Disability Pride: Books for Teens

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Bardugo, Leigh

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction--if they don't kill each other first.

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Callender, Kacen

Budding screenwriter Nate, sixteen, finds his conviction that happy endings do not happen in real life sorely tested when his childhood best friend and crush, Oliver James Hernandez, moves back to town.

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Emmich, Val

In Edison, New Jersey, in a museum devoted to the inventor Thomas Edison, a loner sixteen-year-old girl with a limb difference and the seemingly coolest boy in school spend the night during a snowstorm, growing close until a shameful secret threatens everything.

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Forrest, Claire

Effie Galanos' goals for her senior year include her navigating her way through her high school that is not really wheelchair-friendly, getting into the perfect college, and getting her crush Wilder to accompany her to the prom--but by spring she is beginning to see herself entirely differently.

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Gervais, Alison

Maya has reservations about transferring to a hearing school after studying in a school for the deaf for years, but grows closer to Beau Watson, the student body president, who starts learning sign language to communicate with her.

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Heumann, Judith E.

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her story of fighting to belong in school and society -a powerful role model for young adults with a passion for activism.

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Khanani, Intisar

Disabled country girl Rae reluctantly becomes an attendant to Princess Alyrra, navigating palace life while helping investigate the child snatchers who stole the sister of Rae's best friend.

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Lainoff, Lillie

In 1655 sixteen-year-old Tania is the daughter of a retired musketeer, but she is afflicted with extreme vertigo and subject to frequent falls; when her father is murdered she finds that he has arranged for her to attend Madame de Treville's newly formed Académie des Mariées in Paris, which, it turns out, is less a school for would-be wives, than a fencing academy for girls--and so Tania begins her training to be a new kind of musketeer, and to get revenge for her father.

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Leavitt, Hannalora

This nonfiction book for teens provides a history of disability, describes types of disabilities and examines the challenges faced by people living with disabilities.

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Long, Jessica Tatiana

The champion Paralympic swimmer, born in Russia with a condition that would result in the amputation of both legs below her knee, presents a photographic memoir of the life-changing moments that helped shape who she is today.

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Man, Chella

Fine artist, activist, and Titans actor Chella Man uses his own experiences as a deaf, transgender, genderqueer, Jewish person of color to talk about cultivating self-acceptance and acting as one's own representation.

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Nijkamp, Marieke (editor)

An anthology of stories in various genres, featuring disabled characters and written by disabled creators, ranging from established best selling authors to debut authors.

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Sylvester, Natalia

Ver̤nica has had many surgeries to manage her disability. The best form of rehabilitation is swimming, so she spends hours in the pool, but not just to strengthen her body. Her Florida town is home to Mermaid Cove, a kitschy underwater attraction where professional mermaids perform in giant tanks . . . and Ver̤nica wants to audition. But her conservative Peruvian parents would never go for it. And they definitely would never let her be with Alex, her cute new neighbor. She decides it's time to seize control of her life, but her plans come crashing down when she learns her parents have been hiding the truth from her--the truth about her own body.

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Wong, Alice (editor)

A young adult adaptation of Alice Wong's Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century.