THESE BOOKS GET DISABILITY RIGHT

Brilliant Imperfec

tion, Eli Clare (2016, Duke University Press)

Clare questions the notion that there are minds and bodies that are broken and need to be fixed; she explores the idea of fixing the unfixable in this collection of cultural criticism and a problematic culture of curing.

Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood’s Revenge, Susan Vaught (2017, Simon and Schuster)

A middle-grade gothic mystery whose fabulously smart protagonist uses a wheelchair and is quite able to investigate a manor that just might be ha-ha-ha-haunted.

When Fenelon Falls, Dorothy Ellen Palmer (2006, Coach House)

Palmer’s novel is an ambitious and shockingly original coming-of-age story set in 1969 that features a protagonist who’s described as “disabled, bastard and genius.”

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo (2015, Henry Holt and Co.)

A band of fantastical misfits, led by a thief who uses a cane, band together to kidnap a scientist in the first book in this fantasy duology set in Ketterdam, a fantasy riff on 19th-century Amsterdam.

Wonder, R.J. Palacio (2012, Knopf)

The story of Auggie, a kid with an unnamed facial difference, was the second best-selling Juvenile and YA Book of 2017 in Canada for its poignant story of celebrating difference.