The Diverse Families bookshelf was created and funded through numerous grants. Due to lack of additional grants and the loss of key personnel, the project has come to an end. We have tremendously enjoyed creating this database and hope that it can help bring readers and books together.
Browse by Health & Disability:
Physical Disability
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Rules
Cynthia Lord
Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"--In order to head off David's embarrassing behaviours. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of-friend, and Kristi, the potential next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behaviour that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?
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Saddle Sore
Bonnie Bryant
The girls of the Saddle Club have headed West to the Bar None Ranch. This time they've brought their friend, Emily, who has cerebral palsy. Emily is going to help the ranch's owner make it accessible to riders with special needs. Then the four girls meet a guest their own age. She's a former rider who has lost part of her leg in a motorbike accident. She doesn't plan to get on a horse ever again.
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Sammy Wakes His Dad
Chip Emmons
Sammy's father, who is in a wheelchair, is reluctant to join Sammy in going fishing, until his son's love finally moves him to action.
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Samurai Kids 1: White Crane
Sandy Fussell
Even though he has only one leg, Niya Moto is studying to be a samurai, and his five fellow-students are similarly burdened, but sensei Ki-Yaga, an ancient but legendary warrior, teaches them not only physical skills but mental and spiritual ones as well, so that they are well-equipped to face their most formidable opponents at the annual Samurai Games.
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Samurai Kids 2: Owl Ninja
Sandy Fussell
Sensei Ki-yaga leads Niya and the other students of the Cockroach Ryu on a journey to beg the feudal Emperor to stop war from breaking out between the mountain ryus, putting to the test the firm friendship and unusual skills of these physically-disabled samurai-in-training.
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Sarah's Sleepover
Bobbie Rodriguez
Sarah and her cousins are all set for a sleepover weekend complete with hot chocolate, pillow fights, and ghost stories—until the power goes out in a storm and plunges them into total darkness. Sarah isn't worried. She is able to guide the rest of the girls safely through the pitch-black house because she is comfortable moving in the dark; Sarah is blind.
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Saturdays with Hitchcock
Ellen Wittlinger
Twelve-year-old Maisie feels that she has enough complications in her life: her actor uncle has moved in with her family while he recovers from an accident and her father is not pleased, her grandmother is slipping into dementia but wants to remarry, her mom has been laid off, and her best friend Cyrus, with whom she spends Saturdays watching classic movies, has revealed that he is gay--but Gary, the boy he has a crush on, seems more attracted to Maisie herself.
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See You Tomorrow, Charles
Miriam Cohen
When Charles, a young blind boy, joins their first-grade class, Anna Maria and the other children feel unsure of themselves and of him until they learn to accept Charles.
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Shark Girl
Kelly Bingham
After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring artist, struggles to come to terms with her loss and the changes it imposes on her day-to-day life and her plans for the future.
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Sign Up Here: A Story about Friendship
Kathryn Cole
When nobody will let her join their club, Dee-Dee decides to start a club of her own that welcomes everybody.
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Silence
Deborah A. Lytton
After an accident robs Stella of her hearing and her dream of going to Broadway, she meets Hayden, a boy who stutters, and comes to learn what it truly means to connect and communicate in a world filled with silence.
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Silent Days, Silent Dreams
Allen Say
James Castle was born two months premature on September 25, 1899, on a farm in Garden Valley, Idaho. He was deaf, mute, autistic, and probably dyslexic. He didn't walk until he was four; he would never learn to speak, write, read, or use sign language. Yet, today Castle's artwork hangs in major museums throughout the world. The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened "James Castle: A Retrospective" in 2008. The 2013 Venice Biennale included eleven works by Castle in the feature exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace." And his reputation continues to grow. Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say, author of the acclaimed memoir Drawing from Memory, takes readers through an imagined look at Castle's childhood, allows them to experience his emergence as an artist despite the overwhelming difficulties he faced, and ultimately reveals the triumphs that he would go on to achieve.
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Singing Hands
Delia Ray
In the late 1940s, twelve-year-old Gussie, a minister's daughter, learns the definition of integrity while helping with a celebration at the Alabama School for the Deaf--her punishment for misdeeds against her deaf parents and their boarders.
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Sing to the Stars
Mary Brigid Barrett and Sandra Speidel
When Ephram becomes friends with a blind man in his neighborhood and finds out that Mr. Washington was a famous pianist who hasn't touched a piano for a long time, he resolves to get the man back on stage.
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Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price-and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone... A convict with a thirst for revenge. A sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wager. A runaway with a privileged past. A spy known as the Wraith. A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums. A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes. Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction-if they don't kill each other first.
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Skateboard Sonar
Eric Stevens
Although blind, Matty is an excellent skateboarder, but when the former champion mocks him during the skating competition, Matty shows that seeing is not everything.
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Sosu's Call
Meshack Asare
When a great storm threatens, Sosu, an African boy who is unable to walk, joins his dog Fusa in helping save their village.
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Special People, Special Ways
Arlene H. Maguire
A poem about the ways in which people with many differences in physical and mental ability share the same human needs for love and understanding.
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Splish, Splat!
Alexis Domney
When Colin asks to have his bedroom painted, his mother hires two deaf professionals to do the job, but when the two painters Betty and Molly get too chatty on the job, they produce an unintended effect on the walls.
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Stand Beautiful
Chloe Howard
A whimsical and inspiring picture book that encourages children to embrace their own uniqueness and celebrate the differences in others.
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Stand Straight, Ella Kate: The True Story of a Real Giant
Kate Klise
Ella Kate Ewing was born in 1872. She started out small, but she just kept on growing. Soon she was too tall for her desk at school, too tall for her bed at home, too tall to fit anywhere. Ella Kate was a real-life giant, but she refused to hide herself away. Instead, she used her unusual height to achieve her equally large dreams. The masterful Klise sisters deliver a touching and inspiring true story about a strong-minded girl who finally embraced her differences. It's the perfect book for every child who has ever felt like an outsider.
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Stick Boy
Joan T. Zeier
When a seven-inch growth spurt in the sixth grade makes skinny, self-conscious Eric a school misfit and the victim of the class bully, he is led to befriend Cynthia, a proud and spirited black girl who is disabled.
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Sticky Beak
Morris Gleitzman
When she rescues a mistreated cockatoo, mute Rowena finds herself in more trouble than usual, but her actions finally reveal her true concern, that her new mother's impending baby is a replacement for her because she isn't perfect.
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Stitches
David Small
One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die. Believing that they were trying to do their best, David’s parents did just the reverse. Edward Small, a Detroit physician, who vented his own anger by hitting a punching bag, was convinced that he could cure his young son’s respiratory problems with heavy doses of radiation, possibly causing David’s cancer. Elizabeth, David’s mother, tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding, ran the Small household under a cone of silence where emotions, especially her own, were hidden.
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Stoner & Spaz
Ronald Koertge
A troubled youth with cerebral palsy struggles toward self-acceptance with the help of a drug-addicted young woman.