One Essential Goal for the New School Year

Welcome back! It’s been a busy (and here in Massachusetts, HOT) start to the new school year!

I was recently consulting in a third-grade mainstream classroom, and got into a conversation with the teacher about representation of students with varied abilities and physical appearances in children’s literature. She strives to create a classroom library where each student can find themselves in the characters in the books she reads and provides. This teacher asked for book recommendations featuring characters with hearing loss. I reached out to my good friend and fellow teacher of the deaf, JennyKate Marble, who is a school librarian. She sent me the list below and I’m excited to share it here with you.

Picture Books:

The Deaf Musicians by Pete Seeger

Kami and the Yaks by Andrea Stenn Stryer

My Heart Glow by Emily Arnold McCully

The Printer by Myron Uhlburg

The Mitten String by Jennifer Rosner

The Moses Goes To series by Isaac Millman

Chapter Books:

Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything by Lenore Look

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P! by Alex Gino

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

T4 by Ann Clare LeZotte

Graphic Novels:

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Let’s take on my cooperating teacher’s goal of equal representation and make sure our students are represented in all classroom libraries (and maybe update our own collections, too!)  Cheers to a new school year!