Two Picture Books on Deafness
Deafness is an invisible disability leaving its victims isolated within a hearing environment where oral language dominates the social, political, and entertainment worlds. Compared with the general population, there are few people touched by deafness, so the majority has no idea of its emotional impact and social effect on its victims.
Myron Uhlberg knows better. He grew up in Brooklyn during the 1940s. The author experienced first hand the affect deafness has on an individual because Uhlberg’s father was deaf. In his two picture books—Dad, Jackie, and Me, and The Printer—Uhlberg creates wonderful stories about deaf people and their contribution to our society.
Prejudice in American society is ubiquitous. No one knew this better than Myron Uhlberg’s father, a deaf man. When Branch Rickie decided to break the color barrier in baseball by hiring Jackie Robinson as the starting first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Mr. Uhlberg understood immediately the difficulties the ballplayer would encounter from racist athletes and fans. Though Uhlberg knew nothing about baseball, he became one of Robinson’s adoring fans at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York during the 1947 baseball season.
Myron and his father visited Ebbets Field frequently during Robinson’s rookie year. Author Myron Uhlberg and illustrator Colin Bootman produce an emotionally packed picture book kids can understand, and learn about diversity in their award winning picture book, Dad, Jackie, and Me.
The newspaper printing business during the mid 20thCentury was a noisy affair. Not surprisingly, it attracted a considerable deaf labor force. Author Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father was a printer for the New York Daily News, and tells his father’s story in this beautifully contrived picture book, The Printer. 
On one memorable day in 1940, while the printing presses were loudly churning out the daily newspaper, a fire broke out in the plant. The noise level was too great for anyone to hear cries of “Fire!” However, Mr. Uhlberg, the first printer to see the fire, was able to warn the other deaf workers of their fate with American Sign Language, so that every man in the plant reached safety in time.
Author Myron Uhlberg and illustrator Henri Sorensen do a superb job of recording a 1940 fire at the New York Daily News where every printer was saved thanks to a quick thinking deaf man.
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According to the National Institute on Deafness, approximately one million people are deaf and about 37.5 million adults aged 18 and over report trouble hearing. Authors and illustrators like Myron Uhlberg, Henri Sorensen, and Colin Bootman provide young readers an awareness of the problems people have with hearing loss.
Pop lost his hearing to a virus twenty-five years ago. Since then his entire life was turned upside down forcing him out of one career and into another. The worst was the social alienation and the inability to understand his primary language. So when you confront a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual, look right at them, speak slowly and clearly so they have the opportunity to read your lips and understand that someone out there really cares.
About the Author
Myron Uhlberg is the author of Hands of my Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love. The memoir was a Barnes & Noble Discover Book, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a finalist for the MS Books For a Better Life, for Inspirational Memoir, and it has been optioned for a theatrical motion picture. Uhlberg graduated from Brandeis University in 1955 and served as a paratrooper in the 82ndAirborne Division. After his service in the Air Force, Uhlberg worked in the men’s fashion clothing business for forty years. His first book was published when he was 66 years old.
About the Illustrators 
Colin Bootman was born in Trinidad, and at the age of 7 moved to the United States. He received his formal training as an illustrator at the LaGuardia High School of the Arts. His first illustrated book, Young Frederick Douglass, was published in 1994. He has since illustrated many children’s books, textbooks, periodicals, and book covers.
Henri Sorensen is the illustrator of I Love You As Much . . . , also by Laura Krauss Melmed; Wishes for You by Tobi Tobias; and The Gift of the Tree by Alvin Tresselt. He lives in Denmark with his wife and two daughters.
The description of these picture books is very touching; it almost made me cry