Minneapolis high school senior Effie Galanos (white) has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. Effie hopes to go to Prospect University in New York City for college, and she worries less about getting in than about telling her parents her plan. She knows proving she can advocate for herself will go a long way toward getting their approval, and her high school is providing plenty of opportunities to rise to the challenge. Her IEP says she can have two lockers, but one is taken away. And now that she’s a senior, Effie is allowed to leave campus for lunch, but the only door the school leaves unlocked isn’t accessible. Effie is also working with Wilder, another member of student council, on a school beautification project that will be welcoming to physically disabled students. When Effie finally tells her parents about Prospect, and they take a family trip to visit campus, she’s dismayed to discover how inaccessible Prospect (and the subway) is; in fact, a wheelchair user has never graduated from Prospect. In contrast, she also gets into U.C. Berkeley, which has achieved great strides in accessibility and in making disabled students feel welcome. Effie’s starry-eyed crush on Wilder and their developing romance is yet another aspect of this story that offers eye-opening insights for readers who aren’t physically disabled as Effie is confronted again and again with the small and large challenges of mobility in a world in which accessibility is an too often an afterthought. (Age 12 and older)

A Schneider Family Book Award Honor Book

What does it take to follow your dreams? Where You See Yourself is a relatable, romantic, and necessary story about a girl who has to figure out what--and who--will bring her the happiness she deserves.

By the time Effie Galanos starts her senior year, it feels like she’s already been thinking about college applications for an eternity—after all, finding a college that will be the perfect fit and be accessible enough for Effie to navigate in her wheelchair presents a ton of considerations that her friends don’t have to worry about.

What Effie hasn’t told anyone is that she already knows exactly what school she has her heart set on: a college in NYC with a major in Mass Media & Society that will set her up perfectly for her dream job in digital media. She’s never been to New York, but paging through the brochure, she can picture the person she’ll be there, far from the Minneapolis neighborhood where she's lived her entire life. When she finds out that Wilder (her longtime crush) is applying there too, it seems like one more sign from the universe that it’s the right place for her.

But it turns out that the universe is full of surprises. As Effie navigates her way through a year of admissions visits, senior class traditions, internal and external ableism, and a lot of firsts--and lasts--she starts to learn that sometimes growing up means being open to a world of possibilities you never even dreamed of. And maybe being more than just friends with Wilder is one of those dreams...