Celebrate Disability Pride Month with These Titles for Kids of All Ages
July is Disability Pride Month, and Old Town Books is excited to support the Alexandria Commission on Persons with Disabilities (ACPD) in getting the word out about this important initiative. If you stop by Old Town Books Junior this month, you’ll find a display of some of our booksellers’ favorite books with disability representation. Whether these stories help young readers direct compassion towards themselves or others, I hope you’ll join in making sure our bookshelves at school and home reflect the diversity of the world we live in.
Before I share some recommendations from fellow children’s booksellers and myself, here’s some background. Disability Pride Month celebrates the anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), a law that gives civil rights to people with disabilities. The ADA says that people with disabilities have the right to live, work, and go to school with everyone else. It says they have the right to go anywhere non-disabled people go. It says they have the right to get help when they need it.
The ADA defines disability as something that…
…makes your brain or body different from most people.
…changes how you do major life activities, like: seeing, eating, sleeping, learning, reading, working, and breathing.
…makes it harder or impossible to do one or more of those things.
Under this definition, disabilities might be physical, mental, sensory, or developmental.
Let’s start with some middle-grade recommendations (ages 8-13)
All of these stories take situations that will feel familiar to children, say with friends, siblings, or school projects, and interject them with the added challenges—and sometimes surprising opportunities—of a disability.
Two of the most well-known middle-grade novels featuring protagonists with disabilities are R.J. Palacio’s Wonder, where a boy named Auggie learns to stand up to bullying for his facial and hearing differences brought on by a genetic disorder; and Dusti Bowling’s Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, where a delightfully spitfire girl named Aven Green wows readers with the way she navigates the world with no arms. My daughter would consider both in her Favorite Books of All Time. (Honorable mention to Dusti’s newest, The Beat I Drum, set in the same universe as Insignificant Events but with a focus on Aven’s friend, Connor, who has Tourette syndrome.)
There are some wonderful lesser-known titles, too. Isa and I are super fans of Stacy McAnulty’s The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, as was my son for years after he read it (when he proceeded to gift it at every birthday party). In addition to her genius-level math skills courtesy of acquired savant syndrome, Lucy has OCD as a result of the lightning strike she survived when she was eight; after being homeschooled for years, it’s finally time for her to navigate the ups and downs of mainstream middle school.
Anna and I love Alina Chau’s Marshmallow & Jordan, a beautifully designed graphic novel about a paralyzed sporty teen who befriends an elephant and finds a way to be an athlete again. Anna also recommends a heartwarming STEM novel by Sarah Allen, What Stars Are Made Of, where a tween living with Turner syndrome is determined to win a science contest to help her older sister. Speaking of STEM novels with disability rep, I chose Farther Than the Moon by Lindsay Lackey for our Gift Guide when it came out in 2023 because I loved it so much. It’s about a boy who journeys to Texas as part of a Junior Astronaut Recruitment program. While tackling cool robotics challenges, he works on a project to help make space someday accessible for his brother with cerebral palsy.
Anna and I both inhaled Jamie Sumner’s The Summer of June when it first came out, where a tween sets out to overcome her debilitating anxiety over summer break. Many kids I know have reported feeling so seen by this book.
Percy Jackson made a lot of waves when it first came out (in a good way) for having a protagonist with ADHD, and since then we’ve seen both ADHD and autism show up more in middle grade. Anna recommends Good Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt, where a tween on the spectrum navigates the social complexities of middle school. I’m partial to Ann M. Martin’s Rain Reign, which casts a homonyms-loving girl navigating living with autism and OCD in a high-suspense plot involving a missing dog and a torrential storm.
Rob Harrell’s Popcorn, a comics-prose hybrid novel which won the Schneider Family Book Award earlier this year for its powerful anxiety and OCD representation, is one of the funniest and most charming middle-grade novels I’ve ever read.
Marieke Nijkamp’s Splinter & Ash is one of Su’s favorite newer fantasies (sequel out this fall!), and it stars a young noblewoman who proves her physical disability can’t stop her from an arduous quest to save her kingdom.
Let’s turn to picture books.
Kathryn praises the classic Mama Zooms, a 1993 picture book by Jane Cowen-Fletcher that joyfully centers a mother who uses a wheelchair. A fabulous modern take on this is Lucy Catchpole and Karen George’s forthcoming Mama Car, out this November.
Sydney Smith is one of the most sublime illustrators of our time, and his art for Jordan Scott’s I Talk Like a River, based on the author’s own experiences as a child with a stutter, knocks this already powerful story out of the park. (For a middle-grade novel that prominently features stuttering, look no further than staff-favorite Wildoak by C.C. Harrington.)
Over the past year, we have put Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp’s impressively inclusive collaboration, This Is How We Play: A Celebration of Disability and Adaptation, into several customers’ hands, and we’re looking forward to their newest this fall, This Is How We Speak. And I am so excited for Beth Leipholtz’s The ABCs of Inclusion: A Disability Inclusion Book for Kids, out this fall, which introduces readers to 26 real children with a wide variety of disabilities.
New this month in the First Conversations board book series is All of Us by Megan Madison and Jessica Ralli, which is a perfect introduction for the very young.
I can’t tell you the cheers the erupted from our customers when the last title in Andrea Beaty and David Robert’s incredibly popular “Questioneers” series centered a child with dyslexia. Aaron Slater, Illustrator does a fantastic job of depicting the challenges of learning to read while also celebrating the child’s other gifts, and it’s wonderful to see representation like this in such a beloved mainstream series!
I get frequent requests for books about kids who experience sensory overload, whether as part of an autism diagnosis or not, and Jolene Gutiérrez’s Too Much: An Overwhelming Day has become a favorite. Ditto to Kaz Windness’ delightful portrayal of a school-going bat on the spectrum in Bitsy Bat, School Star.
The brain is getting a moment in kids nonfiction, too, and this can be a wonderful way to talk to your kids about what brain differences look like, how they affect the way we think and learn, and how they come with superpowers of their own. Renowned comics creator Elise Gravel does this topic great justice with This is My Brain: A Book on Neurodiversity.
I’m going to conclude with one last recommendation—in the early chapter book category. I can’t sing the praises of Jenn Bailey and Mika Song’s award-winning series enough, beginning with Henry, Like Always. If you are not sharing these delightful read alouds with your preschool, kindergartener, or first grader, I hope you will change that immediately. Henry is a boy on the autism spectrum who often struggles with abrupt transitions or breaks in routine in the classroom, and the way his teacher and classmates work to support him is a beautiful example of the kindness our world needs right now.
- Melissa, Children’s Bookseller, Buyer, & Kid Lit Specialist