Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Book Review: Another Way of Seeing

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: Another Way of Seeing
Author: Lois Henderson
Date: 1982
Publisher: Christian Herald Books
ISBN: 0-915684-99-3
Length: 211 pages
Quote: "We couldn't understand his fear over anything so small and harmless as a chicken, but, after all, he didn't realize that a chicken was small and helpless. All he knew for sure was that it made queer noises and was kept behind a wire fence."
Microphthalmia is a genetic condition causing children to be born with very small, sightless eyes. If both eyes are affected, the child will of course be blind. If only one eye is affected, the child will have a treatable cosmetic problem but can have a normal life. Since the condition is inherited, however, a person with microphthalmia on one side is likely to have blind children.

The picture accompanying this article shows what microphthalmia looks like. (No, it's not a gross-out.)

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8125493/living_life_under_unexpected_circumstances.html?cat=9
The author known as Lois Henderson was born with one normal eye and one "small, sightless eye," due to partial microphthalmia. Her son David was born with two "small, sightless" eyes. He rarely opened his eyelids. He learned "another way of seeing," and grew up understanding words like "look" and "see" in terms of what he did with his fingers.
When David Henderson was about ten years old, his mother probably complicated his life even further by publishing a book, The Opening Door, that described David's infancy in precisely the sort of detail that makes middle school students wish they could die of embarrassment. Readers learned all about how Baby Davey learned to drink from a cup, how timid he was about unfamiliar things, and much more.

When David Henderson was almost thirty, with a steady job and a fiancee, his mother warned his future wife and possible children what to expect by reissuing a revised and expanded version of The Opening Door, titled Another Way of Seeing.
Although Another Way of Seeing reveals the major facts of David Henderson's late childhood and early adulthood, this information is condensed onto just seven pages. The other 204 pages still deal with how his parents taught Baby Davey to walk, talk, eat, and so on.
This focus on the infancy of a blind child is, of course, what makes the book relevant. The academic education of blind children has changed since the 1950s. Early Optacon devices that scanned printed pages into Braille seemed miraculous in 1982; today's computers can bypass the whole Braille system and convert typed pages to audible words. The early development of infants hasn't changed. Parents can still benefit from reading what the Hendersons learned about where to put the safety gates and when to guide a child into a standing position.
Anyone who anticipates an opportunity to meet a blind child could benefit from reading Another Way of Seeing. These days, with all the efforts to bring children with disabilities into the mainstream at school, this audience could include all of us.
Of course, as Mrs. Henderson reminds readers, the character Davey is not to be read as representative of all blind children. Children with disabilities may, if anything, show more individual differences from each other than most children. Adjusting to the loss of sight is a different experience from being born blind. Davey's blindness accompanied conspicuous academic talent; some children's blindness accompanies brain damage. Davey's eyes never seemed to react to light at all; some "legally blind" people have limited vision, some blind people have memories of sight, and some blind eyes are hypersensitive to light. Davey learned to read and write Braille quickly; some blind people have less acute senses of touch and are limited even in their ability to use Braille.
Nevertheless, the character Davey can still help readers prepare for some of the more predictable issues that will arise when they work or go to school with a blind child, and at Amazon a blind child's mother testifies that this book helped her with her baby. Recommended.
Click here to buy it from me. (Usual rate: online, $5 for the book itself, $5 for shipping; if you're in the area and physically buy my copy, it's only 50 cents. The mark-up is because it takes time and money for me to buy clean copies online.)

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