New Children's Book: My Heart Glow by Emily Arnold McCully

My Heart Glow: Alice Cogswell, Thomas Gallaudet, and the Birth of American Sign Language (2008) by Emily Arnold McCully

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children

Alice Cogswell was a bright and curious child and a quick learner. She also couldn't hear. And, unfortunately, in the early nineteenth century in America, there was no way to teach deaf children. One day, though, an equally curious young man named Thomas Gallaudet, Alice's neighbor, senses Alice's intelligence and agrees to find a way to teach her. Gallaudet's interest in young Alice carries him across the ocean and back and eventually inspires him to create the nation's first school for the deaf, thus improving young Alice's life and the lives of generations of young, deaf students to come.