News about books, and unsolicited political advice
A bunny teaches theory of mind, Sara Novic breaks down Project 2025 for the Deaf community, and some good news about The Deaf Baby Instruction Manual!
Welcome to the newsletter. It’s a little late this month for exciting reasons that you can read down at the bottom of the email.
Beyond Brown Bear, part 2
In the first installment of this series, I reviewed a title where what the book said, what it meant, and what I wanted it to mean were a little at odds.
This month’s pick is another great kid’s book to think with, but it arrives from almost the opposite direction—everything seems to be out in the open.
Antionette Portis’ Not a Box has just one character, a young bunny.
Or really two characters: a bunny and a peevish unseen narrator.
Or really three characters: a bunny, a narrator, and a box, which the bunny continually re-imagines as different objects—a racecar, an elephant, a mountain, etc.
Or really, the book has five characters: a bunny, a narrator, a box, me reading the story to Oscar, and Oscar reflecting the story back to me.
Or more like eleven characters, because as I read and Oscar responds, we each inhabit the bunny, the narrator, and the box in turn, filling them with ourselves just like the bunny does to the box.
Thanks to the simplicity of the language and the pictures, and the clear rhythms of the story, it’s easy for a mediocre signer like me to tackle each role in turn: the faintly parental, increasingly exasperated narrator (“Now you’re wearing a box?”) the slyly imaginative rabbit (“This is not a box.”) and the box itself (it’s a robot, so you get to go HAM on the classifiers.)
That turn-taking switch of perspective was a real lesson in theory of mind for Oscar. One of the characters is invisible, after all, and you can literally see the other one’s inner thoughts. But the real bait for my kid was the way the rabbit is continually asserting their truth in the face of the adult’s skepticism. After all, their imagination is often the only place in their lives where children have control, and he was delighted to see that played out on the page.
Another reason I have a soft spot for this book was because I was lucky enough to get coached through the ASL interpretation by the incredible Deaf performer Ian Sanborne as a part of a class for parents during lockdown. (Thanks, DCARA!)
It was an eye-opening trip into the concept of expansion, because in his hands, nothing was passive; mountains were for climbing, buildings must burn, and rockets had to jet through space.
Watching Sandborne sign the book, and trying to capture that same living element, in my own limited way, reinforced the “character-ness” of the box as it takes different guises, and fed into the book’s flip-flopping triple-ness of selfhood, motives, and the tricky things that are other people.
Vote for Kamala Harris
The election is in one week. Kamala Harris supports Deaf children and LEAD-K. Donald Trump, on the other hand, will be a disaster for Deaf kids and adults. Here’s author Sara Novic discussing some of the many horrors in store for the ADA and disability rights under Project 2025 and a second Trump administration.
Do not sit this one out. Vote early if you can, on election day if not. But please vote!
Good book news: I’ve got an agent
I’m excited and honored to say that The Deaf Baby Instruction Manual is now represented by Jen Nadol of the Unter Agency. It’s a delight to work with her, and it feels wonderful to have taken another step towards getting the book in stores (knock wood,) but more importantly, into the hands of hearing families with deaf children who could use some support and advice.
I’ll keep everyone posted as things develop. But now, if you want to publish my book, you can contact my agent :)
And I almost forgot… happy Halloween!
This is an informational newsletter on raising a deaf kid. All opinions in linked articles are the views and copyright of their respective authors, not this guy. All original content is ©2024, William Fertman. Links are not endorsements.