Wired for Sound: An Advanced Student Workshop on Hearing and Hearing Aids (review)

REVIEWS Messy Monsters, Jungle Joggers and Bubble Baths, Rochelle Sobel and Nehema Pluznik, 97 pp., $9.95 Elan Publishing House, Potomac, Maryland, 1986. Messy Monsters, Jungle Joggers and Bubble Baths is one of the most refreshing, well-organized, clearly illustrated instructional workbooks available. Although the publication is primarily a book of poetry to enrich the language of hearingimpaired children, the authors have incorporated repetitive phoneme production to encourage speechreading practice. The workbook provides a speechreading chart with effectively illustrated and described movements. Each poem with a phoneme target is dealt with in four sections. Section I concentrates on comprehension. Section II is structured to stimulate thinking; Section III is presented to encourage Speech Production; and Section IV provides Language Activities . This workbook is appropriate for both classroom and speech therapy environments. Barbara J. MacNeil, Ed.D. Special Education Coordinator San Diego, California Wired for Sound: An Advanced Student Workshop on Hearing and Hearing Aids. Carole Bugosh Simko, 149 pp., paperback, $4.95, Kendall Green Publications Gallaudet University Press, Washington, D.C, 1986. Wired for Sound is a workbook specifically for hearing-impaired students, which can easily be adapted for use at home. It is separated into two sections: All About Hearing and All About Hearing Aids. These are divided into eighteen clear and concise lessons which encourage hearing-impaired students to explore the facts about hearing, hearing impairments , hearing aids and their personal feelings about their own hearing impairment. Each lesson consists of new vocabulary , well-developed objectives, and exercises with an answer key. Wired for Sound would be an asset in the education of hearing-impaired students Mary Beth Napoli, B. S. Special Education Teacher Souther York County School District Dallastown, Pennsylvania A Loss For Words, Lou Ann Walker, 208 pp., $6.95 paperback , $15.95 hardcover, Harper & Row, New York, New York. "My parents are deaf. I can hear. And the fact of their deafness has made all the difference." The author presents new insight into the effects of deafness on the individual and upon all with whom the deaf person interacts. She shares her experience of deafness from her unique position on a bridge between the two cultures of hearing and deaf. Anyone even remotely concerned with deafness should read this book. Hearing children of deaf parents will identify with the author when she describes chüdhood doubts that her parents were really deaf or when she describes the pressures on the hearing child of deaf parents to be "good." "There is a subtle tyranny in being nice, in worrying about what other people think, in being concerned about how everything you do is perceived, in feeling that you're constantly scrutinized, (p.83)" Deaf parents with hearing children will want to read this book themselves and to share it with their children. If deaf parents become more aware of the impact of deafness on their hearing children they can then help them to understand why there are differences in their lives and that those differences are not necessarily bad. Professionals in deafness will also appreciate this new perspective of the deaf community, such as Ms. Walker's description of her parents' very positive experience in residential school. Her description of professionals in deafness with whom she has had to deal—the teacher of the deaf, the college professor in a teacher training program, the vocational rehabilitation counselor, the interpreters, the judges, the pychologists and many others—holds a mirror for all of us who work with the deaf. She makes us look at our work from a new perspective. Ms. Walker is an accomplished professional writer who presents her ideas concisely and clearly. This book is worth reading simply for its celebration of the strength and preseverence of the human spirit and for its account of a woman coming to terms with herself and a family coining to terms with itself. However, this book is much more than that. It presents a perspective of deafness which many persons involved in the field, both deaf and hearing, do not even realize exists. This is a long overdue addition to the literature in deafness and deserves to be weidely read. Hugh T. Prickett Ed.D. Director, Center on Deafness...