Welcome Readers!

Our 2026 Online Reading Challenge is … KNOW YOUR HISTORY! Each month we will be reading about a different observance month and highlighting a main title about that month.

For July, we are learning about Disability Pride Month. We are recognizing people with disabilities, their culture, experience, achievement, and the struggles of people with disabilities. We are reading books that feature members of the disabled community.

Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By
exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the
need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story. – HarperOne

Looking for some other books that feature members of the disabled community? Try any of the following:

• Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson
• The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland
• Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson
• The Girl Who Figured It Out by Minda Dentler
• In Sickness and In Health: Love Stories from the front lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin
• Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter by John Hendrickson
• Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution by Judith E Heumann with Kristen Joiner
• Up the Down Escalator: Medicine, Motherhood, and Multiple Sclerosis by Lisa Doggett
• Wanda Hears the Stars: A Blind Astronomer Listens to the Universe by Amy Hansen

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!