October is World Blindness Awareness Month, and thanks to our volunteers, we have a number of books that deal with blindness and other disabilities. Let’s have a look at 10 of these gems from our catalog.

When it comes to Blindness Awareness, few have done more here than Helen Keller. An illness took her sight at an early age, and she had to learn to use her other senses to find her way around The World I Live In.

The world Sir Gibbie lives in is a dreary one. The motherless boy roams the Scotland moors to avoid his alcoholic father. But even though he can’t speak (and may be autistic), he finds ways to touch everybody he meets in the novel by George MacDonald.

The story of Kaspar Hauser, the foundling of Nuremberg, still touches people. His early childhood was spent in a dark bunker, deprived of any human contact. Anselm von Feuerbach became Kaspar’s guardian and tells the story as he knows it.

Judith doesn’t know how her cousin was murdered in her very presence – of course not, since she is deaf. Detective Ferguson is called to solve what he thinks is an inside job in The Unseen Ear by Natalie Sumner Lincoln.

Private detective Max Carrados takes on numerous cases, the more difficult, the better. His blindness is not an obstacle, as he trusts the observations of his butler, Parkinson, in the well-loved series by Ernest Bramah.

Trusting somebody is fine – until you’re taken advantage of. The Blind Hannah finds this out when her parents arrange her marriage. Her husband obviously has a secret, but what is it? Jacob Steinberg tells you in his short story.

Overcoming the limits of disabilities can be the secret to success in life. In The Privilege of Pain, Carolin Everett discusses the lives of disabled artists, politicians, philosophers, scientists, poets…

Alfred Castner King is one of them. A mining accident blinded him, and with insufficient education and money, he feared to be completely useless. Until he picked up a pen during convalescence and opened up in Mountain Idylls and Other Poems.

Vladimir Korolenko tried to analyse the inner life of the blind in what he calls a psychological study. The Blind Musician weaves together the stories of several blind people, all with their own struggles, setbacks, and successes.

The lives of 14-year-old Tom and his Blind Brother Bennie are equally intertwined. Together they work in Pennsylvania coal mines to pay for Bennie’s surgery. But in Homer Greene’s novel, which we made into a dramatic reading, life isn’t easy…

Enjoy – and remember: it’s Blindness Awareness Month!