I’ve had 75 years to experience the portrayal of people with disabilities in books and compare it with my lived realities. I’m so passionate about it that I started an award with the American Library Association for children’s and youth books with realistic portrayals twenty years ago and, more recently, an award for good journalism through the National Center for Disability Journalism of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. To build your TBR list for the upcoming anniversary of the ADA, here are some great reads:

Memoirs have morphed from “triumph over” a disability to nuanced pictures of life with the disability. More intersectional memoirs and more emphasis on disability issues make them educational instead of cloyingly inspirational. Some you might like (published in the last five years) include:

Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths about Disability by Blake

Being Seen by Sjunneson (deaf blind media critic)

Dear Senthurian by Emezi (queer, disabled Black writer)

White Magic by Washuta (bipolar indigenous writer)

Sipping Dom Perignon Through a Straw by Ndopu (spinal muscular atrophy)

                If you’re interested in religion and disability, you might enjoy:

My Body Is not a Prayer Request by Kenny

Loving Our Own Bones by Belser

                I started the Schneider Family Book awards because when I was growing up, there were biographies of Louis Braille and Helen Keller and that was about it for disability representations, other than Tiny Tim and the Little Lame Prince. The winners chosen by the librarians have shown the increasing range of lives pictured and the complexity of those lives with single parent families, love affairs, teen angst, etc. for kids with disabilities. Personal favorites are biographies like Looking Out for Sarah by Lang, Rescue and Jessica by Kensky and Listen by Stocker because they picture real adults with disabilities and two of them involve dogs.

                Happy reading!