Stories about Individuals with Disabilities

Top 10 Stories about Individuals with Disabilities : Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's, So B. It, Handle with Care, Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant, Push Girl, Whole, The Running Dream, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey, Follow My Leader

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Author	John Elder Robison
ISBN	0307395987

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label...

So B. It

Author	Sarah Weeks
ISBN	0064410471

Now a major motion picture starring Alfre Woodard, Jessica Collins, John Heard, Jacinda Barrett, Cloris Leachman, and Talitha Bateman—in theaters October 2017!

From acclaimed author Sarah Weeks comes a touching coming-of-age story about a young girl who goes on a cross-country journey...

Handle with Care

Author	Jodi Picoult
ISBN	0743296419

When Willow is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, her parents are devastated--she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for...

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

Author	Daniel Tammet
ISBN	1416535071

One of the world's fifty living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story - and explain how his incredible mind works.

This unique first-person account offers a window into the mind of a high-functioning, 27-year-old British autistic savant with...

Push Girl

Author	Chelsie Hill
ISBN	1250045916

An inspiring, real, and fresh young adult novel about how life can change in an instant by Chelsie Hill, one of the stars Sundance Channel's unscripted series Push Girls, based on her own life

Kara is a high school junior who's loving life. She's popular, has a great group of friends and...

Whole

Author

Ruth Madison

"A young man wanting to be whole; a young woman certain she can never be. A uniquely conflicted love- suspenseful, provocative and deeply moving."
-Shelley Berman Elizabeth Foster is a young woman with a promising future. She has a perfect family in a nice neighborhood and she is getting ready to...

The Running Dream

Author	Wendelin Van Draanen
ISBN	0375866671

An award-winning and inspiring novel.  When Jessica's dreams are shattered, she puts herself back together—and learns to dream bigger than ever before.

Jessica thinks her life is over when she loses a leg in a car accident. She's not comforted by the news that she'll be able to walk with...

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

Author	Dusti Bowling
ISBN	1454923458

Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is she was born without them. And when her parents take a job running Stagecoach Pass, a rundown western theme park in Arizona, Aven moves with them across the country knowing...

Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

Author	Rachel Simon
ISBN	0452284554

Rachel Simon's sister Beth is a spirited woman who lives intensely and often joyfully, despite her intellectual disability. Beth spends her days riding the buses in her Pennsylvania city. The drivers, a lively group, are her mentors; her fellow passengers are her community. One day, Beth asked Rachel...

Follow My Leader

Author	James B. Garfield
ISBN	0140364854

For a novel originally penned in 1957, James B. Garfield's Follow My Leader remains surprisingly current and fresh, especially with regard to the presented information and details on how guide dogs (how seeing eye dogs) are trained and the important truth that there generally is a steep learning curve...

The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son

Author	Ian Brown
ISBN	0312671830

Ian Brown’s son Walker is one of only about 300 people worldwide diagnosed with cardiofaciocutaneous (CFC) syndrome—an extremely rare genetic mutation that results in unusual facial appearance, the inability to speak, and a compulsion to hit himself constantly. At age thirteen, he is mentally...

The Boy Next Door

Author	Annabelle Costa
ISBN	0985826304

Sometimes, love is closer than you think.

Through middle school, high school, bad dates, and an ill-advised punk phase, Tasha has always been able to count on Jason. Since the day he moved in next door, he’s gone from the weird kid in a wheelchair to Tasha’s most trusted friend. But lives...

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

Author	Kate Clifford Larson
ISBN	0547250258

They were the most prominent American family of the twentieth century. The daughter they secreted away made all the difference.

Joe and Rose Kennedy’s strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary attended exclusive schools, was presented as a debutante to the Queen of England, and traveled...

Anything But Typical

Author	Nora Raleigh Baskin
ISBN	1416963782

Jason Blake is an autistic 12-year-old living in a neurotypical world. Most days it’s just a matter of time before something goes wrong. But Jason finds a glimmer of understanding when he comes across PhoenixBird, who posts stories to the same online site as he does.

Jason can be himself when...

Precious Things

Author

Gail R. Delaney

Benjamin Prescott Roth is his own man. Everything he has -- possessions, wealth, prestige, recognition for his accomplishments -- he earned. On his own. His deafness never defined him, but his father's rejection did.

"You'll never amount to anything..."

Every accomplishment...

Rules

Author	Cynthia Lord
ISBN	0439443822

Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules-from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"-in order...

Whisper

Author	Chrissie Keighery
ISBN	1921759321

I'm always trying to figure out what's really going on. Always having to fill in the gaps, but never getting all the details. It's like trying to do a jigsaw when I don't even know what the picture is, and I'm missing one of the vital middle pieces.

How do you know if your friends are talking about...

El Deafo

Author	Cece Bell
ISBN	1419710206

Starting at a new school is scary, even more so with a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest! At her old school, everyone in Cece's class was deaf. Here she is different. She is sure the kids are staring at the Phonic Ear, the powerful aid that will help her hear her teacher. Too bad it also seems certain...

Love Anthony

Author	Lisa Genova
ISBN	1439164681

From the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice and Left Neglected, comes a heartfelt novel about an accidental friendship that gives a grieving mother a priceless gift: the ability to understand the thoughts of her eight-year-old autistic son and make sense of his brief life.

Two...

The Reckless Oath We Made

Author	Bryn Greenwood
ISBN	0525541845

Zee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered hip, she has a long list of worries: never-ending bills, her beautiful, gullible sister, her five-year-old nephew, her housebound mother, and her drug-dealing boss.

Zee may not be a princess, but...

Sophomore Campaign

Author	Frank Nappi
ISBN	1616086637

It’s 1949 and eighteen-year-old pitching phenom Mickey Tussler is back with the rejuvenated minor league Brewers in the sequel to The Legend of Mickey Tussler (the basis for the television movie A Mile in His Shoes). Despite Mickey’s proclamation that he will never play baseball again after last...

The Still Point of the Turning World

Author	Emily Rapp
ISBN	1594205124

Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan.  He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun.  He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father.  He would be an avid skier like his mother.  Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages...

Peace Like a River

Author	Leif Enger
ISBN	0802139256

Once in a great while, we encounter a novel in our voluminous reading that begs to be read aloud. Leif Enger's debut, Peace Like a River, is one such work. His richly evocative novel, narrated by an asthmatic 11-year-old named Reuben Land, is the story of Reuben's unusual family and their journey across...

Planet of the Blind

Author	Stephen Kuusisto
ISBN	0571196969

A haunting, brilliantly imagined memoir about coming to terms with near-blindness, this is the story of a 'lost man with a speck of something like seeing.' Born prematurely, Stephen Kuusisto has been fractionally sighted since a post-natal operation severely damaged his retinas. Yet he grew up pretending...

Window Boy

Author	Andrea White
ISBN	1933979143

Set in 1968, this touching novel tells the story of Sam Davis, a young man with cerebral palsy who peers though his bedroom window every day at the school he longs to attend. With great determination and the help of both his caretaker and his imaginary friend, Winston Churchill, Sam not only succeeds in...

Almost Perfect

Author	Diane Daniels Manning
ISBN	0578136392

An old woman who has given up hope and a boy who believes the impossible wonder if life would be perfect at the Westminster Dog Show.

Seventy-year old Bess Rutledge has dreamed of winning the Westminster Dog Show all her life. Despite her decades-long career as one of America’s top Standard...

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

Author

Elyn R. Saks

Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she's an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis—and suffering the effects of her illness throughout...

The Good Sister

Author	Drusilla Campbell
ISBN	0446535788

Roxanne Callahan has always been her younger sister's caretaker. Now married, her happiness is threatened when beautiful and emotionally unstable Simone, suffering from crippling postpartum depression, commits an unforgivable crime for which Roxanne comes to believe she is partially responsible....

Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller

Author	Sarah Miller
ISBN	1416925422

Annie Sullivan was little more than a half-blind orphan with a fiery tongue when she arrived at Ivy Green in 1887. Desperate for work, she'd taken on a seemingly impossible job -- teaching a child who was deaf, blind, and as ferocious as any wild animal. But Helen Keller needed more than a teacher. She needed...

Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer's

Author	Thomas DeBaggio
ISBN	0743205669

"We are foolish, those of us who think we can escape the traps of aging," writes Tom DeBaggio. "I was one of them, dreaming of a perfect and healthy old age....Now, at fifty-eight, I realize the foolishness of my dreams as I watch my brain self-destruct from Alzheimer's." Losing My Mind is DeBaggio's extraordinary...