SpecialStories

CD: Digging Through My Closet
Song Description
The story behind Nine Gold Medals has become an urban legend, i.e. a story with some truth that reappears from time to time in different forms. I have received chain email messages that include it.
The story takes place at a Special Olympics track and field competition where in a running [...]

Author: Temple Grandin
Major Character with a Disability: the author
Short Description
The author describes autism from the inside in this story of her life.
Published by: Vintage (US), 1996
Author with Disabilities: Temple Grandin
The captivating subject of Oliver Sack’s Anthropologist on Mars, here is Temple Grandin’s personal account of living with autism extraordinary gift of animal empathy has transformed [...]

Author: Mark Haddon
Major Character with a Disability: Christopher Boone (the narrator of the story)
Short Description
A young detective with autism solves a crime while learning about life.
Published by: Doubleday (US), 2003
Author with Disabilities: none
Randomhouse (UK publisher) excerpts (text and audio) from the book
Long Description (from Doubleday)
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the [...]

Author: Rachel Simon
Major Character with a Disability: Beth Simon
Short Description
Beth lives independently and is in a long-term romantic relationship, but perhaps the most surprising thing about her, certainly to her (mostly) supportive family, is how she spends her days riding buses.
Published by: Houghton Mifflin (US), 2002
Author with Disabilities: none

Picture from the TV Special
Long Description (from [...]

Author: Martha Beck
Major Character with a Disability: Adam
Short Description
The pregnancy and birth of Adam, a child with Down syndrome, and the effect on his parents
Published by: Crown (US), 1999
Author with Disabilities: none
Long Description (from Amazon.com)
Expecting Adam is an autobiographical tale of an academically oriented Harvard couple who conceive a baby with Down’s syndrome and decide [...]

Authors: Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano
Major Character with a Disability: the author
 
Short Description
The author gives her personal perspective on autism and how she took advantage of her attributes.
Published by: Warner Books (US), 1996
Author with Disabilities: Temple Grandin
This book is written by a woman who overcame a severe disability to become a successful designer of [...]

Major Character with a Disability: Brad Silverman
Actors with Disabilities: Brad Silverman
Short Description
The true story of Brad Silverman, a boy with Down Syndrome and his quest to lead a normal life.
First Broadcast on ABC (US Network)
Cast (in alphabetical order):
Shelley Berman - Harold
David Feit - Brad (age 5)
Robert Hackman - Sam
Trish Johnson - Gloria Anderson (as Pat [...]

Major Character with a Disability: Charles ‘Corky’ Thatcher (played by Chris Burke)

Actors with Disabilities: Chris Burke, Andrea Fay Friedman
Short Description
A family drama centered around two children, one of whom has Down syndrome.
First Broadcast on ABC (US Network) in September, 1989
Main Cast (in alphabetical order):
Chris Burke - Charles ‘Corky’ Thatcher
Andrea Fay Friedman - Amanda Swanson [...]

Major Character with a Disability: Benny Stulwicz (played by Larry Drake)
Actors with Disabilities: none
Short Description
A lawyer series about the Los Angeles firm, McKenzie, Brackman. One of the main supporting characters, Benny, who is an office assistant, has a intellectual disability.
First Broadcast on NBC (US Network) in September, 1986
Main Cast (in alphabetical order):
Corbin Bernsen - Arnie [...]

Major Character with a Disability: Trev, Belinda, Robert
Actors with Disabilities: Saxon Graham, Ruth Cromer, Chris Greenwood
Short Description
Suddenly broke, a father and his adolescent daughter move in with their three tenants. But father and daughter are shocked to learn that they now share a house with three people with an intellectual disability, and a motorbike-mad social [...]