Category: ASL and Deaf Studies

We got some new DVDs and books in for the special collection of Deaf and ASL studies materials.

Picture Books
The Deaf Musicians by Pete Seeger – a book about some musicians who lose their hearing
Kami and the Yaks – Beautiful book about a Deaf Himalayan boy
My Heart Glow: Alice Cogswell, Thomas Gallaudet and the Birth of ASL – an historical fiction picture book about the beginnings of education in ASL in the United States!

Chapter books
Hogge – historical fiction about a Deaf boy, whose life is changed forever when a friend of his father’s brings ASL into his life.
Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything by Lenore Look – plucky character Ruby Lu’s Deaf cousin from China moves in!
The Smart Princess and Other Deaf Tales – funny 1-3 page stories written by the Deaf in Canada
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson
Here is a booktalk I wrote:
“Hope is a thing with feathers” and Frannie sure needs some. She is a kid who thinks and feels a lot, but isn’t the best at school work. It is the dead of winter in 1971 and Frannie is in 6th grade.

The book starts off in Ms. Johnson’s class. A new kid walks in and it’s already October, and he is white in an all-black school. Who is this new kid? Samantha, Frannie’s church-going friend thinks he’s Jesus—a stranger, misunderstood, persecuted, an outcast. They start calling him Jesus boy. I mean he does look like Jesus with long stringy hair in a neighborhood where everyone else has an Afro. And Trevor, the class bully, is starting to target him. One day he says, “Are you Deaf or something? Well that gets Frannie, you know, because her brother is Deaf and it is SOMETHING. And it gets him, too.

Frannie starts to watch the Jesus Boy, maybe even interested in him? But what will Frannie do when Trevor really tries to hurt him? What will Samantha do? Sometimes we don’t really know who we are or who our friends are until something big happens. And something big DOES happen….. and when it does, Frannie gets a little closer to knowing who she is, who Trevor really is behind all that anger, who Samantha is underneath all that Godliness, and who the Jesus Boy is…..

I would recommend this book to people who have a Deaf sibling because Jacqueline Woodson treats Deafness with sensitivity and understanding, and for tweens who are really trying to figure out their true identity. Readers will find themselves in trying to figure out what to believe about being black or white or somewhere in between, and what it means to believe in God. Feathers is a book for tweens who are not eager to follow the crowd but are forging their own path.

Look for other booktalks done by the 4th grade and 6/7th grade!

DVDs
The Miracle Worker
Helen Keller (animated her classics)