Books published by publisher Gallaudet University Press

Here’s a great book for every young adult age 11 up, Signing Fun: American Sign Language Vocabulary, Phrases, Games, and Activities. Signing is visual, easy to learn, and fun to use. Author Penny Warner offers 441 useful signs on a variety of favorite topics: activities, animals, fashion, food, holidays, home, outdoors, parties, people, places, play, emotions, school, shopping, travel, plus extra fun signs for especially popular words. Each chapter includes practice sentences using everyday phrases to help new signers learn in a fun way.Signing Fun provides dozens of entertaining games and activities, too, such as Alphabet Sign, Finger Fun Gesture Guess, Match Signs, Mime and Sign, Oppo-Sign, Picture Hand, Secret Sign, Sign-A-Gories, Signo Bingo, Snap and Sign, and Truth or Sign. It also features a list of tips on how to sign, including how to fingerspell, use numbers, and communicate with deaf people. Whimsical drawings clearly illustrate all of the signs, and a full index lists all of their English meanings for quick reference. Signing Fun is a terrific first book for learning sign while having a great time.

Laurent Clerc won lasting renown as the deaf teacher who helped Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet establish schools to educate deaf Americans in the 19th century. Now, his character as a young boy growing up in Paris has been captured in the novel Laurent Clerc.In his own voice, Clerc vividly relates the experiences that led to his later progressive teaching methods. Especially influential was his long stay at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, where he encountered sharply distinct personalities — the saintly, inspiring deaf teacher Massieu, the vicious Dr. Itard and his heartless “experiments” on deaf boys, and the “Father of the Deaf,” Abbe Sicard, who could hardly sign.Young adult readers will find his story richly entertaining as well as informative.

As a young blind girl, Georgina Kleege repeatedly heard the refrain, “Why can’t you be more like Helen Keller?” Kleege’s resentment culminates in her book Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller, an ingenious examination of the life of this renowned international figure using 21st-century sensibilities. Kleege’s absorption with Keller originated as an angry response to the ideal of a secular saint, which no real blind or deaf person could ever emulate. However, her investigation into the genuine person revealed that a much more complex set of characters and circumstances shaped Keller’s life.Blind Rage employs an adroit form of creative nonfiction to review the critical junctures in Keller’s life. The simple facts about Helen Keller are well-known: how Anne Sullivan taught her deaf-blind pupil to communicate and learn; her impressive career as a Radcliffe graduate and author; her countless public appearances in various venues, from cinema to vaudeville, to campaigns for the American Foundation for the Blind. But Kleege delves below the surface to question the perfection of this image. Through the device of her letters, she challenges Keller to reveal her actual emotions, the real nature of her long relationship with Sullivan, with Sullivan’s husband, and her brief engagement to Peter Fagan. Kleege’s imaginative dramatization, distinguished by her depiction of Keller’s command of abstract sensations, gradually shifts in perspective from anger to admiration. Blind Rage criticizes the Helen Keller myth for prolonging an unrealistic model for blind people, yet it appreciates the individual who found a practical way to live despite the restrictions of her myth.

This ground-breaking work, originally published 15 years ago, continues to serve as the primary reference on the theories of omission potential and translational contact in sign language interpreting. In the book, noted scholar Jemina Napier explores the linguistic coping strategies of interpreters by drawing on her own study of the interpretation of a university lecture from English into Australian Sign Language (Auslan). A new preface by the author provides perspective on the importance of the work and how it fits within the scholarship of interpretation studies. The concept of strategic omissions is explored here as a tool that is consciously used by interpreters as a coping strategy. Instead of being a mistake, omitting part of the source language can actually be part of an active decision-making process that allows the interpreter to convey the correct meaning when faced with challenges. For the first time, Napier found that omission potential existed within every interpretation and, furthermore, she proposed a new taxonomy of five different conscious and unconscious omission types. Her findings also indicate that Auslan/English interpreters use both a free and literal interpretation approach, but that those who use a free approach occasionally switch to a literal approach as a linguistic coping strategy to provide access to English terminology. Both coping strategies help negotiate the demands of interpretation, whether it be lack of subject-matter expertise, dealing with dense material, or the context of the situation. Napier also analyzes the interpreters’ reflections on their decision-making processes as well as the university students’ perceptions and preferences of their interpreters’ linguistic choices and styles. Linguistic Coping Strategies in Sign Language Interpreting is a foundational text in interpretation studies that can be applied to interpreting in different contexts and to interpreter training.

"Chris was having trouble with his ears. He just couldn't hear right ... every time anyone said anything, Chris would shout 'WHAT?'" Chris Gets Ear Tubes explains what happens before, during, and after the surgery in language a child understands. It takes away the child's natural fear of the unknown. The charming full-color illustrations familiarize the child with the hospital procedures.

As a young blind girl, Georgina Kleege repeatedly heard the refrain, “Why can’t you be more like Helen Keller?” Kleege’s resentment culminates in her book Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller, an ingenious examination of the life of this renowned international figure using 21st-century sensibilities. Kleege’s absorption with Keller originated as an angry response to the ideal of a secular saint, which no real blind or deaf person could ever emulate. However, her investigation into the genuine person revealed that a much more complex set of characters and circumstances shaped Keller’s life.Blind Rage employs an adroit form of creative nonfiction to review the critical junctures in Keller’s life. The simple facts about Helen Keller are well-known: how Anne Sullivan taught her deaf-blind pupil to communicate and learn; her impressive career as a Radcliffe graduate and author; her countless public appearances in various venues, from cinema to vaudeville, to campaigns for the American Foundation for the Blind. But Kleege delves below the surface to question the perfection of this image. Through the device of her letters, she challenges Keller to reveal her actual emotions, the real nature of her long relationship with Sullivan, with Sullivan’s husband, and her brief engagement to Peter Fagan. Kleege’s imaginative dramatization, distinguished by her depiction of Keller’s command of abstract sensations, gradually shifts in perspective from anger to admiration. Blind Rage criticizes the Helen Keller myth for prolonging an unrealistic model for blind people, yet it appreciates the individual who found a practical way to live despite the restrictions of her myth.

University Press returns with another short and captivating portrait of one of history’s most compelling figures, Eleanor Roosevelt.Eleanor Roosevelt was an iconic figure. Best known for being First Lady of the United States during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, she conquered shyness and marital betrayal and used her quiet power to knock down barriers of race and gender in the United States and promote human rights around the world.After her husband died, Eleanor went on to become chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission where she formulated, presented, and worked to secure global implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – words that are now written into national constitutions around the globe. This short book tells the intensely human story of a woman who changed the world in a way that no one else could.

My First Book of Sign, a full-color alphabet book, gives the signs for 150 of the words most frequently used by young children. The vocabulary comes from recognized word list sources such as the Dale List of 769 Easy Words. The proportion of word category choices (nouns, modifiers, and verbs) is based on early language acquisition research. Readers do not have to know American Sign Language to enjoy My First Book of Sign; the book provides explanations of how to form each sign. This is a very special alphabet book appropriate for all children who are just beginning to read.

University Press returns with another short and captivating portrait of one of history’s most compelling figures, Alexander Hamilton.Alexander Hamilton was an orphan from a remote island in the Caribbean. Yet he went on to become one of the elite Founding Fathers of the United States, and, as America’s first Treasury Secretary, the founder of the nation’s financial system. A man of honor, conviction, and genius, Alexander was still not immune to scandal and conflict. His extra-marital affair deeply hurt his beloved wife and brought him ridicule from his political opponents. And his dispute with Vice President Aaron Burr resulted in their famous duel – and in Hamilton’s violent and premature death.This short book tells the intensely human story of a man who changed the world in a way that no one else could.

From the team that created the Baby’s First Signs books come two new board books. A Book of Colors depicts the charming character with the favorite hat signing all of the primary and secondary colors—red, yellow, blue, orange, green, and purple—in interesting settings. The other pages display a wide variety of appealing colors, too, including pink, white, black, gray, brown, and tan, topped off with a richly rendered illustration of a rainbow.Out for a Walk offers toddlers their first look at signs for the world around them. As they follow our distinctively hatted youngster on a stroll, they encounter familiar animals and insects, among them a dog, cat, butterfly, and squirrel, and learn which ones can be pets. They’ll enjoy imaginative images of the senses, too—sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Printed on robust cardboard stock, these delightful full-color books will engage toddlers in new topics as they discover more basic signs, proven to accelerate their grasp of language.

The women's rights movement grew out of the women's suffrage movement of the mid-1800s and also addressed other women's legal rights issues. The second wave of the movement, which promoted economic, political, and social equality, gained momentum in the 1960s and '70s, when such groups as the National Organization for Women fought for equal pay and laws banning employment discrimination. Clearly written, The Women's Rights Movement is an illuminating introduction to one of the most prominent reform movements of the last 40 years. The book is published by Chelsea House Publishers, a leading publisher of educational material.