Honor Disability Pride Month with Underlined

July is Disability Pride Month when we honor the disabled community’s history, achievements, experiences, and struggles. One way to be an ally to the disabled community is to learn how they experience the world through reading their stories. Check out some of these amazing YA books featuring characters with disabilities.

Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults)

Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults)

The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life’s ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy.

The Running Dream

The Running Dream

When Jessica is told she’ll never run again, she puts herself back together—and learns to dream bigger than ever before. The acclaimed author of Flipped delivers a powerful and healing story.

Small Steps

Small Steps

Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it’s hard when you have a record and everyone expects the worst from you. The only person who believes in Armpit is Ginny, his ten-year-old disabled neighbor. Together, they are learning to take small steps.

What to Say Next

What to Say Next

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David. Kit appreciates David’s blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit’s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad’s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they’ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?

You're Welcome, Universe

You're Welcome, Universe

When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural. Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a “mainstream” school in the suburbs, where she’s treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy himself could convince her to give that up.

Diary of a Dying Girl

Diary of a Dying Girl

This collection of one girl’s real, unflinching diary entries about slowly dying of a terminal illness is an unparalleled exploration of the human spirit and what it means to truly live.

See You on Venus

See You on Venus

Fall in love with this runaway romance now a major motion picture on Netflix! Two star-crossed teens embark on a journey to Spain to discover the meaning of love, death and everything in between.

Ariel Crashes a Train

Ariel Crashes a Train

Exploring the harsh reality of OCD and violent intrusive thoughts in stunning, lyrical writing, this novel-in-verse conjures a haunting yet hopeful portrait of a girl on the edge. From the author of Dear Medusa, which New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed called “a fierce and brightly burning feminist roar.”

Did you enjoy this list of YA books about characters with disabilities to honor Disability Pride Month? Discover more themed reading lists here and get social with us at @getunderlined!

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