again – and Mr.… show more.

Another classic title by one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most-loved storytellers. This moving story follows the special friendship forged between Jonasi, a lonely deaf-mute pacific islander, and a huge white turtle. It’s a book about isolation and prejudice, and how love can heal all. One review describes it as ‘somewhere between fact and fiction, superstition and the supernatural.’ It’s another that’s been made into a fabulous film.

All the characters in this book felt totally real and the situations they find themselves in and live through are honest.  And I’m not just talking about the main characters here – all the supporting characters have their own personalities and don’t resort to stereotypes as shorthand.  The romance developed organically and felt like something healthy that both Josh and Skylar needed in order to really accept who they are.

I haven’t seen a lot of picture books about children using American Sign Language (ASL), and I enjoyed the details of a day in a public school for the deaf and hard of hearing, although the book’s age (it came out in 2000) means the tech is somewhat out of date. While this book is not about Deaf culture, it does—like all the books on my list—give kid-friendly examples of the language it is introducing. I appreciated that the children are shown signing in ASL and not just fingerspelling English words, and that the author made some attempt to convey that ASL is its own language and that anyone who is fluent in both ASL and English is bilingual. Other titles in the series include Moses Goes to a Concert, Moses Goes to the Circus, and Moses Sees a Play. 

12-year-old Catherine’s feelings toward her younger, autistic brother are complicated. She’s protective of him and also appears to be embarrassed by his behaviour. All she wants is a “normal” life. When she becomes friends with a paraplegic boy she’s forced to think about what “normal” really means. This book is hopeful, humourous, thoughtful, and explores what it means to interact with someone who is neurodivergent. The author is the mother of a child with autism and the complex relationships and friendships in the book felt real and captured the mixed-up emotions of middle-graders. 

A humorous take on what it's like to be a disabled adult. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It discusses how to interact with someone with a disability and dives deep into diversity and how to communicate effectively with adults. Having read this book has made my journey with cerebral palsy much easier and I would definitely say that it has made me look at life in more humorous ways.