Special Collections

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

Longshot

Lance Allred was probably the last person you'd expect to make it in professional sports. Not only did he grow up on a polygamist commune in Montana, he struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. If those hurdles to the NBA don't seem large enough, Lance is also deaf.

Self-deprecating, witty, and wholly original, Longshot is the unlikely story of an unlikely athlete, who despite these factors and a lot of setbacks along the way, finally realized his dream of playing in the NBA, becoming the first legally deaf player in the league.

Lance refused to let others' expectations hinder his dreams, and his refreshing sense of humor about his disability allowed him to face these setbacks without giving up. From his childhood on the commune where he was "Mormon royalty" (his grandfather was prophet Rulon Allred of the fundamentalist sect) to his first time picking up a basketball (eighth grade), to his clumsy efforts to build his skills while growing into his 6' 11" frame, Longshot is a riveting account of a young man finding his purpose and letting the love of the game drive him toward his ultimate goal.

Going inside the competitive world of collegiate basketball and the strange experience of playing professionally in Europe, with paychecks that never arrive and a knee injury Lance's team didn't want to cover, Longshot recounts the moment when Lance hit rock bottom. When he came back to the United States for surgery, Lance was prepared to let go of his basketball dreams and become a high school history teacher like his dad.

But luckily he had an agent who didn't want to see Lance's dream die, and who found him a deal with the Idaho Stampede, an NBA Development League team in Boise. Although it was paltry pay, it was the last resort. And Lance slowly began to be noticed.

Revealing the resilient heart of a young man who truly believes that it's not about failure or success but about being willing to try, Longshot is a Rudy story for a new generation, a tale of inspiration, dedication, and the power of a dream.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Girl in the Shadows

Some secrets survive the light of day, others should stay lost in darkness forever—the family saga that began with April Shadows continues!April Taylor wasn't a little girl anymore—but who was she really? The home she shared with her parents and her older sister, Brenda, may have been filled with turmoil, but it was the only home she knew. Now, with nowhere to go in the wake of losing her mother and father, April had to grow up fast as she embarked on an odyssey of heartbreak and betrayal. It was mere chance that led her to the secluded home of a kindly elderly woman and her deaf teenaged granddaughter, Echo. There, April found a shelter from her mixed-up life, and from the confusion that severed her relationship with Brenda, after an encounter with Brenda's girlfriend, Celia. But when a dangerous couple arrives with greedy intentions, April discovers they will take advantage of her very special friendship with Echo to get what they want. Now, April's survival depends on being true to the one person she's never fully accepted: herself.

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

Mary Mehan Awake

In a compelling sequel to the highly praised "The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan", Mairhe, who has now taken the name Mary, leaves Washington, D.C., to take a position as a domestic servant in upstate New York. The Civil War has ended. Mary's brother, Mike, has been killed at Gettysburg, her father has returned home to Ireland, and, after two years of nursing wounded and dying soldiers in the capital's hospitals, Mary is emotionally exhausted and physically defeated. But in her new life on the shores of Lake Ontario, Mary finds renewal and her senses gradually re-awaken. Each of the novel's five sections focuses on a different sense -- as Mary learns to assist explorer and naturalist Jasper Dorsett in photographing birds, she begins to see things with a photographer's eye; as she falls in love with Dorsett's stable hand, a veteran left deaf by the war, she learns to describe the sounds she hears for him; and so forth, through the renewal of smell, taste, and touch. This challenging and poetic young adult novel concludes Mary's story with a mixture of sparkling language, thematic richness, and emotional depth.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Journey into the Deaf-world

An introduction to the lives, language, and culture of the Deaf World, the signing community in the US. Conversations with deaf people reveal concepts central to the Deaf World, while overviews of the history, culture, and political agenda of the Deaf World provide details on the education of deaf children, deaf culture worldwide, and the ways in which technology helps and hinders deaf people. For students in hearing disorders, deaf studies, audiology, and speech pathology, and for general readers.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Cloak of Dreams

Intriguing fairy tales by the librettist of Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s CastleA man is changed into a flea and must bring his future parents together in order to become human again. A woman convinces a river god to cure her sick son, but the remedy has mixed consequences. A young man must choose whether to be close to his wife's soul or body. And two deaf mutes transcend their physical existence in the garden of dreams. Strange and fantastical, these fairy tales of Béla Balázs (1884-1949), Hungarian writer, film critic, and famous librettist of Bluebeard's Castle, reflect his profound interest in friendship, alienation, and Taoist philosophy. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, one of the world's leading authorities on fairy tales, The Cloak of Dreams brings together sixteen of Balázs's unique and haunting stories.Written in 1921, these fairy tales were originally published with twenty images drawn in the Chinese style by painter Mariette Lydis, and this new edition includes a selection of Lydis's brilliant illustrations. Together, the tales and pictures accentuate the motifs and themes that run throughout Balázs's work: wandering protagonists, mysterious woods and mountains, solitude, and magical transformation. His fairy tales express our deepest desires and the hope that, even in the midst of tragedy, we can transcend our difficulties and forge our own destinies.Unusual, wondrous fairy tales that examine the world's cruelties and twists of fate, The Cloak of Dreams will entertain, startle, and intrigue.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Silent Melody

From the legendary New York Times bestselling author of Heartless comes an exquisite Georgian romance of a transcendent love, "without doubt, one of the most romantic novels ever written."*Lady Emily Marlowe is beautiful, independent, and unspoiled. Deaf since childhood, she appreciates her family's efforts to nurture her spirit, but the man they've chosen for her betrothal can never fulfill her. The only one Emily has ever desired is bold and reckless Lord Ashley Kendrick. Her childhood amour inspired her fantasies and vowed never to forget her--even as he left her for a new life in India and a new love.Seven years and countless dreams later, Ashley has returned a desolate widower to Bowden Abbey and, true to his promise, to Emily. Yet his heedless proposal of marriage has left her unexpectedly conflicted. Though the heat of passion still burns, Emily fears that it's only a sense of duty--not love--that has brought him to bended knee. And what is she to make of those seven lost years clouded in secrets too dark for Ashley to share?For Emily, her greatest and only love now becomes one worth fighting for, one of startling revelations and second chances, and one, like a melody, too beautiful for words....

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language

This volume provides a complete description of ASL variation. People from varying regions and backgrounds have different ways of saying the same thing. For example, in English some people say "test," while others say "tes'," dropping the final "t. " Noted scholars Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Clayton Valli led a team of exceptional researchers in applying techniques for analyzing spoken language variation to ASL. Their observations at the phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic levels demonstrate that ASL variation correlates with many of the same driving social factors of spoken languages, including age, socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic background, region, and sexual orientation. Internal constraints that mandate variant choices for spoken languages have been compared to ASL as well, with intriguing results.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

Being a hefty, deaf newcomer almost makes Will Halpin the least popular guy at Coaler High. But when he befriends the only guy less popular than him, the dork-namic duo has the smarts and guts to figure out who knocked off the star quarterback. Will can't hear what's going on, but he's a great observer. So, who did it? And why does that guy talk to his fingers? And will the beautiful girl ever notice him? (Okay, so Will's interested in more than just murder . . . )

Those who prefer their heroes to be not-so-usual and with a side of wiseguy will gobble up this witty, geeks-rule debut.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deaf And Hearing Siblings In Conversation

This is the first book to consider both deaf and hearing perspectives on the dynamics of adult sibling relationships. Deaf and hearing authors Berkowitz and Jonas conducted interviews with 22 adult siblings, using ASL and spoken English, to access their intimate thoughts. A major feature of the book is its analysis of how isolation impacts deaf-hearing sibling relationships. The book documents the 150 year history of societal attitudes embedded in sibling bonds and identifies how the siblings' lives were affected by the communication choices their parents made. The authors weave information throughout the text to reveal attitudes toward American Sign Language and the various roles deaf and hearing siblings take on as monitors, facilitators, signing-siblings and sibling-interpreters, all of which impact lifelong bonds. Included: questions for guided discussion, extensive bibliography, and other features.

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

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

Alandra's Lilacs

When, in 1968, 19-year-old Tressa Bowers took her baby daughter to an expert on deaf children, he pronounced that Alandra was "stone deaf," she most likely would never be able to talk, and she probably would not get much of an education because of her communication limitations. Tressa refused to accept this stark assessment of Alandra's prospects. Instead, she began the arduous process of starting her daughter's education. Economic need forced Tressa to move several times, and as a result, she and Alandra experienced a variety of learning environments: a pure oralist approach, which discouraged signing; Total Communication, in which the teachers spoke and signed simultaneously; a residential school for deaf children, where Signed English was employed; and a mainstream public school that relied upon interpreters. Changes at home added more demands, from Tressa's divorce to her remarriage, her long work hours, and the ongoing challenge of complete communication within their family. Through it all, Tressa and Alandra never lost sight of their love for each other, and their affection rippled through the entire family. Today, Tressa can triumphantly point to her confident, educated daughter and also speak with pride of her wonderful relationship with her deaf grandchildren. Alandra's Lilacs is a marvelous story about the resiliency and achievements of determined, loving people no matter what their circumstances might be.

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

Cosmic Healing

With the onset of sudden profound deafness at the age of 29, Barbara Brodsky set out on a quest to understand the nature of illness and healing, examining the interrelationship of mind and body and our capacity to transcend limitation. Asking the questions What is healing? Who and what heals? Why do some people heal while others do not? she discusses karma and free will, our habit of identifying with a limited sense of self, and our potential for greater healing.

A longtime Buddhist practitioner who began meditation in the '60s, Brodsky discovered a new path on her healing journey when she began channeling the spirit Aaron in 1989. Based on three decades of meticulously kept journals, Cosmic Healing weaves together Brodsky's Buddhist teachings, channeled material from Aaron, exercises for the reader, and an account of her experiences with the healer known as John of God (João Teixeira de Faria) at his teaching center, Casa de Dom Inácio, in Brazil. While Cosmic Healing is channeled in part and has deep roots in traditional dharma, it is at heart a universal story of human growth and discovery. Old beliefs limit us every day. But as Brodsky discovered and teaches, we can learn to recognize such limiting beliefs, transcend them, and live a deeper truth.

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

Eloquent Silence

Lauri is a dedicated young teacher for the deaf. Her past conceals a wound still unhealed, her present is a facade, and she uses her career to hide her loneliness. Drake, daytime TV's most popular star, has two secrets -- the daughter he believes may never have a normal life and the dead wife he can't forget. Jennifer is the beautiful hearing-impaired child who may become a pawn between the man and the woman she needs most. Now, in a chic New Mexico arts community, the three are given a chance to be a family...but first each must find a voice to express the deepest fears and greatest needs of the heart.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Read My Lips

Popularity is as easy as a good secret. Serena just wants to fly under the radar at her new school. But Serena is deaf, and she can read lips really well-even across the busy cafeteria. So when the popular girls discover her talent, there's no turning back. From skater chick to cookie-cutter prep, Serena's identity has done a 180...almost. She still wants to date Miller, the school rebel, and she's not ready to trade her hoodies for pink tees just yet. But she is rising through the ranks in the school's most exclusive clique. With each new secret she uncovers, Serena feels pressure to find out more. Reading lips has always been her greatest talent, but now Serena just feels like a gigantic snoop...

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

Sounds from Silence

The author's interest in the development of improved hearing devices for the deaf arose from his interactions with his own father, who lost his hearing. Having worked in a pharmacy, Graham Clark developed a keen interest in pursuing a medical degree. His research and tenacity led him to develop the multiple contact bionic ear. The book takes us on a journey with the author through his life and his perseverance to develp this device.

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

Winning Sounds Like This

The Gallaudet women's basketball team has just defeated the number one ranked team in the country, the College of New Jersey. A reporter, not wanting to be insensitive, delicately broaches the obvious question: "How can you play so well despite your hearing impairment?" Nanette Virnig, a forward for Gallaudet, puts him at ease. "We're not hearing impaired," she says. "We're deaf." Winning Sounds Like This is the remarkable story of the nation's most unique and inspiring women's basketball team and its 1999-2000 season. It is a touching chronicle of players who don't hear buzzers or cheers, a coach who has never used a whistle, and a university that is a mecca for deaf culture throughout the world. Author Wayne Coffey offers an intimate and unsparing look at the players' lives on and off the court, their struggles to overcome the mistreatment and misconceptions of the hearing world, and their deeply rooted connection to one another. Interwoven with an overview of the shameful history of education for the deaf, Coffey explores the players' hopes and dreams and introduces us to such unforgettable people as Ronda Jo Miller, a Minnesota farm girl who is the most decorated athlete in school history; Touria Ouahid, a point guard from Morocco who had to overcome the fierce objections of her Muslim culture to pursue basketball and her education; and their relentlessly dedicated coach, Kitty Baldridge, who has led the Gallaudet women's team for nearly twenty-five years. On the bench for every game, on the bus for every trip, even living in the dorms and attending classes, Coffey presents sensitively crafted portraits of ten remarkable women who adamantly reject the notion that they are disabled in any way. Their goal in life is not to be able to hear, but simply to be accepted and respected. Nearly fifteen years ago, I. King Jordan, Gallaudet's president and a towering figure in contemporary deaf history, issued a famous quote: "Deaf people can do everything but hear." Much more than just a basketball story, Winning Sounds Like This is a celebration of community, of perseverance, and of young women who live out King Jordan's words every day of their lives.

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

Leading Ladies

Megan's fourth-grade class is putting on their own original musical based on the book The Wizard of Oz, and Megan wants to be the star of the show and play Dorothy. Since she's deaf, she will sign the songs for her audition. However, a problem develops when Lizzie, her best friend from camp, transfers from her all-deaf school to Megan's class - and signs the same two songs that Megan was going to do! Luckily, Megan has some other ideas up her sleeve...

Date Added: 03/08/2018