Middle School

A Blind Guide to Normal

Beth Vrabel

After spending the last year at Addison School for the Blind, Ryder relies on his sense of humor when nothing seems to be going right for him at his new school, Papuaville Middle School. Sequel to A Blind Guide to Stinkville (DB 83027). For grades 4-7 and older readers.

A Blind Guide to Stinkville

Beth Vrabel

Leaving her best friend and the familiarity of Seattle for the paper mill town of "Stinkville", South Carolina, twelve-year-old Alice, who lives with albinism and blindness, decides to enter the town’s essay contest. For grades 4-7 and older readers. 2015.

A different way of seeing: youth with visual impairments and blindness DB58329

Patricia Souder

Follows a young girl’s coping with sudden vision loss. Includes descriptions of various visual disorders, their causes, and the kinds of help that adaptive devices like white canes and guide dogs can provide to people with diminished sight.

Blind

Rachel DeWoskin

When Emma Sasha Silver loses her eyesight in an accident, she must relearn everything from walking across the street to recognizing her own sisters to imagining colors. One of seven children, Emma used to be the invisible kid, but now it seems everyone is watching her. And just as she’s about to start high school and try to recover her friendships and former life, one of her classmates is found dead in an apparent suicide. Fifteen and blind, Emma has to untangle what happened and why—in order to see for herself what makes life worth living.

Blindsided

Priscilla Cummings

In many ways, Natalie O’Reilly is a typical fourteen year- old girl. But a routine visit to the eye doctor produces devastating news: Natalie will lose her sight within a few short months. Suddenly her world is turned upside down. Natalie is sent to a school for the blind to learn skills such as Braille and how to use a cane. Outwardly, she does as she’s told; inwardly, she hopes for a miracle that will free her from a dreaded life of blindness. But the miracle does not come, and Natalie ultimately must confront every blind person’s dilemma. Will she go home to live scared? Or will she embrace the skills she needs to make it in a world without sight?

Just Maria

Jay Hardwig

Just Maria is the story of Maria Romero, a blind sixth-grader who is trying her hardest to be normal. Not amazing. Not inspiring. Not helpless. Not weird. Just normal. Normal is hard enough with her white cane, glass eyes, and bumpy books, but Maria’s task is complicated by her neighbor and classmate JJ Munson, an asthmatic overweight oddball known in the halls of Marble City Middle as a double-dork paste-eater. When JJ draws Maria into his latest hare-brained scheme—a series of public challenges to prove their worth as gumshoes for his Twinnoggin Detective Agency—she fears she’s lost her last chance to go unnoticed. When a young girl goes missing on the streets of Marble City, Maria’s new-found confidence is tested in ways she never anticipated. Use your cane and your brain, and figure it out . . . Aimed at middle-grade readers, Just Maria explores difference and disability without resorting to the saccharine and engages universal themes about the price of popularity and the meaning of independence.

Reading Guide

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: The Diary Of Bess Brennan (Dear America)

Barry Denenberg

Blinded after a terrible accident, Bess must learn to overcome her disability with the help of new friends and skills at the Perkins School for the Blind, in the wake of America’s Great Depression.

After Bess Brennan is blinded in a sledding accident, she must face a frightening, much-altered world. Confronted with a new set of obstacles, Bess manages to overcome her disability with the help of her new friends at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she also learns how to read braille. Her twin sister, Elin, assists her with recording daily events in her diary and contributes entries of her own. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Bess’s story will inspire all readers to be strong in the face of hardship.

She Is Not Invisible

Marcus Sedgwick

Laureth Peak’s father has taught her to look for recurring events, patterns, and numbers―a skill at which she’s remarkably talented. Her secret: She is blind. But when her father goes missing, Laureth and her seven-year-old brother, Benjamin, are thrust into a mystery that takes them to New York City, where surviving will take all her skill at spotting the amazing, shocking, and sometimes dangerous connections.

The Heart of Applebutter Hill

Donna Hill

Imagine you’re fourteen. You’re in a new country with your camera, your best friend and her dog. You uncover a secret, are instantly in danger and can’t tell anyone. Join Baggy, Abigail and Curly Connor as they explore Elfin Pond, sneak around Bar Gundoom Castle and discover an underground lake. Oh, and did I mention that Abigail is visually impaired and Curly is her guide dog?

The Window

Jeanette Ingold

Fifteen years old and blinded by the accident that killed her mother, Mandy has just moved to Texas to live with relatives she has never met. She explores the mystery of her family history and learns about her own strengths and resilience as she makes a new life for herself.

Things Not Seen

Andrew Clements

Bobby Phillips is your average fifteen-year-old boy. That is, until he wakes up one morning and can’t see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming-Bobby is just plain invisible. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for Bobby’s new condition and even his dad the physicist can’t figure it out. For Bobby, that means no school, no friends, no life. He’s a missing person.

Then he meets Alicia. She’s blind, and Bobby can’t resist talking to her, trusting her. But people are starting to wonder where Bobby is, and if he’s even still alive. Bobby knows that his invisibility could have dangerous consequences for his family and that time is running out. He has to find out how to be seen again-before it’s too late.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award