Happy Disability Pride Month!

Happy Disability Pride Month! It's held every year in July to recognize the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26th, 1990. 

Each color of the Disability Pride flag symbolizes a type of disability: 

The 2021 disability flag colors each represent a type of disability:

• Green: sensory disabilities
• Blue: emotional and psychiatric disabilities
• White: non-visible and undiagnosed disabilities
• Gold: neurodiversity
• Red: physical disabilities

Below are ten books with disabled characters, or are written by people with disabilities. 

1. Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester: Veronica, a Peruvian-American teen with hip dysplasia, auditions to become a mermaid at a Central Florida theme park in the summer before her senior year, all while figuring out her first real boyfriend and how to feel safe in her own body. 

2. Chaos Theory by Nic Stone: A senior at Windward Academy, Shelbi, who has a diagnosed mental illness, keeps to herself until she forms a connection with Andy Criddle, who is battling addiction, but the closer they get, the more the past threatens to pull them apart.

3. Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram: Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.
    

4. Love from A to Z by SK Ali: Eighteen-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths.

5. Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See: Less than a year away from graduation, seventeen-year-old Joy is too busy overachieving to be worried about relationships. She's determined to be Caldwell Prep's first disabled valedictorian. And she only has one person to beat, her academic rival Nathaniel. But it's senior year and everyone seems to be obsessed with pairing up. One of her best friends may be developing feelings for her and the other uses Caldwell's anonymous love-letter writer to snag the girl of her dreams. Joy starts to wonder if she has missed out on a quintessential high school experience. She is asexual, but that's no reason she can't experience first love, right? She writes to Caldwell Cupid to help her sort out these new feelings and, over time, finds herself falling for the mysterious voice behind the letters. But falling in love might mean risking what she wants most, especially when the letter-writer turns out to be the last person she would ever expect.

6. On the Bright Side by Anna Sortino: When eighteen-year-old Ellie's Deaf boarding school shuts down, she attends a public high school where she struggles to adjust, but finds an ally in Jackson, a soccer player going through a disability diagnosis of his own.

7. Stars in Their Eyes by Jessica Walton: Maisie is on her way to her first fancon and she can't wait to meet her idol, an action star who had an above-the-knee amputation, just like Maisie. But then she meets Ollie. Ollie is a cute volunteer working the show, and they geek out about nerd culture, just as much as Maisie does. After spending the day together, Maisie notices feelings for Ollie that she's never had before. Could Ollie feel the same way?

8. The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonora Reyes: Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers--despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen. Luis's attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party--while Ari didn't say no, she definitely didn't say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning--thanks, she's sure, to Luis's ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she'll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night--and risk everything to see justice done. 

9. Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie McLemore: Teenagers Cade McKenna, a transgender prince doubling for his brother, and lady-in-waiting Valencia Palafox/boy assassin Gael Palma, thanks to their concealed identities, do not realize they are simultaneously falling for and trying to destroy each other.

10. Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest: 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.