Tag Archives: Young Adult Fiction

Celebrate Disability Pride Month with Middle Grande and YA Novels

16 Jul
Just Like Me: 40 Neurologically and Physically Diverse People Who Broke Stereotypes by Louise Gooding. Cover image of drawings of a variety of people included in the book included Frida Khalo, Greta Thunberg, and Winnie Harlow.
Cover of AIR by Monica Roe. Features a quote What happens when your dream gets turned upside down? Features a youth in a wheel chair flipping up in the air.
Cover of Audiobook Song For a Whale by Lynne Kelly. Audiobook Read by Abigail Revasch with the Author. Features a drawing of a silhouette of a person standing on a dock with a whale under the water. Green, blue, and purple streaks surround them.

July is Disability Pride Month! Here is a round up of our favorite middle grade and young adult books that feature disabled characters, providing the perfect opportunity to see one’s self reflected or to learn about other people’s experiences. All featured titles are available in our BCCLS collection. Interested in picturebooks featuring disabled characters? Check out our Disability Pride Month part 1 post here!

Middle Grade

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly (large print, physical book, e-audiobook)
Deafness
Twelve old Iris is great with technology, but often feels isolated by her peers because of her deafness. When she learns about Blue 55, a whale who can’t speak to other whales, she decides to use her talents to create a device to sing to him.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio (physical book, eBook, large print, e-audiobook, audiobook on CD, audiobook media player)
Facial difference
Ten old Auggie Pullman is about to make a difficult transition from being homeschooled to a private school with other kids. The situation is further complicated by his facial differences caused by Treacher Collins syndrome. Auggie must navigate his new environment and how his peers treat him because of his appearance. 

Shiny Misfits by Maysoon Zayid (physical book, eBook)
Cerebral palsy
Bay Ann’s tap dance performance at the school talent show is overshadowed by her crush, Alyee Maq, catching her after a fall. The moment goes viral with people “inspired” by Bay Ann’s cerebral palsy instead of her dancing talent. 

Maysoon Zayid: The Girl Who Can by Dr. Seema Yasmin (physical book)
Cerebral palsy
Maysoon dreamt of being an actress, comedian and dancer. Only problem? As a Muslim girl with cerebral palsy, people often didn’t believe that she could. As the title suggests, Maysoon can – defying any odds set against her! 

Just Like Me: 40 Neurologically and Physically Diverse People Who Broke Stereotypes by Louise Gooding (physical book)
Various Disabilities
A collection of true stories from famous figures like Simone Biles, Daniel Radcliffe, Selena Gomez and Greta Thunberg.

Air by Monica Roe (physical book, e-audiobook)
Wheelchair use
Twelve ½-year old Emelyn has used a wheelchair her whole life. She dreams of doing wheelchair motocross, but her community makes plenty of assumptions about what she should want instead, especially since the death of her mother in an accident. Emmie and her best friends hatch a plan to make her dreams a reality.

My Aunt is a Monster by Reimena Yee (physical book, Libby ebook) 
Blindness
Safia is used to experiencing adventure only through audiobooks. But that quickly changes when she’s sent to live with her mysterious aunt, Lady Whimsy. It turns out Safia’s blindness isn’t limiting her ability for adventure after all. 

Young Adult

Cover of Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield. A green haired teen sits on a blue car holding a pink cane facing a brunette teen leaning on the car. There are palm fronds overhead and the ocean in the distance.
Cover of Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today Adapted for Young Adults edited by Alice Wong. Multicolored geographic designs decorate the cover.
Cover of All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis. Two African American Youth are pictured. One has a shaved head and the other has dreadlocks and is wearing headphones. The book is the winner of the William C. Morris Debut from the American Library Association.

All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis (physical book)
Autism
Aiden finally makes it on the football team with the star quarterback – his brother, Brandon. Their teammates wonder how Aiden’s autism will affect their season. A fight breaks out, Brandon is charged with assaulting an officer, and Aiden must clear his brother’s name. 

Something More by Jackie Khalilieh (physical book, ebook)
Autism
Fifteen year old Jessie is determined to keep her recent autism diagnosis a secret as she enters high school. Despite the goals she set for herself, her plans go awry when two boys steal her heart.

Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield (physical book)
IBS
Phoebe has been stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop for almost a month until a car crash with her crush, Jess. After the accident, Phoebe and Jess are stuck in the time loop together…and that might not be so bad. But Phoebe fears what’s on the other side of it all.

You Started It by Jackie Khalilieh (physical book)
Anxiety, IBS
Seventeen year old Jamie Taher-Foster has senior year all planned out – that is, until her boyfriend, Ben, breaks up with her. She decides the perfect way to get him back is by pretending to date a TikTok dancer named Axel. In time, their relationship might not be so fake after all.

The Tank Chair series by Manabu Yashiro (physical books)
Wheelchair use
Nagi has to use a wheelchair after taking a bullet to protect his sister, Shizuka. After he recovers, the two become a dangerous assassin duo.

Disability Visibility: 17 First Person Stories for Today adapted for Young Adults edited by Alice Wong (physical book)
Various disabilities
Essays written by disabled people about their lives: the complexities, facing ableism, and wisdom. 

Written by:
Alison Woodley
Information and Digital Services Assistant

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Understanding Grief with YA Verse Fiction

29 Apr

Grief from loss is a common occurrence among those that know someone that has passed away during this chaotic time. Mourning the passing of someone comes in different ways. Grief can be expressed through anger, sadness, and even an extreme action. For poetry month, these two fiction young adult books will show the reader different ways characters grieved in a time of instability.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Long Way Down
Will’s brother got gunned down on his way to the neighborhood bodega. He and his grief-stricken mother try to process Shawn’s death. Will retreats to “the rules” in his grieving for his brother. There are three rules which are not to cry, not to snitch (tell who did it), and get revenge. These three rules create a toxic cycle of gun violence in his neighborhood. Will learns this in his grief when he steals his brother’s gun and descends the elevator to find and kill the person that killed his brother. The majority of the story takes place in the elevator that goes down seven floors. On each level, a person from Will’s life connected to gun violence boards the elevator. Each person like his father, classmate, confides in him how “the rules” played a part in their murders. The reader takes in the heart-wrenching drama through a variety of verses that would leave the reader questioning if Will is open enough to take in the message that he is receiving from beyond the grave.  It is available from elibraryNJ and eBCCLS as ebooks and digital audiobooks.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
Out of the Dust
In this historical verse fiction, readers get to learn about a very different America in the early 1930s. The Great Depression was very hard on the average American but especially hard for Americans that lived in Oklahoma like Billie Jo. She is a 15-year-old girl that tries to survive during the Great Dust Bowl. Oklahoma’s countryside was overtaken by dry land due to over-farming and drought. The book begins with Billie Jo’s seemingly happy. When a horrible tragedy affects her and her mother, things fall apart! Hesse does a beautiful job telling the story of grief, family, and adversity through the spirit of a spunky teenage girl.  It is available from eBCCLS as an ebook and eLibraryNJ as an ebook and digital audiobook.

Written by:
Elbie Love
YA Library Associate

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