ED270930.Pdf

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 270 930 EC 182 930 AUTHOR Eldridge, Leslie, Comp. TITLE R Is for Reading. Library Service to Blind and Physically Handicapped Children. INSTITUTION Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8444-0480-2 PUB DATE 85 NOTE 198p. AVAILABLE FROMReference Section, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20542 (free). PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Collected Works General (020) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC08 Plus Postage. - DESCRIPTORS Audiotape Recordings; *Blindness; Braille; Elementary Secondary Education; Large Type Materials; *Library Services; Personal Narratives; Reading; Reading Attitudes; Reading Consultants; *Reading Habits; Reading Skills; Teacher Attitudes; *Visual Impairments IDENTIFIERS *National Library Service ABSTRACT The tent presents information gained from interviews with blind and physically handicapped children, their mothers, teachers, reading specialists, and librarians concerning reading patterns and library use. The book describes the difficulties handicapped children face in learning to use and enjoy such reading materials as braille books, large print books, and audio cassette recordings. The interviews focus on reading enjoyment and skills, library use, information needs and satisfaction with or improvements required in service from their own network library. Interviews with the children and their mothers provide information about the types of home environment that stimulate reading as well as the types of influences that limit reading. Teachers are asked about their use of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) and about their approach to reading in the classroom. Interviews with counselors focus on what handicapped children must overcome to become healthy, happy, and well-rounded. The importance of the preschool years to a handicapped child's development is also stressed. Reading specialists respond to questions about the effects of mainstreaming on reading. Staff librarians offer suggestions on improving the NLS program for print-handicapped children. (CO *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** fifitScaLW.Wsr..7WASMIK; s:4V6L'Ariaglel.110 --.41111% U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION °Rice of Educabonal Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Cinrs document nas been reproduced as recemed from the person or organrzabon onanaung a C Minor changes have been made to Improve rePrOduCtrOn duality Rants ot %new or oanrons stated rn tn Is document do not necessanly represent otfroat OERI positron or policy Library Service to Blind and Physically Handicapped Children Washington, D.C. 1985 2 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: R is for reading. 1. Libraries and the visually handicapped Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Visual- ly handicapped childrenBooks and readingAddresses, essays, lectures. 3. Blind, Libraries for theAddresses, essays, lectures. 4. BlindBooks and reading Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Children, BlindBooks and readingAddresses, essays, lectures. 6. Reading disabilityAddresses, essays, lectures. 7. Librarians Interviews. I. Eldridge, Leslie. Z711.92. V57R17 1985 025.5'277663 84-600215 ISBN 0-8444-0480-2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. PREFACE 1 II. CHILDREN AND MOTHERS 5 An Introductory Vignette 5 Teng Phasouk 5 Brandy Peiper 7 Lisa Connor 7 Masumi Scherb 9 Guywood De La Cruz 9 Betty Linsinbigler and Tuan Linsinbigler 10 Marty Coe and Heidi Coe 21 Lynn Bombelyn 25 Daphne Bogdan and Robert Bogdan 30 Therese Snyder and JoAnne Snyder 35 Connie Garner and Tammy Gamer 40 Linda Smiley and Jason Smiley 43 III. SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS 51 Education of the Visually Handicapped: A Personal History, by Philip H. Hat len 51 Improving Library Service for Visually Handicapped Children, by Sally Mangold 67 Learning Disability: The Problem of Definition, by David A. Sabatino 75 How Blind Children Understand Language, by David W. Anderson 80 Thoughts from an Itinerant Teacher, by Bobby Powell 82 An Ecological Approach to Service, by Warren Umansky 85 Thoughts from a Resource Room Teacher, by Amy Shimamoto 88 Forty Years Later, by Berthold Lowenfeld 90 Learning-Disabled Children and Talking Books, by Synnove Travis 93 Factors Influencing Teachers' Enthusiasm about Talking Books, by Michael J. Bina 98 IV. CHILD DEVELOPMENT COUNSELORS 103 Making Books Meaningful for Very Young Blind Children, by Lois Harrell 103 Helping the Nonreader, by John H. Richards 110 Teaching Children Who Have Low Vision: A New Approach, by Kathryn Daugherty-Rosenberg 115 Serving Visually Handicapped Children and Their Parents, by Susan Dupree 120 5 F.. V. READING SPECIALISTS 129 Techniques for Teaching Blind Children to Read, by Lea M. McGee 129 The Classroom Teacher and Children's Literature, by R. Ann Zinck 133 Cooperation between Librarians and Teachers, by John N. Mangieri 140 A New Technique for Recording Books for Children with Reading Disabilities, by Marie Carbo 144 Promoting Leisure Reading, by Sylvia McCoy Carter 151 VI. LIBRARIANS 155 Staff of the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Honolulu, Hawaii 155 Loma Lau, Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Honolulu, Hawaii 159 Kay Smith, Wayne County Regional Library, Wayne, Michigan 165 Barbara Goral, Wayne County Regional Library, Wayne, Michigan 168 Janet Wright, Talking Book Center, Athens, Georgia 174 Johanna Nagel, New Jersey Library for the Blind and Handicapped, Trenton, New Jersey 179 VII. CONCLUSION 189 I= I. PREFACE What vehicle do we have to transmit good values to children? Con- sider the media that the children are exposed to. They may watch "Sesame Street" if they are lucky, and perhaps some of the children's theater programs. More than likely they are opting to watch the Saturday cartoons and "Dukes of Hazzard." On most of the programs during prime time what values are transmitted? Where are the values that are going to open the children's eyes to hobbies or to experiences that they have to experience vicariously? Books, not microcomputers, can help transmit important information, values, and vicarious experiences to children. And if the parents and teachers are not willing to devote time to books and to discussions revolving around books, we end up with children who are burned out at age twelve, looking for outlets such as drugs or dropping out. They see no options for themselves. They have a very limited life view. R. Ann Zinck, a reading specialist On a typical day any library for blind and physically handicapped individuals will receive numerous telephone calls from adults asking about books. Many of these adults are avid readers and committed library users; some of them even use their local public libraries occasionally. The majority of them have not been blind since birth and they developed their interest in reading as sighted children and young adults. The library staff challenge with these adult readers is how to keep up with their de- mands for reading material. The situation with blind and physically handicapped children is sadly different. A few exceptional children approach the library for the blind and physically handicapped and the public library the way their adult counterparts do, but most handicapped children are uneasy with libraries and reluctant about reading. They present long-standing enigmas to the librarians who would like to give them good service. The usual links between librarians and library-using children are not there. As a result, librarians for blind and physically handicapped individuals can easily become out of touch with the needs of their juvenile patrons and out of touch with the reading world of children. This latter point is important 1 7 because these young people are children first. Their handicap is a secondary characteristic. In most libraries, services to blind and physically handicapped children, as provided through the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) network, have been a postscript added to an already demanding schedule of providingservice to handicapped adults. The usual explanation for this is that the number of registered juvenile borrowers is small and the funding for ch2dren's programs is cor- respondingly low. One special education teacher provided another valid explanation: "The profession that serves blind children and adults has always been a practitioner profession rather than a research profession. So all tend to be busy maintaining the system rather than trying to figure out ways of making it better." Most librarians are too busyserving the people who are already on their mailing liststhe people who are con- stantly making demandsto take a long and objective look at services to children. Recent research efforts have been directed more toward developing technological aids than toward developing better library services for handicapped children. As a former librarian in this field who daily vowed to "do something about children's services" but never quite knew where to start, I had my own suspicions about why the program for blind and handicapped children in our library was ineffective and I thought those suspicions could apply to our children's services nationwide. I heard recurring stories about

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