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🧲 Books like this

The Boy from Baby House 10: From the Nightmare of a Russian Orphanage to a New Life in America

Alan Philps, John Lahutsky · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

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NeglectOrphansChild AbuseMemoir & Biography
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The Lost Boy

Dave Pelzer · 272 pages

Imagine a young boy who has never had a home. His only possessions are the old torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. His only world is isolation and fear. Although this young boy has been rescued from his alcoholic mother, the real hurt is just beginning-he has no place to call *home*. This is the first paragraph on the back of the book. While I feel it sums up the book pretty well, I think some

NeglectAdoptionMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

Michael Lewis · 345 pages

Follows one young man from his impoverished childhood with a crack-addicted mother, through his discovery of the sport of football, to his rise to become one of the most successful, highly-paid players in the NFL.

AdoptionNeglectUpliftingBiography
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AdoptionOrphansMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

NeglectAdoptionOrphansChild Abuse
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Dorie, the girl nobody loved

Doris Van Stone

"Someone has said that when you have nothing left but God, you realized that God is enough. God had stood beside me when no one else wanted me. He was not going to abandon me now. God would have to heal the emotional pain that throbbed through my body." As a child, Dorie was rejected by her mother, sent to live in an orphanage where she was regularly beaten by the orphanage director, was beaten ti

NeglectOrphansMemoir & BiographyChild Abuse
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A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley · 280 pages

AdoptionOrphansUpliftingMemoir & Biography
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Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

Katie J. Davis, Beth Clark · 264 pages

What would cause an eighteen-year-old old senior class president and homecoming queen from Nashville, Tennessee, to disobey and disappoint her parents by forgoing college, break her little brother’s heart, lose all but a handful of her friends (because the rest of them think she has gone off the deep end), and break up with the love of her life, all so she could move to Uganda, where she knew only

AdoptionOrphansMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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Beyond the Bear: How I Learned to Live and Love Again after Being Blinded by a Bear

Dan Bigley, Debra McKinney · 218 pages

A 25-year-old backcountry wanderer, a man happiest exploring wild places with his dog, Dan Bigley woke up one midsummer morning to a day full of promise. Before it was over, after a stellar day of salmon fishing along Alaska's Kenai and Russian rivers, a grizzly came tearing around a corner in the trail. Dan barely had time for "bear charging" to register before it had him on the ground, altering

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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The War that Saved My Life

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley · 349 pages

Nine-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute—she sneaks out to join him. So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a

Disabled ProtagonistNeglectDisability RepresentationChild Abuse
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Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War‐Torn Syria in a Wheelchair

Nujeen Mustafa · 312 pages

This book tells the inspiring true story of a remarkable young hero: Nujeen Mustafa, a teenager born with cerebral palsy, whose harrowing journey from war-ravaged Syria to Germany in a wheelchair is a breathtaking tale of fortitude, grit, and hope that lends a face to the greatest humanitarian issue of our time, the Syrian refugee crisis.For millions around the globe, sixteen-year-old Nujeen Musta

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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I Can Jump Puddles

Alan Marshall · 256 pages

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationUpliftingMemoir & Biography
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Amelia's Story: A Childhood Lost

D.G. Torrens · 386 pages

NeglectOrphansMemoir & BiographyChild Abuse
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Kim Edwards · 408 pages

Kim Edwards's stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives fo

AdoptionDisabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationNeglect
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Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero

Michael Hingson · 256 pages

Excellent! This is such a great book about a wonderful man who is blind and his guide dog, who together survived the terrorist attack on our nation 9/11/2001.

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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With Love from Karen

Marie Killilea · 371 pages

A warm and uplifting memoir of a family dealing with cerebral palsy.

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationUpliftingMemoir & Biography
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The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett · 256 pages

A ten-year-old orphan comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors where she discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.

NeglectOrphansDisabled ProtagonistUplifting
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Joni: An Unforgettable Story

Joni Eareckson Tada, Joe Musser · 224 pages

Autobiography of Joni Eareckson, who at 17 was left a quadriplegic as a result of a diving accident, and who today as an accomplished artist drawing with a pen held in her teeth, describes her struggles and her abiding faith in Christ.

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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The Boy on the Porch

Sharon Creech · 168 pages

"One day a young couple wakes to find a boy asleep on their porch. Unable to speak, the boy cannot explain his history. What kind of people would leave their child with strangers? All John and Marta know is that they have been chosen to care for this boy. As their connection to him grows, they embrace his exuberant spirit and talents. The three of them blossom into an unlikely family, but how long

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationAdoptionUplifting
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Street Kid

Judy Westwater, Wanda Carter · 320 pages

After a childhood lived in terror, in 1994, Judy was presented with an Unsung Heroes Award for her charity work with street children in South Africa. Her moving story came to light after Judy was interviewed by John Peel on BBC's "Home Truths". This title offers the story of her early years, a story of a child who refused to give up.

NeglectMemoir & BiographyChild AbuseOrphans
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Ellen Foster

Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

NeglectOrphansAdoptionChild Abuse
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Good Kings Bad Kings

Susan Nussbaum · 336 pages

The residents at a facility for disabled young people in Chicago build trust and make friends in an effort to fight against their living conditions and mistreatment.

NeglectDisabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationChild Abuse
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The Story of Beautiful Girl

Rachel Simon · 346 pages

A novel about a woman who can't speak, a man who is deaf, and a widow who finds herself suddenly caring for a newborn baby. Pennsylvania, 1968. Lynnie, and her sweetheart Homan, have escaped from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, an institution where people with disabilities were routinely shut off from society, and left to languish, forgotten.

Disabled ProtagonistNeglectAdoptionDisability Representation
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The Story of Helen Keller

Lorena A. Hickok · 181 pages

Seven-year-old Helen Keller cannot see, hear, or speak. One day, into Helen's dark, silent world comes a young teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, determined to open the doors of Helen's prison of silence.

Disabled ProtagonistDisability RepresentationUpliftingBiography

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