Special Collections

Deaf Child Crossing

Megan is excited when Cindy moves into her neighborhood -- maybe she'll finally have a best friend. Sure enough, the two girls quickly become inseparable. Cindy even starts to learn sign language so they can communicate more easily.

But when they go away to summer camp together, problems arise. Cindy feels left out, because Megan is spending all of her time with Lizzie, another deaf girl; Megan resents that Cindy is always trying to help her, even when she doesn't need help. Before they can mend their differences, both girls have to learn what it means to be a friend.

A sensitive depiction of childhood friendship with its fragility, jealousies, and joys" - Booklist

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Blind Side

DEAD FROGS CAN'T JUMP On the eve of Calaveras County's annual frog-jumping contest, is the suspicious death of Buford, the county's prizewinning amphibian, sabotage or murder? Feisty local newspaper publisher Connor Westphal ponders the irony of this untimely tragedy-- made suddenly more alarming when poor Buford's handler, Dakota Webster, is found floating in Critter's Creek surrounded by dozens more dead frogs. Connor is more than curious when the frog of a rival competitor is discovered stuffed in the dead man's mouth, and worried when the prime suspect is Jeremiah "Miah" Mercer, one of her closest friends. Determined to clear Miah's name, Connor navigates a sordid mess of toxic waste, embezzlement, prescription drug scams and cold-blooded murder ... taking a dangerous leap of her own in a race to catch a killer.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Quiet Undertaking

Macavity Award-winning author Penny Warner knows there's no rest for the dead....

Life is never dull in the California Gold Country town of Flat Skunk. But deaf journalist Connor Westphal is shocked all the same when she learns that boxes of human ashes have been found stashed in a nearby self-storage facility. The space is leased to one Jasper Coyne, a bourbon-happy fisherman hired by the Memory Kingdom Memorial Park to scatter the ashes at sea.

Connor thinks the scandal will make great copy for her paper, the Eureka!--until Jasper is murdered and suspicion falls on Connor's own best friend, Memory Kingdom owner Del Rey Montez. Connor is sure Del Rey is innocent. To prove it, Connor must navigate mortician politics and skinhead teens to untangle the secrets of Del Rey's past. But when she gets too close to the truth, she makes an enemy who's determined to make sure the intrepid reporter bites the dust along with her biggest scoop of the year.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Carry Me Like Water

"Sentimental and ferocious, upsetting and tender, firmly magic-realist yet utterly modern. . . Sáenz is a writer with greatness in him." —San Diego Union TribuneWith Carry Me Like Water, Benjamin Alire Sáenz unfolds a beautiful story about hope and forgiveness, unexpected reunions, an expanded definition of family, and, ultimately, what happens when the disparate worlds of pain and privilege collide.Diego, a deaf-mute, is barely surviving on the border in El Paso, Texas. Diego's sister, Helen, who lives with her husband in the posh suburbs of San Francisco, long ago abandoned both her brother and her El Paso roots. Helen's best friend, Lizzie, a nurse in an AIDS ward, begins to uncover her own buried past after a mystical encounter with a patient.This immensely moving novel confronts divisions of race, gender, and class, fusing together the stories of people who come to recognize one another from former lives they didn't know existed— or that they tried to forget. 

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Crocodile Meatloaf

As she becomes friends with Rachel, a deaf girl who has joined her sixth-grade class, Alex begins to feel that God has given her a mission to protect Rachel from the boy who is tormenting her.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Enforcing Normalcy

This book tries to think through some of the complex issues raised by concepts such as the body, the normal, the abnormal, disability, the disabled, and people with disabilities. I wrote this book because I believe deeply that people with disabilities, Deaf people, and others who might not even consider themselves as having a disability have been relegated to the margins by the very people who have celebrated and championed the emergence of multiculturalism, class consciousness, feminism, and queer studies from the margins.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Our Stories

Short 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.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Cry of the Gull

A memoir by a deaf, French actress who starred in the French production of Children of a Lesser God.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life.

When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Of Sound Mind

Tired of interpreting for his deaf family and resentful of their reliance on him, high school senior Theo finds support and understanding from Ivy, a new student who also has a deaf parent.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

My Sister's Voice

Every love leaves an echo. . .

What do you do when you discover your whole life was a lie? In Mary Carter's unforgettable new novel, one woman is about to find out...

At twenty-eight, Lacey Gears is exactly where she wants to be. An up-and-coming, proudly Deaf artist in Philadelphia, she's in a relationship with a wonderful man and rarely thinks about her difficult childhood in a home for disabled orphans. That is, until Lacey receives a letter that begins, "You have a sister. A twin to be exact. . ." >P>Learning that her identical, hearing twin, Monica, experienced the normal childhood she was denied resurrects all of Lacey's grief, and she angrily sets out to find Monica and her biological parents. But the truth about Monica's life, their brief shared past, and the reason for the twins' separation is far from simple. And for every one of Lacey's questions that's answered, others are raised, more baffling and profound.Complex, moving, and beautifully told, My Sister's Voice is a novel about sisterhood, love of every shape, and the stories we cling to until real life comes crashing in. . .

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Spencer Tracy

His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called "The Gray Fox" by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the "The Pope."

Spencer Tracy's image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense of humor toward himself. Whether he was Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a pillar of strength.In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adam's Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.

Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges ("Definitive" --Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields ("By far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had. Or are likely to have" --Richard Schickel, The New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation.

Curtis writes of Tracy's distinguished career, his deep Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn. Drawing on Tracy's personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracy's daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend. We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee; given over to Dominican nuns ("They drill that religion in you"); his years struggling in regional shows and stock (Tracy had a photographic memory and an instinct for inhabiting a character from within); acting opposite his future wife, Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two children, their son, John, born deaf.

We see Tracy's success on Broadway, his turning out mostly forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles that had eluded him in the past--a streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kipling's classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became America's top male star.

We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the time the unhappy shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a comedy, made Woman of the Year. Its unlikely costar: Katharine Hepburn.We see Hepburn making Tracy her life's project--protecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.

And we see Tracy's wife, Louise, devoting herself to studying how deaf children could be taught to communicate orally with the hearing and speaking world.Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit the Wind--a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracy's final picture, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner . . . A rich, vibrant portrait--the most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actor's actor.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Typhon’s Children

To the new colonists, the teeming, ocean-dominated planet of Typhon seems a wondrous and exotic paradise--until the land erupts with incomprehensible violence, consuming the colony in a fiery hell. Their supplies lost, the survivors find themselves struggling against a world where death wears many guises. But the deadliest menace strikes from within--for every child born on Typhon suffers strange, degenerative mutations. Unless the situation can be reversed, the Typhon colony is doomed. Per Langstaff is a scientist obsessed with the life-and-death mystery, certain that the answer to the colony's survival lies with the virulent planet itself. His staunchest ally, Dilani, is a rebellious young girl born deaf to sound and convention, an orphan as unruly as the oceans themselves. Together these two outcasts, bound by a shared love of the depths, embark on an unforgettable journey that will take them to the utmost reaches of humanity . . . and beyond.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Silent Fury

A classic Lynette Eason story of faith, family and dangerTragedy strikes Palmetto Deaf School--twice. With one student murdered and another missing, it's up to homicide detective Catelyn Clark to find the killer--and probable kidnapper--"fast."

She'll even work with her ex-boyfriend, FBI agent Joseph Santino, to solve the case...while keeping her distance. Relationships between cops never work; her parents taught her that. They also taught her that the only one she can rely on is herself. But when the killer starts targeting Catelyn, it's only by opening her heart to faith--and love--that she can finally bring the silent fury to an end.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Maiden's Grave

Eight vulnerable girls and their helpless teachers are forced off a school bus and held hostage. The madman who has them at gunpoint has a simple plan: one hostage an hour will die unless the demands are met.

Called to the scene is Arthur Potter, the FBI's best hostage negotiator. He has a plan. But so does one of the hostages-a beautiful teacher who's willing to do anything to save the lives of her students. Now, the clock is ticking as a chilling game of cat and mouse begins.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Crying Hands

Exposes 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.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Other Victims

Personal narratives of Christians, gypsies, deaf people, homosexuals, and blacks who suffered at the hands of the Nazis before and during World War II, written for teenagers.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Silent Dances

Deaf since birth, Tesa is the perfect ambassador to the alien Grus, whose sonic cries can shatter human ears. But her mission is harder than it looks. The Grus are not alone on their world. They have deadly enemies, both natural and otherwise. And if Tesa is to save all life on the planet, she will have to make peace with not one alien species but two.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Moses Goes to a Concert

"Moses and his school friends are deaf, but like most children, they have a lot to say. They communicate in American Sign Language, using visual signs and facial expressions. This is called signing. And even though they can't hear, they can enjoy many activities through their other senses. Today, Moses and his classmates are going to a concert. Their teacher, Mr. Samuels, has two surprises in store for them, to make this particular concert a special event."

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Hurt Go Happy

Thirteen-year-old Joey Willis is used to being left out of conversations. Though she's been deaf since the age of six, Joey's mother has never allowed her to learn sign language. She strains to read the lips of those around her, but often fails. Everything changes when Joey meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimpanzee, Sukari. Her new friends use sign language to communicate, and Joey secretly begins to learn to sign. Spending time with Charlie and Sukari, Joey has never been happier. She even starts making friends at school for the first time. But as Joey's world blooms with possibilities, Charlie's and Sukari's choices begin to narrow; until Sukari's very survival is in doubt.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Echo

In book two of the Sensations series, Cassie Dixon's getaway to the mountains with her friends and their thirteen-year-old deaf son becomes a high-stakes search when the boy disappears. Danger stalks the slopes.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Service Dogs (Dog Heroes)

The tornado was coming, but Betty who is deaf couldn't hear it. Her dog Tykie, however, knew what was on the way. He touched Betty's leg and raced to the window. Betty followed. When she saw the funnel cloud, she grabbed Tykie and dashed into a closet. Seconds later, the tornado hit. It destroyed the front of Betty's house, but she and her dog were safe. Tykie had saved her life. Look inside to find out more about Tykie and the heroic deeds of other service dogs.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Talk Talk

Over the past twenty-five years, T.C. Boyle has earned wide acclaim and an enthusiastic following with such adventurous, inimitable novels as The Tortilla Curtain, Drop City, and The Road to Wellville. For his riveting eleventh novel, Boyle offers readers the closest thing to a thriller he has ever written, a tightly scripted page turner about the trials of Dana Halter, a thirty-three-year-old deaf woman whose identity has been stolen. Featuring a woman in the lead role (a Boyle first), Talk Talk is both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love, and identity from one of America's most versatile and entertaining novelists.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

No Excuses

The first deaf athlete to play offense in the NFL (and win a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks!) relates his inspirational story of hard work and determination in his own words. Great for readers of all ages.The inspirational memoir from the popular current Seattle Seahawks running back Derrick Coleman Jr., who, in just his second year in the NFL, won the 2014 Super Bowl with the Seahawks. Showcasing his unlikely and challenging journey to become the first deaf offensive NFL player, he talks about overcoming internal obstacles and external obstacles (bullies and naysayers) in the course of reaching your true potential.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deaf American Poetry

“The Deaf poet is no oxymoron,” declares editor John Lee Clark in his introduction to Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology. The 95 poems by 35 Deaf American poets in this volume more than confirm his point. From James Nack’s early metered narrative poem “The Minstrel Boy” to the free association of Kristi Merriweather’s contemporary “It Was His Movin’ Hands Be Tellin’ Me,” these Deaf poets display mastery of all forms prevalent during the past two centuries. Beyond that, E. Lynn Jacobowitz’s “In Memoriam: Stephen Michael Ryan” exemplifies a form unique to Deaf American poets, the transliteration of verse originally created in American Sign Language.

This anthology showcases for the first time the best works of Deaf poets throughout the nation’s history — John R. Burnet, Laura C. Redden, George M. Teegarden, Agatha Tiegel Hanson, Loy E. Golladay, Robert F. Panara, Mervin D. Garretson, Clayton Valli, Willy Conley, Raymond Luczak, Christopher Jon Heuer, Pamela Wright-Meinhardt, and many others. Each of their poems reflects the sensibilities of their times, and the progression of their work marks the changes that deaf Americans have witnessed through the years. In “The Mute’s Lament,” John Carlin mourns the wonderful things that he cannot hear, and looks forward to heaven where “replete with purest joys/My ears shall be unsealed, and I shall hear.” In sharp contrast, Mary Toles Peet, who benefitted from being taught by Deaf teachers, wrote “Thoughts on Music” with an entirely different attitude. She concludes her account of the purported beauty of music with the realization that “the music of my inward ear/Brings joy far more intense.”

Clark tracks these subtle shifts in awareness through telling, brief biographies of each poet. By doing so, he reveals in Deaf American Poetry how “the work of Deaf poets serves as a prism through which Deaf people can know themselves better and through which the rest of the world can see life in a new light.”

Date Added: 01/22/2019