Voices from the Margins

A valuable tool to help librarians, teachers, health care professionals and parents identify special books for and about young people who are marginalized because of differences and disabilities. Anyone personally or professionally involved with young people knows that sensitive, yet, realistic fiction can promote a healthy self acceptance and greater understanding toward others. Young people who feel marginalized because of physical differences or disabilities may be helped by reading about well-drawn characters who face similar difficulties. This unique bibliography surveys the field of children's and young adult literature published since 1990 and identifies 200 quality books that deal with a wide range of contemporary health and self-image topics, including physical handicaps, autism, burns, scars, and disfigurement, obesity and anorexia, speech disorders, skin color, and basic issues of popularity and "fitting in." The literature covered here includes picture books, chapter books for middle school readers, and young adult novels spanning different genres including mysteries, historical fiction, and poetry. Annotations give brief plot synopses, full bibliographic information, publishers' age-level suggestions, and subject key words. This valuable bibliography is a useful professional tool not only for librarians as a collection development guide, but for also for educators and healthcare professionals who can use it to put good books in the hands of young readers in several ways. Voices from the Margins can be used to obtain information about authors, titles, and age levels of books on a particular subject such as blindness; or to determine the subject of a particular book. The four indexes by Title, Author, Subject, and Age-level wil facilitate use of this resource for all users and readers.