Stuck in Neutral is a young adult (YA) fiction novel about Shawn McDaniel, a fourteen-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. To the outside world, Shawn is in a kind of vegetative state: his condition makes it so that he has no control over any of his motor function, from moving his lips to evacuating his bowels. Shawn cannot communicate with the outside world, and so people—including his family members—believe him to have the brain function and... Read Stuck In Neutral Summary

Author and naturalist Sy Montgomery’s Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World (2012) is a biography of the animal behaviorist, animal rights advocate, and autism activism Temple Grandin. The biography is intended for young adult readers and discusses Grandin’s life from early childhood to the present day. It explores the challenges she faced with autism, the development of her creativity and her passion for animals, and the persistence... Read Temple Grandin Summary

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The Beginning of Everything is a young adult coming-of-age novel by the accomplished American author Robyn Schneider. First published in 2013, it is Schneider’s debut novel and has been nominated for numerous YA book awards. It is published in multiple countries, in the UK under the title Severed Heads, Broken Hearts.Schneider, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of several other bestselling YA books: Extraordinary Means; Invisible Ghosts; You Don’t Live Here. Her newest... Read The Beginning of Everything Summary

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Audre Lorde was a poet, essayist, activist, and memoirist whose writings on lesbian feminism and race were integral to second-wave feminism. Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Grenadian immigrant parents. She attended Hunter High School, where she edited the school’s literary magazine. She published her first poem, which had been rejected by an English teacher, in Seventeen magazine. She later attended Hunter College, where she trained to become a... Read The Cancer Journals Summary

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Book DetailsIn the mystery novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher Boone, a brilliant teenage boy, sets out to solve the murder of his neighbor’s dog. While it is not explicitly stated in the novel, critics and professional medical reviewers generally agree that Christopher has autism. Written by Mark Haddon and published in 2003, the book won the Whitbread Book Award for best Novel and Book of the Year and the... Read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Summary

This memoir is a series of autobiographical vignettes that was composed over the span of two months (July-August, 1996) by Jean-Dominique Bauby, with the help of a publishing assistant named Claude. He dispatches from room 119 of the Naval Hospital at Berck-sur-Mer, France. The vignettes do not follow a chronological order, and interweave recollections of various eras in Bauby’s life with his contemporary reality. Bauby suffered a massive stroke on December 8, 1995 that left... Read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Summary

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The Elephant Man, a one-act play by American playwright Bernard Pomerance, was first produced in London at the Hampstead Theatre in 1977. The play transferred to New York and played Off-Broadway in 1979, moving to Broadway three months later, where it ran successfully for two years. The play won many awards with its Broadway debut, including a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play, and... Read The Elephant Man Summary

Written by Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown is a 1984 fantasy novel that acts as a prequel to McKinley’s 1982 novel, The Blue Sword. The Hero and the Crown focuses on the life and exploits of Aerin Dragon-Killer, the legendary wielder of the titular blue sword Gonturan, which first appeared in the previous novel. The Hero and the Crown focuses on Aerin’s personal development into a hero and a queen, emphasizing the physical... Read The Hero and the Crown Summary

The Housekeeper and the Professor, written by Yōko Ogawa, is a work of literary fiction set in modern-day Japan and loosely based on the book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of the mathematician Paul Erdös. The Housekeeper and the Professor was originally published in Japanese in 2003; it sold more than one million copies and received the Hon’ya Taisho award in 2004. In 2006, it was adapted into a film version, titled... Read The Housekeeper and the Professor Summary

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The London Eye Mystery (2007), by Siobhan Dowd, is a novel for young readers about a boy named Ted who teams up with his sister to figure out how their cousin disappeared while riding a giant Ferris wheel.The novel was nominated for a Carnegie Medal, was listed as a 2008 Booklist Children’s Editors’ Choice title, and a School Library Journal Best Book of 2008. It was also shortlisted for many English awards, including the Red... Read The London Eye Mystery Summary

The Man Who Loved Clowns by June Rae Wood is a young adult novel about a teenage girl, Delrita, who lives with her Uncle Punky, who has Down syndrome. Wood based the novel on her personal experience growing up with her brother, Richard, who had Down syndrome. The Man Who Loved Clowns was published in 1992 and won the Mark Twain Award in 1995. Wood published a sequel, Turtle on a Fence Post, in 1997.This... Read The Man Who Loved Clowns Summary