Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) emphasized that children need to see themselves as well as others reflected in the books available to them. For children who are deaf, images of themselves that are "distorted or laughable or inaccurate" (Bishop, 1997) negatively impact their self-esteem and reinforce their marginalized status. The portrayals of characters who are deaf have the potential to shape children's opinions about deafness as loss and disability or as normal human variance. Recognizing that children's literature might perpetuate or counter prevailing cultural discourses, the goal in this study was to determine how characters who are deaf are portrayed in a set of middle-grade novels. The qualitative content analysis revealed positive and problematic representations, and we call for empowering images of deaf children that will benefit all child readers. To set the backdrop for the study, the authors turn to a discussion of how human variance is constructed as disability, the prevailing medical and social models of disability, Deaf culture, and other studies of children's literature featuring characters who are deaf.