Databases for Finding Disability-Inclusive Literature
At INCLUDAS, our mission is to publish books about disabled characters, written by disabled authors. We want to see more diversity within literature, and since we know that finding novels with disability representation can be difficult, we’ve compiled a list of inclusive resources to aid your search for finding your next favorite book.
These are websites we’ve found. They are not sponsored nor are we endorsing any of the books or authors. Please use your own judgment when considering reading a particular book for yourself.
If you’re looking for children’s books:
Dr. Annie’s Bookshelf was created by child psychologist Annie Allclair, and includes over 500 picture books about growth, healing, and mental illness. The website layout makes it easy to navigate and find books for a wide array of topics.
The Schneider Family Book Award is granted to an author or illustrator for “artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” Over seventy books have won this award since 2004.
Children’s Books: Portrayals of People with Disabilities, a list curated by Vanderbilt University’s IRIS Center, includes a large assortment of books that are sorted by disability. Each book has a synopsis and age rating attached. The website also has an easy search function and, as a bonus, a film database full of movies with disability representation!
Goodreads’ Children’s Fiction with Positive Images of Disability list is one of several user-made lists promoting books with disability representation. This one is a starting point, with 119 inclusive children’s stories recorded.
A Novel Mind has the most comprehensive database in this post, featuring over 1,100 books that focus on neurodiversity and mental health conditions. The topics, summary, age group, and genre are all listed to aid in the process of finding your next great read. Majority of the categories include picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and a few YA books.
While the Social Justice Disability List list doesn’t include as many books as some of the other resources present, the books included here have been approved by groups of experts on the topics present in each book. Majority of the books focus on children, but there are a few YA and adult read mentions.
If you’re looking for YA or adult reads:
The YA Disability Database contains more than 540 books with positive disability representation. The database is updated with submissions on a regular basis, and has a search bar function to quickly find the story that sounds the best to you.
The Goodreads YA Disability Book List is another great list of books generated by Goodreads users.
Kaley’s Book Database is a resource with a wealth of information. It gives visitors the ability to sift through age categories, series, genres, and disabilities present in each novel, as well as classifying which books are Own Voices or by disabled authors, for over 600 books. Most books are YA but some do include adult and children’s books.
Dr. Haley’s Disability Representation Spreadsheet lists over 550 books and is sorted by genre, highlighting fantasy, sci-fi, romance, contemporary, and mystery/horror. For every book, there is information offered on the age rating and representation that is present. The document has a link to suggest more books, and is continually updated.
This Disability Books Spreadsheet was created by twitter user @cupofkinship and has over 250 books listed. Each book has information about the disabilities that are represented, the genre, audience, and queer representation.
If you’re looking for social media recommendations from book influencers:
Inclusive Story Time is run by Kelly, who promotes inclusive children’s books on her podcast, blog, and Instagram. Kelly’s recommendations encompass disability representation, as well as everything from race and religion to sexuality and gender. She wants the next generation of children to have books that they see themselves represented in.
_chronicallybookish is run by Kaley, the very same creator of the Kaley Book Database linked above. Kaley is a book influencer who is mainly active on TikTok and Instagram, and frequently posts disability book recommendations.
Thestarrybibliophile, aka Natalie, is a book influencer who reads books that have an emphasis on disability and mental health representation. Natalie is mainly active on her Instagram and has a fun and colorful feed.
Taras.littlelibrary is another book influencer who posts general book recommendations as well as books that have mental health and disability representation. Tara mainly recommends fantasy and romance novels.
Sick.stories is run by Sophie who posts comprehensive book reviews on Instagram of books with disability representation and by Own Voices authors.
The.page.sage is the creator of the Disability Representation Spreadsheet linked above. Active on Instagram and TikTok, Dr. Haley is a pediatrician and lover of books about disabilities.
Cassiesbookshelves posts a wide age range and variety of genres of disabled and diverse book recommendations on her Instagram and TikTok.
Bonus resources:
During Disability Book Week, held annually from April 23rd–29th, people are encouraged to read disability inclusive books. Disability Book Week’s website is a great resource for finding recommendations that have been reviewed by a panel of sensitivity readers.
Hachette Book Group has a page listing the books they’ve published about disability and accessibility, sorted into genres including nonfiction books, biographies and memoirs, and children’s, middle grade, and young adult novels.
The ReadDown, Penguin Random House’s book recommendation blog, posted a collection of “Beloved Book Characters with Disabilities” that’s worth checking out.
BookRiot’s Disability Archives collects all of the website’s posts that center around disability in literature, whether they’re opinion pieces on the current state of representation or listicles of book recommendations.
It’s also important to support disability-owned bookstores: @adastra_stories on Instagram has compiled a list of disabled-owned bookstores, book clubs, and bookish spaces.
If you’re a fan of audiobooks Libro.fm has created a page with a list of audiobooks written by disabled authors.
We love seeing the disability book inclusion work that others are doing. There are so many books out there and we hope you’ve found a few that you enjoy. Let us know if you have other databases or influencers you’ve come across!
