Celebrate Disability Pride Month with the Schneider Family Book Award.

Photo from ala.org

July celebrates Disability Pride Month in the United States, and as librarians do, I was looking for books that would help our users celebrate. The first place I started was looking at winners of The Schneider Family Book Award. The Schneider Family Book Award, endowed to the American Library Association in 2003 by Dr. Katherine Schneider and her family, honors authors or illustrators for their work that "embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences." These winning books highlight the lives and experiences of people with disabilities, with an understanding that people with disabilities have full lives beyond their disability. 

Dr. Schneider stated in her speech for the first presentation of the award in 2004, "in the 1950s when I was in grade school, the only media mentions of blind people were of Helen Keller, Louis Braille, and the seven blind men who went to see the elephant. Other disabilities fared no better. Fifty years later we're here to celebrate the fact that the situation has dramatically improved." Now, 21 years later, 98 books have been honored by the ALA with the Schneider Award. 

The 2025 theme of Disability Pride Month is "We Belong Here, and We're Here to Stay." What books are you highlighting this month to show everyone that they belong?

Learn more about the Schneider Family Book Award here. [Schneider Family book Award. ala.org/awards/books-media/schneider-family-book-award. 2025.]