Special Collections

Silent Songs

The men and women of StarBridge found intelligent life -- and new friends -- across the galaxy... In the skies of Trinity, the birdlike Grus welcomed the deaf human ambassador, Tesa. In the seas of Trinity, the aquatic Singers communicated with the young telepath, Jib. But on the surface of Trinity, a different kind of life form has landed. They are amphibious beings from a distant world. And they are definitely -not- friendly...

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Jessi's Secret Language

The hit series is back, to charm and inspire another generation of baby-sittersJessi knows a secret language! She learned it from Matt Braddock, the BSC's newest charge. Matt's been deaf since birth, and he uses sign language to speak. Since Jessi is Matt's baby-sitter, she's been using sign language, too.Soon all the kids in Stoneybrook want to learn to sign . . . which keeps the Baby-sitters busy. Jessi's the busiest of all: she working on another secret just for Matt. Will she be able to keep the secret and pull off her special event?The best friends you'll ever have--with classic BSC covers and a letter from Ann M. Martin!

Date Added: 03/08/2018

When the Mind Hears

Impassioned, polemical, at times even virulent, the author shows immense scholarship, powers of historical reconstruction, and deep empathy for the world of the deaf. The unimaginable world of those who have been born deaf is made almost imaginable by Lane's account of their history. The author's passion and directness are delivered through the mouth of one of his subjects, himself deaf, who became an intellectual leader of the deaf community in France and then in America. The story he tells is extraordinary and is perhaps the best illustration of what it means to see the condition and the patient as a whole.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Child of Silence

1st in mystery series. Bo Bradley, child abuse investigator with manic-depression rescues deaf child. Light, fast read, but excellent depiction of what's now called bi-polar disorder.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

I'll Scream Later

Critically acclaimed and award-winning actress Marlee Matlin reveals the illuminating, moving, and often surprising story of how she defied all expectations to become one of the most prolific and beloved actresses of our time. Marlee Matlin entered our lives as the deaf pupil turned custodian audiences fell in love with in Children of a Lesser God, a role for which she became the youngest woman ever to win a Best Actress Oscar. More than twenty years after her stunning big screen debut, the Golden Globe- and Emmy-nominated actress is an inspirational force of nature -- a mother, an activist, and a role model for millions of deaf and hard-of-hearing people around the world. In I'll Scream Later, Marlee takes readers on the frank and touching journey of her life, from the frightening loss of her hearing at eighteen months old to the highs and lows of Hollywood, her battles with addiction, and the unexpected challenges of being thrust into the spotlight as an emissary for the deaf community. She speaks candidly for the first time about the troubles of her youth, the passionate and tumultuous two-year relationship with Oscar winner William Hurt that dovetailed with a stint in rehab, and her subsequent romances with heartthrobs like Rob Lowe, Richard Dean Anderson, and David E. Kelley. Though she became famous at the age of twenty-one, Marlee struggled all her life to connect with people, fighting against anyone who tried to hold her back. Her own mother often hid behind their communication barrier, and Marlee turned to drugs before she even started high school. However, she found in acting -- with the encouragement of her mentor, Henry Winkler -- a discipline, a drive, and a talent for understanding the human condition that belied her age and her inability to hear. By the time Hollywood embraced her, she had almost no formal training, a fact that caused many other deaf actors to give her the cold shoulder, even as she was looked upon as a spokesperson for their community. She has played memorable roles on wildly popular television shows such as Seinfeld, The West Wing, and The L Word, danced a show-stopping cha-cha-cha on Dancing with the Stars, and now, with uncompromising honesty and humor, Marlee shares the story of her life -- an enduring tale that is an unforgettable lesson in following your dreams.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

For Hearing People Only

A question and answer book to those questions that the general public wants to know about Deafness, the Deaf culture, and what it is like to be Deaf in America.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Mean Little Deaf Queer

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Wall of Light

"I am Sonya Vronsky, professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, and this is the story of a day in late August. On this remarkable day I kissed a student, pursued a lover, found my father, and left my brother." So begins A Wall of Light, a novel which chronicles a single day in the life of Sonya, a thirty-two-year-old deaf woman about to break out of her predictable routine.

Sonya lives in Tel Aviv with her protective half-brother, Kostya; their household has dwindled from five to two. Anna, their mother, is now in a nursing home and Noah, Kostya's son, is living in Berlin. Kostya, wracked with guilt for the tragedies that have befallen Sonya, also grapples with the memory of his wife, Iris, a lawyer murdered in the course of a dangerous investigation seventeen years earlier.As we move through Sonya's day, Noah and Anna narrate their stories as well. Noah's journal entries cover the years 1980-1993, and Anna's letters to Andrei, her married lover in Russia, are written in 1957, after Anna has emigrated to Israel to build a new life for herself and her son, Kostya.

While Sonya's story moves rapidly through the events of a single day, Noah and Anna's voices take the reader back in time, filling in the circumstances that have led Sonya to this pivotal moment. We learn that Sonya has already endured two catastrophes. At age twelve, a medical mishap leaves her deaf, and at eighteen, while studying at university in Beersheba, Sonya is assaulted by two hoodlums. Throughout the novel, Sonya's experiences, instigated by both human error and human evil, are echoed by the larger, political violence that haunts modern Israel.

While Noah's and Anna's voices shed light on Sonya's journey, they also provide insights into the political and cultural fabric of Israel from the mid 1950s to the present. Noah's journal entries, starting with his tenth birthday and ending shortly after his army service, map his coming of age. We see him wrestling with his sexual identity and first sexual encounters, the fallout from his mother's leftist politics, and his own conscription to the army. Anna's secret letters to Andrei offer an outsider's perspective on the new Israeli state.

The remarkable events of Sonya's day are set in motion when her brother gives her an antihistamine. Overcome with sleepiness, she dismisses her morning class early, asking only one student, Matar, to stay behind. She wants to understand what lies behind his unusual expression. He answers that he has been involved in war crimes, and surprises Sonya by kissing her. Sonya feels that she has been roused from a long slumber and as the novel progresses we see the ways in which her awakened desire shapes her choices. She decides to take a taxi home from the university and impulsively invites the taxi driver inside and seduces him. He complies, but when she tells him she's deaf, he flees in confusion. Sonya is convinced that she has fallen in love with him, and decides to pursue him. She solicits her brother's help and sets out to find her lover.

Sonya's search gains in intensity and purpose as she travels to East Jerusalem. There she encounters the walls that prevent Palestinians from moving freely through the West Bank. After an Alice in Wonderland-like journey past numerous obstacles, Sonya finally makes it to her lover's house. This second encounter leads Sonya to a central revelation: the identity of her father.As this day of awakened desire and dispelled secrets closes, Sonya is able to step out from under the protective wing of her brother into a life that reflects both the ambiguity and uncertainty of contemporary Israel and her own personal possibilities.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals

Humans' development of literacy has been a recent focus of intense research from the reading, cognitive, and neuroscience fields. But for individuals who are deaf--who rely greatly on their visual skills for language and learning--the findings don't necessarily apply, leaving theoretical and practical gaps in approaches to their education.

Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals: Neurocognitive Measurement and Predictors narrows these gaps by introducing the VL2 Toolkit, a comprehensive test battery for assessing the academic skills and cognitive functioning of deaf persons who use sign language. Skills measured include executive functioning, memory, reading, visuospatial ability, writing fluency, math, and expressive and receptive language. Comprehensive data are provided for each, with discussion of validity and reliability issues as well as ethical and legal questions involved in the study. And background chapters explain how the Toolkit was compiled, describing the procedures of the study, its rationale, and salient characteristics of its participants. This notable book:
Describes each Toolkit instrument and the psychometric properties it measures.
Presents detailed findings on test measures and relationships between skills.
Discusses issues and challenges relating to visual representations of English, including fingerspelling and lipreading.
Features a factor analysis of the Toolkit measures to identify underlying cognitive structures in deaf learners.
Reviews trends in American Sign Language assessment.
Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals is an essential reference for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and other professionals working in the field of deafness and deaf education across in such areas as clinical child and school psychology, audiology, and linguistics.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Burn Down the Ground

In this powerful, affecting, and unflinching memoir, a daughter looks back on her unconventional childhood with deaf parents in rural Texas while trying to reconcile it to her present life--one in which her father is serving a twenty-year sentence in a maximum-security prison.

As a child, Kambri Crews wished that she'd been born deaf so that she, too, could fully belong to the tight-knit Deaf community that embraced her parents. Her beautiful mother was a saint who would swiftly correct anyone's notion that deaf equaled dumb. Her handsome father, on the other hand, was more likely to be found hanging out with the sinners. Strong, gregarious, and hardworking, he managed to turn a wild plot of land into a family homestead complete with running water and electricity. To Kambri, he was Daniel Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley all rolled into one. But if Kambri's dad was Superman, then the hearing world was his kryptonite. The isolation that accompanied his deafness unlocked a fierce temper--a rage that a teenage Kambri witnessed when he attacked her mother, and that culminated fourteen years later in his conviction for another violent crime.

With a smart mix of brutal honesty and blunt humor, Kambri Crews explores her complicated bond with her father--which begins with adoration, moves to fear, and finally arrives at understanding--as she tries to forge a new connection between them while he lives behind bars. Burn Down the Ground is a brilliant portrait of living in two worlds--one hearing, the other deaf; one under the laid-back Texas sun, the other within the energetic pulse of New York City; one mired in violence, the other rife with possibility--and heralds the arrival of a captivating new voice.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Dovey Coe

There have been Coes living in the mountains of Indian Creek, North Carolina, going on forever, and everyone in town is amazed that twelve-year-old Dovey might ur and do such a terrible thing. Even if the girl does have the tendency to shoot her mouth off, she's had good reason since she's always had to stick up for her brother, Amos, who may be older and bigger, but folks treat like he's slow on account of his being deaf. Her sister, Caroline, might shake her head over Dovey's high spirits, but if Caroline hadn't been letting the likes of Parnell Caraway hang around her all summer, Dovey wouldn't be in this mess. Dovey's not one to sit back when troubles are brewing, but now with this murder charge, for once she might just have to keep quiet and let the slick city lawyer take care of things, or will she?

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Hue & Cry

Jared Austin, staunch member of the mutual protection society that defends his 1830s New Hampshire community against thieves, tries to temper justice with mercy when his deaf daughter Melody befriends a young Irish immigrant who has stolen a horse.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deaf Like Me

Deaf Like Me is the moving account of parents coming to terms with their baby girl's profound deafness. The love, hope, and anxieties of all hearing parents of deaf children are expressed here with power and simplicity.

In the epilogue, Lynn Spradley as a teenager reflects upon being deaf, her education, her struggle to communicate, and the discovery that she was the focus of her father's and uncle's book. At once moving and inspiring, Deaf Like Me is must reading for every parent, relative, and friend of deaf children everywhere.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

T4

It is 1939. Paula Becker, thirteen years old and deaf, lives with her family in a rural German town. As rumors swirl of disabled children quietly disappearing, a priest comes to her family’s door with an offer to shield Paula from an uncertain fate. When the sanctuary he offers is fleeting, Paula needs to call upon all her strength to stay one step ahead of the Nazis.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Hark!

Ed McBain concocts a brilliant and intricate thriller about a master criminal who haunts the city with cryptic passages from Shakespeare, directing the detectives of the 87th Precinct to a future crime -- if only they can figure out what he means. The 87th Precinct gets a visit from one of the city's most accomplished criminals -- a thief known as the Deaf Man. Because he might be deaf. Or he might not. So little is known about the man who is harassing Detective Steve Carella with puzzling messages that it is hard to tell. But as soon as a pattern emerges, the detectives of the 87th are forced to hit the books and brush up on their Shakespeare -- because each new clue contains a line from one of his works. Unless they can crack the complicated riddles and beat the Deaf Man at his own cat-and-mouse game, someone is going to end up hurt, or something will be stolen -- or both. It's always so hard to tell with the Deaf Man. Ed McBain brings his most intelligent and devious criminal back to the 87th Precinct with a richly plotted and literary crime.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Legion

A young boy, a deaf-mute, is found horribly murdered. The detective assigned to the case sees it as part of a larger and more baffling mystery...

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deaf Again

Drolsbaugh was born to deaf parents, yet had normal hearing that became a progressive hearing loss. Follow his trip through hearing, hard of hearing, and deaf identity. Many provocative ideas and facts are brought forward for discussion.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Train Go Sorry

This portrait of New York's Lexington School for the Deaf is not just a work of journalism. It is also a memoir, since Leah Hager Cohen grew up on the school's campus and her father is its superintendent. As a hearing person raised among the deaf, Cohen appreciates both the intimate textures of that silent world and the gulf that separates it from our own.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Place for Grace

Grace is a little dog with big dreams. She longs to be a seeing-eye dog, but is disappointed when she finds that she is too small for guide dog school. Grace isn't discouraged for long, though. She's discovered by Charlie, a deaf man who sees her perform a remarkable rescue and who knows a way she can use her eagerness and courage to help other people.

Charlie takes Grace to a hearing dog program, where she learns the skills dogs need to assist the hearing impaired throughout the day. School is difficult for Grace, but thanks to the flexibility of Mrs. Lombardi, the program director, and Charlie's encouragement, Grace finally succeeds in her own inimitable way.

A Place for Grace introduces children to the challenges of the hearing impaired and gives them the opportunity to see how people communicate through American Sign Language. Charlie uses some creative problem-solving to help Grace complete the hearing dog program; her struggles, hard work, and ultimate triumph make Grace an inspiring model for children facing obstacles in school and family life.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Understanding Deaf Culture

This book presents a 'Traveller's Guide' to Deaf Culture, starting from the premise that Deaf cultures have an important contribution to make to other academic disciplines, and human lives in general. Within and outside Deaf communities, there is a need for an account of the new concept of Deaf culture, which enables readers to assess its place alongside work on other minority cultures and multilingual discourses. The book aims to assess the concepts of culture, on their own terms and in their many guises and to apply these to Deaf communities. The author illustrates the pitfalls which have been created for those communities by the medical concept of 'deafness' and contrasts this with his new concept of "Deafhood", a process by which every Deaf child, family and adult implicitly explains their existence in the world to themselves and each other.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sign of Foul Play

Last night's earthquake has the California Gold Country town of Flat Skunk buzzing; and over her morning mocha, deaf newswoman Connor Westphal is shaping it into a lead story for her local paper, the Eureka! Then her TTY phone brings more sensational news: a twisted corpse has been found on a construction site owned by her rival publisher, Harlan Truax. What was the dead soil engineer doing there at midnight, and was it the quake that toppled him four stories to his death? An act of God--or human malevolence?Connor is soon back in the sleuth business, uncovering Flat Skunk's darkest secrets: from toxic dirt to tainted relationships. But someone's out to stop her, and they're saying it with flowers, verses, menacing e-mail--and a series of murders that could knock the numbers off the Richter scale and silence one lip-reading reporter forever.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Earth and Ashes

"You know, father, sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes, or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword, or it can become a time bomb that, one day, will explode and destroy you"

Earth and Ashes is the spare, powerful story of an Afghan man, Dastaguir, trying desperately to reach his son Murad, who has left his village to earn a living working at a mine. In the meantime the village has been bombed by the Russian army, and Dastaguir, with his newly-deaf grandson Yassin in tow, must reach Murad to tell him of the carnage. The old man is beset on all sides by sorrow, that of his grandson, who cannot understand, that of his son, who does not yet know, and his own, made even crueler by the message he must deliver.

Atiq Rahimi, whose reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with this, his first novel, has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into a short tale of three very different generations. But he has also created a universal story about fathers and sons, and the terrible strain inflicted on those bonds of family during the unpredictable carnage of war.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything

When Ruby's cousin Flying Duck emigrates from China to live with her, Ruby decides the best thing about Flying Duck is that she is a great new friend. BUT the worst thing about Flying Duck is that now, no one speaks English at home. Plus, there's strange food on the table every night and only chopsticks to eat it with. And Flying Duck is deaf, and Ruby doesn't know any Chinese Sign Language. As if that weren't enough, this summer proves to be even more perilous as Ruby faces the dangers of swimming lessons, the joys of summer school, the difficulty of staying with a twelve-step program, the miracle needed to keep a beautiful stray dog that wanders into her life, and much more. Is it all too much for anyone -- even the Empress of Everything -- to handle?

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Place of Their Own

The book is an attempt to provide a coherent look at important aspects of the process whereby deaf Americans became the American deaf community.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deafening

This novel interweaves the lives of its two main characters - Grania, deaf since age five; and her husband Jim, who serves as a medic on the battlefields of World War I. The story begins with Grania's childhood in a small Canadian town, and her years at a residential school for the deaf. Her relationships within her family are portrayed with insight and depth. Jim leaves for Europe two weeks after his marriage to Grania, and much of the book involves his horrifying experience of the war. The author based Grania's character on her own grandmother, who was deaf, and has done extensive research on both deaf history and the social history of the World War I era. This is an absorbing novel and gives a refreshingly rounded depiction of a woman with a disability.

Date Added: 03/08/2018