Books published by publisher Gallaudet University Press

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.

Charming, full-color photographs of basic words plus illustrations of their corresponding signs offer children ages 1 to 4 a fun way to learn their first signs and vocabulary words. Constructed of sturdy cardboard with a protective finish on each page, this hearty book will withstand the hard use to which fascinated young children will subject it, reading it again and again. Studies have shown that babies who learn to sign can communicate at an earlier age than those who learn verbal communication alone. Other research indicates that children strengthen their grammar and vocabulary skills by learning sign language.Word Signs and its companion book, Animal Signs, offer children exciting new worlds describing favorite things and animals while also making learning language skills fun!

Handy Stories to Read and Sign takes a bilingual, fun approach to help beginning readers, deaf and hearing, improve their comprehension of both English and American Sign Language (ASL). Charmingly illustrated, the five stories presented here increase in complexity as the children’s vocabulary and reading skills increase during the school year. Introductions to each story explain to parents and teachers the elements emphasized, such as providing helpful information on how the formation of certain signs creates ASL rhymes.The first story, “School Signs,” is told entirely in single-word sentences. New readers use the story’s rhymes and rhythm to memorize it until they can match the words they hear or the signs they see with the words printed on the page. The second story, “Haunted House,” highlights rhymes in ASL but not in English, and also ASL classifiers. “Thanksgiving Soon” adds refrains that divide the story into different sections, and shows the differences between the structures of the two languages.The final two stories, “Winter Solstice” and “Class Pet,” introduce young readers to English articles, while also positioning the ASL sign illustrations apart from the English sentences to encourage the children to rely on their new skills. Handy Stories is the perfect bilingual book for teaching children to read and sign.

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.

Every parent knows the frustration of trying to satisfy the demands of an infant too young to communicate his or her thoughts. Now, a growing consensus of researchers agree that not only deaf children but also hearing children can benefit from early exposure to sign language, often learning such basic signs as “milk,” “mother,” and “change” as early as seven months. With this knowledge in mind, Kim Votry and Curt Waller have written and illustrated Baby’s First Signs and More Baby’s First Signs, two books designed to provide your infant with the means to articulate his or her fundamental desires.Baby’s First Signs and More Baby’s First Signs are durable board books, lavishly colored in bright reds, blues, greens, and yellows sure to please your child’s eye. Each page features an illustration of a toddler signing a word as well as demonstrating what the sign is about. For example, on the “baby” page, the toddler makes the sign for “baby” by mimicking the cradling of a child in his arms while also smiling at his baby sister sitting beside him. The illustrations include both a diagram box that depicts exactly how to perform the sign and the English word in the top left corner, so that your child will learn English and sign language simultaneously. The books cover fundamental expressions such as “sleep,” “cold,” “eat,” and “hurt” as well as “rain,” “mommy,” “daddy,” and “car.” “Signing is a beautifully tactile way for babies to learn about their world,” the authors write. “It acknowledges a baby’s natural abilities and provides a powerful tool for self-expression.” The Baby’s First Signs books are the ideal place to begin building your baby’s library.

Charming, full-color photographs of basic animals plus illustrations of their corresponding signs offer children ages 1 to 4 a fun way to learn their first signs and vocabulary words. Constructed of sturdy cardboard with a protective finish on each page, this hearty book will withstand the hard use to which fascinated young children will subject it, reading it again and again. Studies have shown that babies who learn to sign can communicate at an earlier age than those who learn verbal communication alone. Other research indicates that children strengthen their grammar and vocabulary skills by learning sign language.Animal Signs and its companion book, Word Signs, offer children exciting new worlds describing favorite things and animals while also making learning language skills fun!

University Press returns with another short and captivating portrait of one of history’s most compelling figures, Albert Einstein.Albert Einstein was once told by a teacher that he would never amount to anything. Yet he went on to develop the special and general theories of relativity, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921, and become the most influential physicist of the 20th century.Einstein would later write that he was deeply affected by his first encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. Along his circuitous route to fame, Einstein fell in love, enjoyed his family, escaped from Nazi Germany, experienced heartbreak, and advised the President of the United States.This short book tells the intensely human story of a man who changed the world in a way that no one else could.

I was born, like my seven brothers and sisters, in a house atop a hill overlooking lovely Bras d'Or Lake. So begins Christy MacKinnon's story of life as a little girl in 19th-century Nova Scotia, Canada. Through wonderful images created with her own words and her watercolors, she tells of a simple, charming life on the family farm; of learning with her father, the master of her town's one-room schoolhouse; and of her eventual travel to Halifax to attend a special school. As with many children in the 1800s, Christy became deaf after a seige of whooping cough, a sickness common then, which she barely survived. Silent Observer opens to young readers a world rarely seen today. They will be thrilled by her family's ride in a horse-drawn sleigh over a frozen northern lake, and her close encounters with a noisy bull and a gentleman ram. Children and adults alike will warm to her cheerful memories of the simple pleasure of playing in a flower-filled field with her brothers and sisters. They will discover, too, that young Christy crossed paths with many vital figures of the day, beginning with frequent visits by Alexander Graham Bell, and later with a momentous meeting with Helen Keller. Silent Observer is a delightful memoir told as it was seen through the eyes of a lively child. It is also a meaningful record of life for a deaf child and her family in the far reaches of Canada at the end of an era. Silent Observer is a beautiful, sensitive story that is sure to be enjoyed by everyone.

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.