Some of the year’s best books also happen to be some of the year’s best books on disability.

Books for Children with Disabilities
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson
Frannie, the insightful narrator of this Newbery Honor winner, communicates with her brother Sean through sign language. Jesus Boy, the new kid in her class and the only white student in their school, somehow understands sign, although he doesn’t remember learning it. Frannie, Jesus Boy and Sean each struggle against others’ misconceptions in this brief and moving exploration of the central idea in a line from Emily Dickinson: “Hope is the thing with feathers.”

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
In a sibling story with a different kind of mystery at its heart, Salim (Ted and Kat’s cousin) gets into a pod on the London Eye observation wheel (a gigantic ferris wheel with large, glassed-in "pods" instead of seats) but never comes out. He couldn’t have vanished into thin air—could he? Ted, who has Asperger’s, looks at things as a series of clues and comes up with several theories. While the adults talk to the police, Ted and Kat set out across London following every lead they can as they try to find Salim.

Books for Teens with Disabilities
The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
Sym’s adventure is not at the top of the Eye, but at the bottom of the world. In this Printz winner, impulsive Uncle Victor takes Sym to Antarctica. Sym can’t believe her luck. Partially deaf since childhood and fed up with her boy-crazy classmates, Sym is fascinated by Antarctica and prefers the company of Captain Titus Oates, a dashing polar explorer with one minor problem—he’s been dead for 90 years and lives only in her head. But when it comes to survival, he’s indispensable, as Sym learns when their vacation takes a dangerous turn.

The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California by Mary Hershey
Alistair’s California vacation doesn’t turn out the way he expected, either. Sent to spend the summer with his estranged father and new stepmother, Alistair hopes he’ll be sent home early if he’s obnoxious enough. He is, after all, the tough kid who makes a joke out of his amputated leg before anyone else can and likes to be called “Stump.” But his stepmother’s beautiful, soap-star niece Jesse has asked him to compete with her in a Hollywood charity triathlon—so . . .  the summer might not go so badly after all.

Books for Adults with Disabilities
A Richer Dust by Amy Boaz
Doll’s pilgrimage to the American West in this lyrical debut leads her to shift her expectations, too. She has come to Taos, New Mexico, with visionary writer Abe Bronstone and his wife in 1924 to found an artists’ colony. The story moves between Doll’s earlier life in London, where her deafness and artistic ambitions ensured that she would always live on the fringes of society; their experience in the colony; and Doll’s own liberation in her sexual relationship with a much younger man in 1960s Taos.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
This debut novel takes place in another remote landscape. The Sawtelles have been raising their own strain of dogs in northern Wisconsin for three human generations, and the result is a breed so unlike any other that it can only be called a Sawtelle dog. Edgar, mute since birth, trains his pups using sign language. He never imagines he’ll have to count on that training and on his strong bond with his dogs to carry him through family tragedies and his desperate journey from home when everything falls apart.

Disability Book Resources
Woodson, Jacqeline. Feathers. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2007.
Dowd, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery. New York: David Fickling, 2007.
Hershey, Mary. The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California. New York: Penguin, 2007.
McCaughrean, Geraldine. The White Darkness. New York: HarperTempest, 2007.
Boaz, Amy. A Richer Dust. Sag Harbor: Permanent Press, 2008.
Wroblewski, David. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. New York: Ecco, 2008.