My Heart Glow: Alice Cogswell, Thomas Gallaudet, and the Birth of American Sign Language

Received product in good condition. Good service. Book is enchantingly told and illustrated. Inspirational to readers, young and old. Thanks!

After decades as a journalist specializing in covering the impact of religion in American life, I now focus on finding and recommending great books and films with spiritual themes. At first glance, this historical picture book about the development of American Sign Language may seem like an unusual recommendation for spiritual reading. But, after reading the book, you'll find that the letters of this real little girl, Alice Cogswell, will touch your heart as she struggles within her silent world to maintain hope, avoid depression and reach out to the larger world. Emily Arnold McCully is a veteran writer and illustrator (and a Caldecott winner for an earlier book). From the front cover to the final pages, she manages to capture the whole range of little Alice's emotions in her simple yet beautiful watercolors. She wisely decides to let Alice speak for herself in excerpts of letters she writes to the scholar Thomas Gallaudet as he travels to Europe in search of educational resources for deaf students. Unless your heart is made of stone, you'll be moved in the middle of the book, when Alice nearly gives up hope and writes bitterly, "I am not good heart. I wish good heart. ... God made me deaf ... Perhaps me bad, I hear not." Of course, we have this wonderful book because Alice triumphs in the end as Gallaudet is inspired sufficiently by her letters to make the creative leap that leads to the development of American Sign Language. You'll read this book with children again and again.