Special Collections

The Gift of the Girl Who Couldn't Hear

Life can seem awfully confusing for a young girl turning 13. Suddenly the things young Eliza wants most, like a role in the school musical, seem hopelessly out of reach. Then Eliza starts teaching her friend Lucy--who has been deaf since birth--to sing, and her confusion begins to dissolve.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Story of Beautiful Girl

It is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in an institution, the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow. But the couple is not alone-Lynnie has just given birth to a baby girl. When the authorities catch up to them that same night, Homan escapes into the darkness, and Lynnie is caught. But before she is forced back into the institution, she whispers two words to Martha: "Hide her." And so begins the 40-year epic journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha, and baby Julia-lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret pact and extraordinary love.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Crossed Wires

Crossed Wires, a highly original mystery novel, introduces readers to an unusual heroine, who is being stalked by a particularly chilling serial killer. Finley is tenacious, sympathetic, and attractive. What then makes her an unusual sleuth? Finley is deaf. And Finley and the murderer who hunts her inhabit, literally, a new world -almost a new dimension. They live an important part of their lives within the electronic bulletin boards accessed by their personal computers.

Finley, whose hearing impairment makes her vulnerable, has learned to live and rely upon faceless friends, especially Tracy and Jane, she knows only through her modem. She works as a researcher at CIAC, the National Crime Information and Analysis Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a very sophisticated clearing house for law enforcement agencies. Even without romance, life is pretty good for Finley, with a challenging job as an electronic detective and an apparently reliable set of friends, until one beautiful fall morning the ebullient Tracy is murdered - her throat slashed and her computer's memory wiped clean.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Give Me a Sign

Jenny Han meets CODA in this big-hearted YA debut about first love and Deaf pride at a summer camp.

Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least, that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes—when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change.

When Lilah becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community. There are cute British lifeguards who break hearts but not rules, a YouTuber who’s just a bit desperate for clout, the campers Lilah’s responsible for (and overwhelmed by)—and then there’s Isaac, the dreamy Deaf counselor who volunteers to help Lilah with her signing.

Romance was never on the agenda, and Lilah’s not positive Isaac likes her that way. But all signs seem to point to love. Unless she’s reading them wrong? One thing’s for sure: Lilah wanted change, and things here . . . they're certainly different than what she’s used to.

Date Added: 03/06/2024

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

Once in a Lifetime

Millions adored Daphne Fields, for she shared their passion, their pain, their joy, and their sorrow. But America's most popular novelist remained a closed book to the world -- guarding her life with a fierce privacy no reporter could crack.

Her life hides a myriad of secrets. The husband and daughter she lost in a fire. The son who barely survived it and would be deaf forever. The victories, the defeats, the challenges of facing life as a woman alone and helping her son meet the challenges of his handicap. A strong woman, she would not accept defeat, or help from anyone... until she found she could no longer face it alone.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Kami and the Yaks

Just before the start of a new trek, a Sherpa family discovers that their yaks are missing. Young Kami, anxious to help his brother and father maintain their livelihood, sets off by himself to find the wandering herd. A spunky deaf child who is unable to speak, Kami attempts to summon the yaks with his shrill whistle. Failing to rout them, he hustles up the steep mountainside to search the yaks' favorite grazing spots. On the way he encounters the rumblings of a fierce storm which quickly becomes more threatening. Surmounting his fear of being alone in the midst of treacherous lightning and hail, Kami uses his heightened sense of observation to finally locate the yaks. Reunited with their animals, the astonished family is once again able to transport their gear and guide the mountain climbers into the majestic terrain.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Linguistics of British Sign Language

This is the first detailed explanation of the way British Sign Language works and is the product of many years' experience of research and teaching sign linguistics to deaf and hearing people. It assumes no previous knowledge of linguistics or sign language, and is not structured around traditional headings such as phonology, morphology and syntax. Instead it is set out in such a way as to help learners and their teachers understand the linguistic principles behind the language. There are sections on BSL grammar and also on the use of BSL, including social acceptability in signing, variation, and poetry and humour in BSL.

Technical terms and linguistic jargon are kept to a minimum, and the text contains many examples from English, BSL, and other spoken and sign languages. The book is amply illustrated and contains exercises, as well as a reading list for further study.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Unheard

Swiller spent his early years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world. So he decided to abandon the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.

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

Silent Night

Some people may have considered Sue Thomas's deafness a liability. The FBI considered it an asset....

Growing up in northeastern Ohio, Sue Thomas was like any other toddler. But one evening while watching television with her family, suddenly she couldn't hear the sound of the program. The next morning Sue didn't respond to anyone's voice. Her parents rushed her to their family doctor. He delivered devastating news: eighteen month-old Sue had experienced a sudden and total hearing loss.

Sue's parents made a lifelong commitment to help her live as normal a life as possible in the hearing world. With professional assistance, Sue learned to speak and lip read. When school presented challenges, Sue worked harder, eventually earning a B. S. degree and completing graduate work in political science and international relations.

A door opened at the FBI for Sue to begin a training program for deaf people to classify fingerprints. But when agents realized Sue's uncanny ability to read lips, they approached her about undercover surveillance. Sue excelled at her job, exceeding her family's expectations.

Yet something still seemed to be missing in her life. Refocusing her goals on helping others, today Sue is a motivational speaker with a deeper purpose who appears regularly before civic, professional, and church groups. Silent Night tells her inspiring story.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Spider's Web

In the spring of 666 A.D., Sister Fidelma is summoned to the small Irish village of Araglin. An advocate of the Brehon law courts as well as a religieuse, she is to investigate the murder of the local chieftain. While traveling there with her friend Brother Eadulf, a band of brigands attacks the roadside hostel in which they are staying and attempts to burn them out. While Fidelma and Eadulf manage to beat back their attackers, this incident is only the first in a series that troubles them. When they arrive at Araglin, they find out that the chieftain was murdered in the middle of the night, and next to his body, a local deaf-mute man was found holding the bloody knife that killed him.
While everyone else seems convinced that the man's guilt is obvious, sister Fidelma is not so sure. As she investigates, she's convinced that there is something happening in the seemingly quiet town--something that everyone is trying very hard to keep from her. In what may be the most challenging and confusing situation that she has yet faced, Fidelma must somehow uncover the truth behind the chieftain's murderer and find out what is really going on beneath the quiet surface of this rural town.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Dad, Jackie, and Me

Jackie Robinson is the new first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers--and the first black player in Major League Baseball. A young boy shares the excitement of Robinson's rookie season with his deaf father.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Hands of My Father

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg's memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents--and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it."Does sound have rhythm?" my father asked. "Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?" Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg's deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face. Uhlberg's first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: "I love you."

But his second language was spoken English--and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father's ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn. Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression--an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times.

From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father's hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Printer

A young boy tells the story of his deaf father who loved working as a printer for a major newspaper but was saddened by the fact that his hearing coworkers ignored him because he couldn't talk. Picture descriptions added.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Morality Play

The time is the fourteenth century. The place is a small town in rural England, and the setting a snow-laden winter. A small troupe of actors accompanied by Nicholas Barber, a young renegade priest, prepare to play the drama of their lives. Breaking the longstanding tradition of only performing religious plays, the groups leader, Martin, wants them to enact the murder that is foremost in the townspeoples minds.

A young boy has been found dead, and a mute-and-deaf girl has been arrested and stands to be hanged for the murder. As members of the troupe delve deeper into the circumstances of the murder, they find themselves entering a political and class feud that may undo them. Intriguing and suspenseful, Morality Play is an exquisite work that captivates by its power, while opening up the distant past as new to the reader.
Man Booker Prize Finalist

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Loss for Words

“A personal journey of introspection by a young woman whose childhood was spent as parent to her deaf parents” (Kirkus Reviews).From the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker acted as the ears and voice for her parents, who lost their hearing at a young age. As soon as she was old enough to speak, she assumed the responsibility of interpreter—confirming doctors’ appointments and managing her parents’ business transactions. While the Walkers’ family was warm and loving, outside the comfort of their home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them.In this deeply moving memoir, Walker offers us a glimpse of a different world, bringing with it a broader reflection on how parents grow alongside their children and how children learn to navigate the world through the eyes of their parents. In recounting her story, she encourages us to question the inequalities that shape our society, introduces us to the warm, supportive deaf community, and illuminates the creativity and kindness of humanity.Winner of the Christopher Award“A deeply moving, often humorous, and beautiful account of what it means to be the hearing child of profoundly deaf parents . . . I have rarely read anything on the subject more powerful or poignant than this extraordinary personal account by Lou Ann Walker.” — Oliver Sacks

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

Dead Body Language

Thirty-seven year old journalist, Connor Westphal, has relocated from San Francisco to Flat Skunk, a mining-turned-tourist town in the foothills of the Sierras, to start up her own weekly paper. Suddenly, dead bodies begin turning up in the most unusual places, setting Connor on a hunt for a killer. You might say Connor has a sixth sense when it comes to investigating...but she only has four of the usual five senses. Connor Westphal is deaf. But being hearing impaired doesn't stop Connor from pursuing the murderer. Without sound to distract her, she attends to subtleties that others overlook and ultimately unravels the mystery.

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

Right to Remain Silent

Connor Westphal is drawn into another mystery in Flat Skunk when the local historian dies, is resurrected, and dies again! Hot on the story of this unexpected event, Connor stumbles across the murdered woman's son, a deaf man who has been misdiagnosed for years. Working to clear his name for his mother's murder turns out to be more than she bargains for. Staying one step ahead of the killer, locating a missing will, and getting out her weekly paper are all just part of a day's work for amateur sleuth Connor Westphal in the third book of this popular series by Penny Warner.

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

I Danced

Weber presents a readable yet comprehensive look at cochlear implants and shares her own story:
why did she choose to hear?
how did she cope?
what were the frustrations with implants?

The book includes some technical information and lists of resources for those with hearing disabilities.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sounds of Silence

Border Patrol agent Eli Carmichael knew the deaf child he'd found outside a Mexican orphanage was harboring a dark secret--she was carrying a bloodstained knife and was clearly traumatized. To keep her safe, he turned to trusted neighbor Isabel Valenzuela. A sense of duty had kept Eli close to his fellow agent's widow and her young son over the past year, and now Eli was spending more time with Isabel and the kids, trying to determine exactly what the girl had seen. Under Isabel's gentle care, the child began to open up. But the killers were close by, and determined to silence the girl forever. . . .

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Feathers

View our feature on Jacqueline Woodson's Feathers."Hope is the thing with feathers" starts the poem Frannie is reading in school. Frannie hasn't thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more "holy." There is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy. And although the new boy looks like a white kid, he says he's not white. Who is he? During a winter full of surprises, good and bad, Frannie starts seeing a lot of things in a new light--her brother Sean's deafness, her mother's fear, the class bully's anger, her best friend's faith and her own desire for "the thing with feathers." Jacqueline Woodson once again takes readers on a journey into a young girl's heart and reveals the pain and the joy of learning to look beneath the surface.

Date Added: 03/08/2018