Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
By Rebekah Taussig
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the ‘90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous, inspirational, or angelic. Am,s she got older, she longed for more nuanced stories.
Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.
By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. – Provided by publisher.
Adult book selection for NEA Big Read.
The Degenerates
By J. Albert Mann
The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and mean older girls bully them. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to an unexpected, life-altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes. – Provided by publisher.
Teen book selection for NEA Big Read.
Wink
By Rob Harrell
A hilarious and heart-wrenching story about surviving middle school – and an unthinkable diagnosis – while embracing life’s weirdness.Ross Maloy just wants to be a normal 7th grader. He doesn’t want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don’t know what to say to “the cancer kid.” But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, blending in is off the table.Based on Rob Harrell’s real-life experience, and packed with comic panels and spot art, this incredibly personal and poignant novel is an unforgettable, heartbreaking, hilarious and uplifting story of survival and finding the music, magic and laughter in life’s weirdness. – Provided by publisher.
Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You
By Sonia Sotomayor (Author), Rafael López (Illustrator)
Feeling different, especially as a kid, can be tough. But in the same way that different types of plants and flowers make a garden more beautiful and enjoyable, different types of people make our world more vibrant and wonderful.In Just Ask, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor celebrates the different abilities kids – and people of all ages – have. Using her own experience as a child who was diagnosed with diabetes, Justice Sotomayor writes about children with all sorts of challenges and looks at the special powers those kids have as well. As the kids work together to build a community garden, asking questions about each other along the way, this book encourages readers to do the same; when we come across someone different from us but we’re not sure why, all we have to do is “just ask.” – Provided by publisher.
Children book selection for NEA Big Read.
