Disability Employment Awareness Month

4 stars

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, Jennifer Keelan grew up battling - and overcoming - the limitations others set for her. From a lack of cutaway curbs and bus lifts to being denied enrollment at her neighborhood school, Jennifer was continually blocked from living the life she wanted. But after discovering the world of disability rights activism, she knew she had to use her voice to change things. When Jennifer was just eight years old, she...

"A young adult adaptation of Alice Wong's Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century"-- According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden-- but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. Inside you will find activists, authors,...

Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people--but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age thirteen to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing four hundred miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: disability is not inability. Today,...

College student Isaac struggles to manage his epilepsy and his day-to-day life. His medication does not seem to work, the doctors won't listen, the schoolwork keeps piling up, his family is in denial about his condition, and his social life falls apart as he feels isolated by his illness. Even with an unexpected new friend by his side, so much is up against him that Isaac is starting to think his epilepsy might be unbeatable.

5 stars

Twelve-year-old Ellie, who has cerebral palsy, finds her life transformed when she moves with her mother to small-town Oklahoma to help care for her grandfather, who has Alzheimer's Disease.

4.5 stars

"Mary Lambert has always felt safe and protected on her beloved island of Martha's Vineyard. Her great-great-grandfather was an early English settler and the first deaf islander. Now, over a hundred years later, many people there--including Mary--are deaf and nearly everyone can communicate in sign language. Mary has never felt isolated. She is proud of her lineage. But recent events have delivered winds of change. Mary's brother died, leaving her...

To prevent the Mayan gods from battling each other and destroying the world, thirteen-year-old Zane must unravel an ancient prophecy, stop an evil god, and discover how the physical disability that makes him reliant on a cane also connects him to his father and his ancestry.

In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.

5 stars

When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural. Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a "mainstream" school in the suburbs, where she's treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy...