Special Collections
Deaf-Blind Special Collection
Description: A collection featuring biographies, fiction and non-fiction by and about members of the deaf-blind community. For books by and about members of the deaf community, visit: https://www.bookshare.org/browse/collection/249852 #disability
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Bigger than the Sky
by Michele Wates and Rowen JadeIn this anthology the editors gather work by a variety of women with disabilities, united by the theme of parenting. Many contributors write enthusiastically about their parenting experiences; some explain their choice not to raise children; some write about meaningful relationships with children outside the traditional parent role. The authors represent disabilities including blindness, deafness, MS, post-polio, cerebral palsy, and cognitive and psychiatric disabilities.
Your Child's Hearing Loss
by Debby Waldman and Jackson RoushFrom a mother whose daughter has hearing loss, and an audiologist with more than twenty-five years of experience with deaf and hard-of-hearing children and their families, this comprehensive volume offers parents what they need to know from day-to-day practical solutions to technical information to emotional support.
Helen Keller
by Dorothy HerrmannA comprehensive biography of Helen Keller, focusing not only on her disabilities and challenges and how she overcame them or made them moot, but also on her relationships, her work with other challenged and inspirational people, her involvement in the arts as subject and as participant, and her political beliefs and actions.
Deaf-Blind Infants and Children
by John Mcinnes and J. A. TreffryThis is a comprehensive reference guide for teachers, parents, and paraprofessionals working or living with children who are both deaf and blind. It provides day-to-day guidance and suggestions about techniques and methods for assessing children with multi-sensory deprivation, and for devising programs to help them cope.
The Story of Esther Costello
by Nicholas MonsarratEsther Costello, born on a peasant farm in Ireland, became a deaf-blind-mute after an explosion. She was discovered and saved from her predicament by Mrs. Bannister, a wealthy American. Mrs. Bannister rescued her, and brought her to Boston shortly after the 2nd World War. Mrs. Bannister taught Esther how to communicate by writing letters in her palm. Esther became an overnight success in America and around the world. Then in walks Mr. Bannister, the separated husband, but interested in how Esther can be used as a money-making machine. What happens to Esther and the Bannisters?
Breaking the Silence
by Jo MilneImagine for a moment that you have never heard the voices of those you love, the music on the radio, the sound of birdsong at dawn nor the persistent passing traffic on the road you walk down. Now imagine that the lips that you have watched moving, the faces that you have smiled at, the words that you read in front of you all slowly start to disappear too. It's hard to comprehend isn't it?Jo Milne had already lived a lifetime surrounded by silence, profoundly deaf from birth, when she began to lose her sight. Just before turning thirty, Jo was diagnosed with Usher Syndrome, a rare genetic and progressive condition that will one day rob her of her sight altogether.Although at this lowest ebb, Jo suffered from deep depression, she has always been determined to live her life to the full. Jo has never let her disabilities affect the way she embraces life however there was always so much that she was missing. In 2014 she made a life-changing decision to undergo major surgery. She had cochlear implants fitted allowing her to hear for the first time. Every moment of Jo's days since the operation has become a journey of discovery.She has been able to hear the voice of her own mother who has stood by her and helped her through some of her darkest moments. She has heard birds sing, people chatting and the sound of children laughing. She is embarking on an incredible journey through four missed generations of music - from the hymns she missed in school assembly to sweeping orchestral performances, from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to the music of this very moment and everything in between. Breaking the Silence is a remarkable and beautifully written memoir that will serve as an inspiration to everyone who reads it. By turns, heart-breaking and heart-warming, it is the incredibly uplifting life-story of a woman who refused to give up hope and always lives life with a smile upon her face.
Unaccompanied Sonata & Other Stories
by Orson Scott CardShort stories by this prolific and award winning science fiction author. The title story is about truly unique music and its guardians, deafness and blindness.
The Touch of Magic
by Lorena A. HickokThe story of Helen Keller's great teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy
Our Stories
by Marianne DecherShort vignettes of real life sign language interpreting experiences that left a mark on interpreters' souls. Some pieces are funny, some serious. A few are written by Deaf and Deaf-Blind consumers.
God Knows His Name
by Dave BakkePolice found John Doe No. 24 in the early morning hours of October 11, 1945, in Jacksonville, Illinois. Unable to communicate, the deaf and mute teenager was labeled "feeble minded" and sentenced by a judge to the nightmarish jumble of the Lincoln State School and Colony in Lincoln. He remained in the Illinois mental health care system for over thirty years and died at the Sharon Oaks Nursing Home in Peoria on November 28, 1993.
The young black man, who later became blind, survived institutionalized hell: beatings, hunger, overcrowding, and the dehumanizing treatment that characterized state institutions through the 1950s. In spite of his environment, he made friends, took on responsibilities, and developed a sense of humor. People who knew him found him remarkable.
Award-winning journalist Dave Bakke reconstructs the life of John Doe No. 24 through research into a half-century of the state mental health system, personal interviews with people who knew him at various points during his life.
Helen Keller
by Katharine E. WilkieFocusing on her childhood years, this biography is about Helen Keller who overcame her handicaps with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan.
On Different Roads
by Geraldine LawhornA true story of an incredible woman who was not about to be held back by the challenges of becoming blind and deaf before she completed high school. Not only does Geraldine Lawhorn live a full life, but she also continues to help others.
Deaf-Blind Interpreting Workbook
by Mary Bauer and Karen Chriest Stueland and Jackie Engler-Morris and Janie Neal and Jelica Nuccio and Cynthia WallaceThis workbook was put together to cover basic Deaf-Blind interpreting techniques. Over the past years, the Seattle Deaf-Blind Community has shaped this class and the workbook has evolved.
And The Journey Begins
by Cyril AxelrodThis life story of deafblind priest, Father Cyril Axelrod, makes compelling reading. A man of such spirituality, humanity, gentleness, compassion, humour, leadership and vision, he has worked tirelessly for others throughout his life and has become a worldwide ambassador for deaf and deafblind people.
He gives a remarkably poignant and tender account of his childhood as the profoundly Deaf child of an orthodox Jewish family in South Africa. He describes the wrenching spiritual journey that follows in his twenties and led him eventually to become a Catholic priest in order to serve deaf people. He tells too of his own painful transition from deafness to deafblindess as his sight deteriorates in middle age as a result of Usher syndrome.
Despite this, his remarkable pastoral work continues, using over eight different indigenous sign languages, in countries as varied as South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Australia, USA, China, Singapore, Macau, Ireland, and finally Britain. His work and his love for deaf and deafblind people transcends colour, creed and faith and has been recognised throughout the world.
This is the story of a remarkable man.
The Story of My Life
by Helen KellerAn American classic rediscovered by each generation, The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's account of her triumph over deafness and blindness. Popularized by the stage play and movie The Miracle Worker, Keller's story has become a symbol of hope for people all over the world.
This book-published when Keller was only twenty-two-portrays the wild child who is locked in the dark and silent prison of her own body. With an extraordinary immediacy, Keller reveals her frustrations and rage, and takes the reader on the unforgettable journey of her education and breakthroughs into the world of communication.
From the moment Keller recognizes the word "water" when her teacher finger-spells the letters, we share her triumph as "that living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!" An unparalleled chronicle of courage, The Story of My Life remains startlingly fresh and vital more than a century after its first publication, a timeless testament to an indomitable will.
From Homer to Helen Keller
by Richard Slayton FrenchFrom Homer to Helen Keller, Homer stands for the greatest achievement of the blind in the times antecedent to their systematic education. He stands for all those bards, many of them blind or blinded, creators of literature and makers of our language, who through ballads, always of great vigor and sometimes of surpassing beauty, have handed down to us the glorious traditions of far-off heroic times.
Miss Keller stands for the supreme achievement of education. The blind claim her, but the deaf can claim her, too, and modern education can claim her more than either--and all humanity claims her with the best claim of all. For she is the epitome of all that is best in humanity, all that is most spiritual; and all this through conscious aim and directed effort, through education in its best sense.
Give Me a Sign, Helen Keller!
by Peter Roop and Connie RoopIn this book, you will find out all about Helen Keller, before she made history.
Through the Rain and Rainbow
by Lyle M. CristRichard Kenny lost his sight at age seven. He spent his childhood adjusting to and overcoming blindness. He entered college but had to drop out in his second year when his hearing failed.
The next ten years contained motes of both great anguish and sweet victory as he adjusted to being totally deaf-blind. With perseverance, the support of family and friends, and the counsel of such leaders as Helen Keller and other workers for the deaf and blind, Kenny became the third deaf-blind person in history to earn a college degree. He married, became a father, traveled and wrote.
Of Such Small Differences
by Joanne GreenbergIn this poetic novel, 25-year-old John Moon, who is deaf-blind, has a job in a sheltered workshop and lives within a small community of friends who are deaf or deaf-blind. Life for John is transformed when he falls in love with Leda, a young actress working as a driver for the workshop. As their relationship develops John learns about his own capacity for joy and suffering, and struggles to find his place in the world of people who hear and se. The novel is written from John's point of view and attempts to convey his perceptions as a deaf-blind person.
Independent Living Without Sight and Hearing
by Richard KinneyThis is a wonderful resource for blind-deaf individuals and those who interact with them. It covers such topics as communication methods, independence at home, telephones, travel hints and much more.
Walking Free
by Rosezelle Boggs-Qualls and Darryl C. GreeneBiography of a deaf-blind woman who spent 18 years isolated in a mental hospital before gaining her freedom, earning a college degree and working as a social worker in northeast Ohio. The co-authors are a deaf social worker and blind pastor.
Guidelines
by Theresa B. SmithHow does deaf-blindness affect communication? How does one guide a person who is deaf and blind? How does all of this affect the role of the interpreter etc.?
Helen Keller
by Johanna HurwitzWhen a childhood illness leaves her blind and deaf, Helen Keller's life seems hopeless indeed. But her indomitable will and the help of a devoted teacher empower Helen to triumph over incredible adversity. This amazing true story is finally brought to the beginner reader level.
Helen Keller
by Carol GhiglieriHelen Keller was deaf and blind, but went on to learn and teach and advocate. Correlate with Guided Reading Levels J. For use with Grades K-2.
Bird in the Hand
by Paul HostovskyFrom the book:
Sighted Guide Technique at the
Fine Arts Work Center
In your hands the poems in their Braille versions grow longer, thicker, whiter.
They are giving themselves goose bumps, they are that good. Still they are only as good as themselves.
We are two
people wide
for the purposes of this exercise.
Remembering that is my technique, it's that
simple. Remembering it well is success.
Success is simply paying attention.
Like a poem with very long lines
we appear a little wider, move a little slower
than most of the community of haiku poets
leaping past us with a few right words.
A word about doors: they open
inward or outward, turn
clockwise or counterclockwise, depending
on something that you and I
will probably never grasp.
Doorknobs dance away
and the songs of the common house sparrow
who is everywhere, you say, play in the eaves
as we pass together through the door
to the world,
you holding my elbow,
your elbow and mine making two
triangles trawling the air
for the tunneling, darting, juking, ubiquitous brown birds.