reading – Easterseals Thrive Media Hub

3 Halloween Reads Featuring Disability

Easterseals Thrive’s top three picks of spooky books featuring disability.

October is the best month for getting cozy with a cup of tea, a blanket, and a spooky book. It’s also the start of the Disability Readathon, a month-long event focused on reading texts by and about disabled people.

Take a look at some of our recommended Halloween reads below, and leave the name of your favorite scary book in the comments!

Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle

From Anna, one of the co-hosts of the Disability Readathon: “One of our main characters, Olive, is bisexual and deaf and wears a hearing aid. I am about 100 pages into this story, and it’s about a town where, after a party, objects randomly start going missing, and a mysterious spellbook may hold the answer to why.”

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

This book is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In this story, the Belle figure, now named Harper, has Cerebral Palsy. She’s pulled from a modern-day Washington, DC into a fantastical land with a brooding beast.

Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda

This recommendation is for all the graphic novel fans. Monstress follows a teen girl who is an amputee and lives with trauma from a war. She also has a symbiotic relationship with, well, a monster. The art reminds me of the ’20s, and is considered steampunk.

Read This Next: Broken Places and Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor

Broken Places and Outer Spaces cover - blue with yellow accents.

I only learned a few weeks ago that Nnedi Okorafor is disabled. A few years ago, I read her book Who Fears Death and thought it was captivating; I added Akata Witch and Binti to my to-be-read shelf immediately. Okorafor is a leading sci-fi writer, but Broken Places & Outer Spaces takes a more personal look at her experience with scoliosis, paralysis, and racism.

Broken Places is a quick read (the audio book is under two hours), and it shows how creativity comes through in the midst of change, disability, and hardships. She also shows how other disabled and otherwise marginalized artists use these identities to fuel and produce their work.

This is available on Amazon, Scribd, and anywhere else you can find books!

Read This Next: A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman

I’m starting a new series here on the blog – “Read This Next,” which offers book and reading recommendations that relate somehow to disability. If you have a recommendation for this space, comment with your suggestion and we will definitely check it out!

A Time to Dance cover. A young woman in a green and red dress kneels on the ground.

Our first rec is A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman. This novel is written in verse and follows Veda’s journey through acceptance and strength after losing her leg after a car accident. Veda is a dancer in India who must learn to find a new but equal way to express herself through the medium.

While Venkatraman is not disabled herself, she did extensive research with disabled individuals to give her writing an authentic feel. I found myself connecting to Veda’s experiences so much that I knew the author consulted with others and listened to their suggestions. I also appreciated how, through the narrative, Venkatraman shows the power of seeing others like yourself achieving goals – this novel is the perfect example of why representation is important.

You can learn more about the book on the GoodReads page. Let us know in the comments whether you’ve read this, or if you’ve added it to your reading list!

The Reading Rush!

Have you heard about The Reading Rush? It’s a book challenge from July 22nd to July 28th. The goal is to read as many books as possible while earning some badges along the way.

Have you heard about The Reading Rush? It’s a book challenge from July 22nd to July 28th. The goal is to read as many books as possible while earning some badges along the way. I’ll be participating, and my personal goal includes 7 books that will hopefully fulfill all the challenges. Here’s my list – post yours in the comments!

Read a book with purple on the cover: A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatramen

Read a book in one sitting: The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Perez

Read a book you meant to read last year: The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Read an author’s first book: Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum

Read a book with a non-human main character: A Stitch in Time (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #27) by Andrew J. Robinson

Read a book with over five words in the title: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Read and watch a book-to-movie adaptation: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak