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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Miss Spitfire
by Sarah MillerAnnie Sullivan was little more than a half-blind orphan with a fiery tongue when she arrived at Ivy Green in 1887. Desperate for work, she’d taken on a seemingly impossible job—teaching a child who was deaf, blind, and as ferocious as any wild animal. But if anyone was a match for Helen Keller, it was the girl who’d been nicknamed Miss Spitfire. In her efforts to reach Helen’s mind, Annie lost teeth to the girl’s raging blows, but she never lost faith in her ability to triumph. Told in first person, Annie Sullivan’s past, her brazen determination, and her connection to the girl who would call her Teacher are vividly depicted in this powerful novel.
Independence without Sight or Sound
by Dona SauerburgerSuggestions for working with deaf-blind adults by an expert on orientation and mobility.
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.
Hand in Hand
by Elga Joffee and Jeanne Glidden Prickett and Kathleen Mary Huebner and Therese Rafalowski WelchAn in-service training guide that presents structured information and guidelines for using the Hand In Hand materials with various audiences. Focusing on the needs of the trainer, this manual provides sample blueprints for individual workshops, as well as an overview of training, assessment, and evaluation. Also includes sample forms for conducting a pre-training needs assessment and post training evaluation.
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.?
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.
Hand in Hand
by Elga Joffee and Jeanne Glidden Prickett and Therese Rafalowski Welch and Kathleen Mary HuebnerThis series was designed to develop resources for educators of children who are visually impaired, hearing impaired, and severely disabled. The Hand In Hand materials emphasize the communication and mobility skills crucial to independence, and provide important information to help service providers do their jobs effectively. Containing contributions from more than 30 nationally recognized experts in the field of deaf-blindness, this groundbreaking information consists of four components that can be used separately or together. A two-volume, self-study text that explains how deaf-blind students learn, focusing on essential communication and mobility skills. Designed to provide comprehensive information in an easy-to-read way, this invaluable resource includes identified key concepts, self-study questions and answers, and references. The user-friendly format includes concise "Help at a Glance" and "From Theory to Practice" sections throughout. Sidebars, figures, tables, graphs, and photos offer additional perspectives and information.
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.
Suddenly Slow
by John Lee ClarkThis collection of poems opens with a stumble: 'It was not there / until I tripped over it.' But this is fitting because John Lee Clark bounces back, as he always does, artfully and unexpectedly, to make an astonishing statement. Snowballs, his long white cane, pears, Braille, bedsheets, sign language, and even morning light come alive in this deaf-blind poet's hands like they have never before. Thanks to his sparkling language, his intellectual playfulness, and his capacity for wonder, together with his unique perceptions of life, his poems add a much-needed new wrinkle to the lexicon of imagination. What he reflects on, others cannot see in the same way again, and that includes the poet himself: We understand that he is like the rest of humankind in all the most important ways.
Usher's Syndrome
by Earlene Duncan and Hugh T. Prickett and Dan Finkelstein and Mccay Vernon and Toni HollingsworthDescribes what Usher's syndrome is, how it impacts a person's life, and ways to cope with this dual disability.
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.
Remarkable Conversations
by Barbara Miles and Marianne Riggio and Carol Crook and Karen Olson and Cristina CastroThis book is a practical guide for teachers, family members and others who play a critical, direct role in the lives of children who are deafblind. The beginning chapters lay the foundation for the development of instructional programs for children who are congenitally deafblind or who have become deafblind early in life. Later chapters look more specifically and sequentially at the nuts and bolts of providing meaningful experiences for these learners. The final chapters address some of the underlying issues that are fundamental to providing personalized educational services for infants, children and young adults who are deafblind.
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.
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.
Charmed Destinies
by Mercedes Lackey and Rachel Lee and Catherine AsaroThree classic stories of timeless love and tantalizing fantasy. . .
Counting Crows by New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey In Lady Gwynnhwyfar's dark, lonely court, her only ally was noble Sir Atremus, a warrior willing to fight for her honor. But would her powerful spell capture his heart-- or tumble the kingdom into chaos?
Drusilla's Dream by USA TODAY bestselling author Rachel Lee Every night Drusilla Morgan dreamed of courageous and handsome Miles Kennedy. Their quest: to battle evil and find true love. Yet when the sun rose, would Drusilla's fantasy man become a reality?
Moonglow by Nebula Award-winning author Catherine Asaro In a world where kings married for magic, Iris Larkspur was required to wed the prince--despite the spell that kept him deaf, mute and blind. Healing her bridegroom would take a power greater than any she'd ever known--one only two bonded hearts could provide!
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.
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 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?
The Persistence of Vision
by John Varley
The Persistence of Vision
With an Introduction by Algis Budrys
These nine stories show the best work of the decade's most exciting new writer of science fiction. His Quantum novel The Ophiuchi Hotline established the "Eight Worlds" setting of many of these tales--a bizarre future in which genetic engineering, sex changes, and arcane pleasures and trades are commonplace.
The title story, nominated this year for a Nebula award by the Science Fiction Writers of America, is a haunting treatment of communication beyond our normal senses, an unusually enriching and absorbing work.
The last tale in the volume, the one the book is named after, is particularly memorable. It features a man who becomes part of a colony of deaf-mute-blind people, who have developed a highly spiritual means of communicating.
Take, for instance, the plight of the hero of "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank." All he wanted was a relaxed weekend as a lion; but a meddlesome kid switched a circuit, and his psyche was trapped inside a computer. . . . And what creative spirit wouldn't envy the artist in "The Phantom of Kansas" who composes storms?
Most of us feel pretty negatively about skyjackers, but "Air Raid" shows an unexpected rationale for it; "Retrograde Summer," "The Black Hole Passes," and "In the Bowl" are (among other strange things) unique and confusing love stories; "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" is a new and enthralling twist on the planetary castaways theme; and "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" shows what a Tin Pan Alley of the centuries to come might be like.
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.
In Shadows
by Chandler McgrewIn a small Maine valley, thirteen-year-old Pierce Morin, born blind and deaf, possesses a terrifying gift: he can hear evil whispering-and knows an elusive, deadly force is stalking the people he loves. . . .
Detective Jake Crowley has run far away from his Maine hometown. But a bizarre shootout in Galveston, Texas, finally draws him home: to a woman he can barely face, to the unsolved mystery of his mother's murder, to a family curse and a valley that's fallen under the spell of a serial killer. . . .
For Jake, redemption lies in unlocking Pierce's gifts and hoping the boy can show him the way to stop the terrors that plague him. But while young Pierce can begin the search, only Jake can finish it-by looking evil in the eye and claiming both their birthrights. . . .
Beauty is a Verb
by Michael Northen and Sheila Black and Jennifer BartlettChosen by the American Library Association as a 2012 Notable Book in Poetry.
Beauty is a Verb is a ground-breaking anthology of disability poetry, essays on disability, and writings on the poetics of both. Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace.
Sheila Black is a poet and children's book writer. In 2012, Poet Laureate Philip Levine chose her as a recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship.
Disability activist Jennifer Bartlett is a poet and critic with roots in the Language school.
Michael Northen is a poet and the editor of Wordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.
Blind Rage
by Georgina KleegeAs a young blind girl, Georgina Kleege repeatedly heard the refrain, “Why can’t you be more like Helen Keller?” Kleege’s resentment culminates in her book Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller, an ingenious examination of the life of this renowned international figure using 21st-century sensibilities.
Kleege’s absorption with Keller originated as an angry response to the ideal of a secular saint, which no real blind or deaf person could ever emulate. However, her investigation into the genuine person revealed that a much more complex set of characters and circumstances shaped Keller’s life.
Blind Rage employs an adroit form of creative nonfiction to review the critical junctures in Keller’s life. The simple facts about Helen Keller are well-known: how Anne Sullivan taught her deaf-blind pupil to communicate and learn; her impressive career as a Radcliffe graduate and author; her countless public appearances in various venues, from cinema to vaudeville, to campaigns for the American Foundation for the Blind. But Kleege delves below the surface to question the perfection of this image.
Through the device of her letters, she challenges Keller to reveal her actual emotions, the real nature of her long relationship with Sullivan, with Sullivan’s husband, and her brief engagement to Peter Fagan.
Kleege’s imaginative dramatization, distinguished by her depiction of Keller’s command of abstract sensations, gradually shifts in perspective from anger to admiration.
Blind Rage criticizes the Helen Keller myth for prolonging an unrealistic model for blind people, yet it appreciates the individual who found a practical way to live despite the restrictions of her myth.
Crying Hands
by Horst Biesold and Williams SayersExposes the active collusion with the Nazis of various physicians, administrators, and teachers of the deaf who embraced the Third Reich's eugenics policies. Documents the collusion of deaf leaders, who tried to incorporate all independent deaf groups into one Nazi organization while expelling deaf Jews, and traces resistance against the Third Reich by deaf Germans. Includes personal accounts of some of the 1,215 deaf victims of enforced sterilization, demonstrating the lasting physical and emotional pain of Nazi violations. The author is a retired professor and teacher of deaf students.