Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts

January 16, 2014

Freak City, title from new Enslow imprint, reviewed in the January 2014 issue of School Library Journal

School Library Journal reviewed Freak City it its January 2014 issue. Freak City is the story of a teenage couple's relationship as they learn to communicate using sign language.

Here is an excerpt from the review:

"Readers are left knowing that the strains of understanding between two cultures are complicated but not insurmountable."

This title is part of a new imprint, Scarlet Voyage. You can order it from enslow.com, your preferred vendor, local bookstores, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. It is available in hardcover and e-Book formats.

January 04, 2013

Did You Know That Louis Braille Could See When He Was Born?



Braille is named after the person who invented it. Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in a town near Paris, France. He could see when he was born but when he was three years old, he had a terrible accident. One day, he went to his father's workshop and poked himself in the eye while playing with one of the very sharp tools. His eye became infected and the infection spread causing Louis to become blind.

When Louis was ten, he was sent to a special school for blind children. They had some books written in large capital letters that were raised so that the students could feel them and put them together to figure out the words. Louis read these books, but he thought he could figure out a better way to make books for blind people.

One day when Louis was twelve, a soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. He told Louis and the other children about his invention called night writing that used raised dots and dashes to represent words. The soldiers used this system to talk to each other in the dark and without speaking so enemy soldiers could not hear them.

Louis thought he could change night writing to make a code for blind people. At fifteen years old, after many tries, Louis created a dot code. He called his system Braille. In 1829, when Louis was twenty years old, he published the first Braille book.

Today, blind people all over the world use Braille to read. Thanks to Braille, words, numbers, and musical notes are no longer just something people see. They are also things people can feel.

View a sample chapter here of What is Braille? from our Overcoming Barriers series which is available from EnslowBarnes and Noble, Amazon, or your preferred vendor.




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