Book Review # 2

Ancona, George, and Mary B. Miller. Handtalk School. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's, 1991.




Handtalk School is a non-fiction picture book that shows the reader what a school day at this particular residential school for the deaf is like. The entire book is composed of photographs that show people speaking ASL (American Sign Language). The pictures enhance the story a lot, by emphasizing how real the situations are that the children in the book are. In many of the photographs, the movement of people’s hands is captured to show that some words in ASL involve the person moving their hands around to complete a word or phrase. Since each page contains eye-catching pictures that take up the entire page, the reader is able to feel like they are actually at the school, being shown around by the students and staff. The book begins by having the students who stay at the school (not all do, but all do have the option) go through their morning routine—brushing their teeth, taking a shower, eating breakfast, etc. The majority of the pictures in the book are of children and adults signing, and each picture is accompanied by the word written in English that they are signing. Next, the students take the reader through the many classes that they have in their school, including gym, math, literature, art, science, etc. One of the students is shown using a TDD (Telephone Device for the Deaf), which is a phone that allows deaf people to talk to people on the other end of the line. She is phoning home to make sure that her parents are going to be able to come to the Thanksgiving play that the students are preparing for throughout the book. The end of the book shows the students putting on their play and going home for the holiday weekend. After the story is finished, a list of schools for the deaf in the United States is included.

I really liked this book and will definitely consider including it in my classroom library in the future (if I can find a copy—it is out of print!). I thought this book did a great job at showing the reader what it is like to attend a school designed for deaf children. Not only did the book show what the students were signing (by including the word written in English), but George Ancona was able to capture the movement in the signs with his amazing photography skills. The book’s photographs were very bright and they succeeded at grabbing the reader’s attention. This book was very informational and helped the reader understand a little more about what it is like to be deaf. I thought it was great that this book showed that the children at this particular school in New York went through the same things that any student their age would go through. It did not show the children having difficulties simply because they are unable to hear, which is a great way to show young children that people who cannot hear are just like everybody else. The author, Mary Beth Miller, is an insider to this group. She graduated from Kentucky School for the Deaf and Gallaudet University. Both of her parents were deaf, and she was a founding member of the National Theater of the Deaf. She is currently (or was in 1991 when this book was published) the Director of Deafness Services at Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn. This book did a fabulous job at showing how deaf children can be integrated in classrooms of their own, even when they are apart from their general education peers.