Looking for authentic teen reads for Disability Pride Month in July? Here are four excellent titles from the last few years that show a range of experiences and disabilities in realistic fiction. Learn more about the importance of Disability Pride Month.
All the Noise At Once by DeAndra Davis
All Aiden has ever wanted to do was play football just like his star quarterback brother, Brandon. An overstimulation meltdown gets in the way of Aiden making the team during summer tryouts, but when the school year starts and a spot unexpectedly needs to be filled, he finally gets a chance to play the game he loves. However, not every player is happy about the new addition to the team, wary of how Aiden's autism will present itself on game day. Tensions rise. A fight breaks out. Cops are called. Brandon interferes on behalf of his brother, but is arrested by the very same cops who, just hours earlier, were chanting his name from the bleachers. When he's wrongly charged for felony assault on an officer, everything Brandon has worked for starts to slip away, and the brothers' relationship is tested. As Brandon's trial inches closer, Aiden is desperate to figure out what really happened that night. Can he clear his brother's name in time?
Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest
If Effie's being honest with herself, she knows just what she wants. She wants to enjoy all the firsts and lasts of senior year with her two best friends. She wants to go to college in NYC and major in mass media so she can make sure more disabled people like her get to see themselves represented. She's never been to New York, but she can picture the person she'll be there, far from the Minneapolis neighborhood where she's lived her entire life. And she wants the specific kind of happiness that would come with dancing with her longtime crush, Wilder, at homecoming ... When she finds out that Wilder is applying to her dream school, too, it seems like a sign that it's the right place for her. But when her high school fails to make the accommodations Effie needs as a wheelchair user and she can't get the situation fixed on her own, she can't help wondering: Is New York too big, too far, too much? And if she can't bring herself to tell Wilder how she feels, how could they ever have a future together? As Effie learns to speak up and fight for her dreams, she'll also have to decide which dreams are truly worth fighting for.
Give Me A Sign by Anna Sortino
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.
Unbroken: 13 Stories of Disabled Teens edited by Marieke Nijkamp
An anthology of stories in various genres, each featuring disabled characters and written by disabled creators. The collection includes stories of interstellar war, a journey to Persia, a dating debacle. The teenaged characters reflect diverse colors, genders, and orientations—without obscuring the realities of their disabilities.
All summaries provided by the publisher.