March is Indiana Disabilities Awareness Month! This is a great excuse (not that you need one) to pick up a book written by or about people with disabilities and the Schneider Family Book Award is a great place to find good books on this topic. Presented by the Association of Library Services to Children (the same organization that awards the Newbery and Caldecott Medals) the Schneider Award honors the best books for youth about disability each year. Here are the 2021 Schneider Family Book Award recipients; any of them would make a great read this month or any month!

For younger readers:

I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith. In this incredibly powerful picture book memoir, elementary age Jordan has a “bad speech day”, a day when his stutter is really pronounced and the kids in his class laugh at him when he tries to speak up. He just wants to be somewhere quiet. So his dad takes him down to the river. And when Jordan can’t stop thinking about his bad day and his teasing classmates, his father points out that Jordan talks like a river. Bubbling. Whirling. Churning. Crashing. And ultimately part of the beautiful natural world and “forever making its way toward something greater than itself”. And then forever after, Jordan reminds himself of that fact when he has a bad speech day: I talk like a river. This is a wonderful book for kids who stutter or for any kids to read to better empathize with people who may not speak exactly like they do.

All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything by Annette Bay Pimentel, illustrated by Nabigal-Nayagam Haider Ali. This is a fantastic introduction to the disability rights activism that led to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Jennifer Keelan was one of very, very few children who participated in the demonstrations, including the Capitol Crawl in which people with disabilities crawled up the steps of the Capitol, the building where laws are made which at the time was completely inaccessible to people in wheelchairs.

Itzhak: A Boy Who Loved the Violin by Tracy Newman, illustrated by Abigail Halpin. This gorgeous picture book celebrates the childhood and career of virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman, from growing up in Israel and surviving polio to performing on the Ed Sullivan show and then touring all over the world. More than a celebration of music (although it is that, for sure), this is a book that advocates for better disability accessibility as Perlman often faced physical barriers in the music halls he visited. This is a wonderful biography for young musicians and a super introduction to a famous performer.

For middle readers:

Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LaMotte. Set on Martha’s Vineyard in 1805 in a community where a large percentage of the population is deaf and everyone speaks sign language (which was a real community!), this story features an outsider’s arrival on the island and subsequent terrible things that happen as a “scientist” tries to figure out an environmental cause for the island’s high rate of deafness. This own-voices historical novel is definitely worth a read even if just for an introduction to an element of Deaf culture and history that you may not have known about before.

Get a Grip Vivy Cohen by Sarah Kapit. Vivy Cohen wants to play baseball. Ever since her hero, Major League star pitcher VJ Capello, taught her how to throw a knuckleball at a family fun day for kids with autism, she’s been perfecting her pitch. And now she knows she’s ready to play on a real team. When her social skills teacher makes her write a letter to someone she knows, she writes to VJ and tells him everything about how much she wants to pitch, and how her mom says she can’t because she’s a girl and because she has autism. And then two amazing things happen: Vivy meets a Little League coach who invites her to join his team, the Flying Squirrels. And VJ starts writing back.

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. This riveting graphic novel memoir shares the day-to-day life of people living in a refugee camp and the unforgettable story of one man who grew up in a camp and went on to make life better for many refugees. If your kids read one graphic novel from 2020, make it this one!

For teens:

This Is my Brain in Love by I.W. Gregorio. Rising high school juniors Jocelyn Wu and Will Domenici fall in love while trying to save the Wu family restaurant, A-Plus Chinese Garden. Told in dual narrative, This Is My Brain in Love is a stunning YA contemporary romance, exploring mental health, race, and, ultimately self-acceptance.