Category Archives: Reviews

Read This!: SAIL ME AWAY HOME by Ann Clare LeZotte

American Sign Language, ASL/Deaf Culture Book Reviews, Authors You Should Know, Read This, Recommended Reading, Reviews

Sail Me Away Home (Show Me a Sign #3)Sail Me Away Home by Ann Clare LeZotte

Summary: As a young teacher on Martha’s Vineyard, Mary Lambert feels restless and adrift. So when a league of missionaries invite her to travel abroad, she knows it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. Paris is home to a pioneering deaf school where she could meet its visionary instructors Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc—and even bring back their methods to help advance formal deaf education in America! 
But the endeavor comes at a cost: The missionaries’ plan to “save” deaf children is questionable at best—and requires Mary’s support. What’s more, the missionaries’ work threatens the Wampanoag and other native peoples’ freedom and safety. Is pursuing Mary’s own goals worth the price of betraying her friends and her own values?

Mary Lambert has always been a restless sort, so when she gets the opportunity to travel to Europe, of course she’s going to take it. But it comes at a cost – traveling with missionaries whose view of deaf people, and Mary herself, is patronizing and harmful. Mary learns hard lessons along the way about who to trust and how to weigh her own choices and actions. As in the previous books in the trilogy, LeZotte immerses her readers into Mary’s world. She seamlessly tackles topics like discrimination, privilege, and diversity within the Deaf community in a story that offers ample discussion starters without ever becoming preachy. Along the way, readers will meet many real historical figures from Deaf history. Mary finishes her trilogy sure of her home in the Deaf community, wherever her travels take her.

I was honored to be selected by Ann Clare LeZotte to write the reading guide for the trilogy, which contains discussion questions and classroom/programming activities. Check it out the reading guide here.

SAIL ME AWAY HOME is out now.

 

Read This!: GIVE ME A SIGN by Anna Sortino

American Sign Language, ASL/Deaf Culture Book Reviews, Authors You Should Know, Recommended Reading, Resources for Teachers and Librarians, Reviews

Give Me a SignGive Me a Sign by Anna Sortino
Summary: Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least, that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes—when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change. When Lilah becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community. There are cute British lifeguards who break hearts but not rules, a YouTuber who’s just a bit desperate for clout, the campers Lilah’s responsible for (and overwhelmed by)—and then there’s Isaac, the dreamy Deaf counselor who volunteers to help Lilah with her signing. Romance was never on the agenda, and Lilah’s not positive Isaac likes her that way. But all signs seem to point to love. Unless she’s reading them wrong? One thing’s for sure: Lilah wanted change, and things here are certainly different than what she’s used to.

As soon as I found out about this book, I knew I had to read it, and I knew exactly when and where I would do so: at the Deaf/American Sign Language Camp where I have been a counselor and director for 23 years and counting.** Having seen how many of our campers have discovered and embraced their Deaf identities at camp, I couldn’t wait to see how Deaf author Anna Sortino tackled this story. And she NAILED it. Lilah’s story is both effective and affecting, touching on many hot topics in the Deaf community: cochlear implants, hearing social media influencers, interactions with law enforcement, feeling “not Deaf enough”. But the story stays firmly grounded in Lilah’s singular experience, never feeling like a lecture or a checklist. (Aside from being a nuanced depiction of the Deaf experience, this book is also a terrific mentor text for any author who wants to tackle big issues in a natural way that keeps the story grounded in the protagonist’s wants and needs.) Through Lilah’s interactions with campers and counselors, Sortino showcases the diversity of the Deaf community and the disabled community, highlighting many different communication styles, language preferences, abilities, educational backgrounds, and perspectives coming together. Add to that a very sweet summer romance, and you’ve got a fun, immersive read that will appeal to anyone with a heart.

**If you or someone you know is between the ages of 7 and 17 and is Deaf/hard-of-hearing OR wants to learn American Sign Language in an immersion environment, check out Deaf Camps, Inc.’s residential camps!

GIVE ME A SIGN at Deaf/ASL Camp 2023:

GIVE ME A SIGN lying in a hammock at camp.  GIVE ME A SIGN sitting on a picnic table, backed by trees.  GIVE ME A SIGN nestled in a tire swing. GIVE ME A SIGN perched atop a giant Connect 4 set.

GIVE ME A SIGN is out now.

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Super Cities!: Baltimore in Baltimore Fishbowl

Reviews, Super Cities! Baltimore

Super Cities! Baltimore by Kathy MacMillan coverMy new book Super Cities!: Baltimore (Arcadi Publishign, 2023) was recently featured in the Mother/Daughter Corner at BaltimoreFishbowl.com! Ana Preger Hart and her six-year-old daughter Mia explored the book together and shared their favorite things about the book:

“After 19 years of living in Baltimore, 10 of them spent covering the city streets on a bicycle (my only mode of transportation during that time), and seven moves across the city’s neighborhoods, I didn’t think there was much left for me to discover about Charm City. Even so, I’d be hard-pressed to compile an exhaustive list of everything that makes our city the greatest. Kathy MacMillan’s done some of the work for us in Super Cities! Baltimore…’I basically liked all of the book,’ Mila told me after we’d finished reading. ‘It felt like I was really there.'”

Read the whole thing here: “Mother/Daughter Corner: Ana and Mila Hart Review ‘Super Cities! Baltimore’”, Baltimore Fishbowl

Order Super Cities!: Baltimore now from Deaf Camps, Inc. Online Bookstore (Autographed by the author and supports a great cause!) | Arcadia Publishing | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Bookshop.org

Read This!: UNRAVEL by Amelia Loken

ASL/Deaf Culture Book Reviews, Read This, Recommended Reading, Resources for Teachers and Librarians, Reviews

UnravelUnravel by Amelia Loken

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Marguerite knows her uncle doesn’t like her. True, she’s in line for the throne before him and he contends she’s too deaf to rule, but she’s known since he broke her hand to keep her from using sign language. Now, as the kingdom’s Bishop-Princep, Uncle Reichard has declared war on magic and Marguerite must hide the fact that she’s a witch. While witnessing her first witch trial, Marguerite rescues a child from death with the help of a handsome, itinerant acrobat, Tys. Marguerite flees, hiding in the neighboring empire where magical gifts can flourish. Before her training is complete, war threatens. She returns home, only to witness her uncle seizing the throne. He isolates and imprisons her. Marguerite’s love for her people drives her to continue defying him. But to challenge him means she’ll have to rely on her homemade invisibility cloak, questionable allies, and Tys, the one boy she never should have trusted.

This beautifully-written novel full of adventure, magic, and romance grabbed hold of my heart and never let go! Marguerite is a compassionate and resourceful heroine who knows who she is even when the world tries to define that for her. I never knew how much I needed a story about textile magic until I read this book! The author wove her own experience as a deaf/hard-of-hearing individual and ASL interpreter into Marguerite’s story, and the results are a gorgeous tapestry of political intrigue, swordplay, romance, and feminist magic.

UNRAVEL is out now.

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Read This!: GOOD DIFFERENT by Meg Eden Kuyatt

Read This, Recommended Reading, Resources for Teachers and Librarians, Reviews

Good DifferentGood Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt
Summary: Selah knows her rules for being normal. She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it. Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student. Selah’s friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble. But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?

How I adore this book! The author’s gorgeous use of imagery puts us directly into Selah’s point of view. I felt the itchiness of that school uniform and smelled that sour milk big-box store smell. Every detail, from Selah’s dragon metaphors to Pop’s four-colored pen to a through-the-bathroom-stall-wall conversation at FantasyCon, is pitch perfect. This deeply realized and beautifully rendered OwnVoices novel should be on every reading list.

GOOD DIFFERENT is out now.

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