By Laurie Ann Thompson
The true story of a boy born with one working leg in a place that called him a curse, who cycled across Ghana to prove them wrong.
Emmanuel was born in Ghana with one leg that didn't work, in a place where many people believed a disabled child was a curse and should be hidden away. His mother refused. She carried him two miles to school on her back, taught him to hop, told him he could do anything. As a young man, with one leg, he rode a bicycle four hundred miles across his whole country to change how people saw disability.
This is the true one, and true matters here, because your child can't file Emmanuel away as a made-up hero. He was a real boy who was told his body made him worthless, and who spent his life proving that a disability is not the same thing as an inability. It's the book that moves the trail from feelings to action, and it does it without ever turning Emmanuel into a lesson. He's just a person who did an astonishing thing.