Disabled Books

This is an excellent book for teachers of autistic children. Outside recess is often baffling and stressful for kids who don't have the necessary social skills to "fit in". Carol Gray takes you step by step through a visually oriented strategy to help the autistic child ease into this often puzzling and frustrating part of his day.

A section of this book, The Sixth Sense, can be used as a means of enabling others to understand the social sense, the perception of social-emotional cues for Autism Spectrum disorders.

Wonderful book. Deshler knows what he is talking about and writes a wonderful guide for teachers, great suggestions that are very practical.
If you only buy one resource, this would be the main one to purchase.

This book is full of strategies and techniques that are porven to work with adolescents through adults with learning disabilities. It is a rich resource of the theorectical underpinnnings and the everyday realities that edcators face with this unique population.

James Evans' candid and clear testimonial about dealing with his ADD is an important story to be told. Autobiographically written, he manages to bring out his pain in the midst of struggling through ADD as well as his spiritual growth.

I never would've read the book had a dear friend not given it to me, just as I was learning about my own ADD. I thought it might be trite, but Evans' story of his life is filled with depth and passion. His life is far different from mine, but, boiled down, we have shared similar experiences.

Other books on ADD are out there, but for the spiritual person, especially Christians (Evans is a Presbyterian pastor), there are few sources for encouragement.

Balanced in his book, Evans shows his struggles were real, drawing him to question his gifts and wonder where God intended him to go. Through the help of a theater coach and a family who cared deeply for him, he learned how to manage his focus better.

Any person with ADD who can learn as Evans' learned to focus will see improvement in his or her job, relationships and internal life. Anyone with ADD or another LD issue knows the workplace is affected, but social (platonic) and romantic relationships are where the biggest hurts are felt. Jobs are easy to find. Friends and significant others are harder to replace. The pain of losing a job via ADD-related matters is minor when compared to losing a close friend.

The gift of this book didn't transform my life, but it did encourage me through the toughest diagnosis of my life. Like my friend realized, I needed to know other people could live successfully with ADD. Evans' shows it is a long road, but on the road is evidential growth.

I fully recommend this book.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

This is a well-written first person account of the LD experience. The author illustrates for the reader not only the academic difficulties experienced by the individual with LD, but also the effects of learning differently upon self-esteem, familial relationships and social relationships (often the pieces forgotten by us, the professionals). I feel that this book can be valuable for practicioners, parents and individuals with learning disabilities (particularly as they move throughout their lifespans and continuoulsy greet challenges unique to those with LD). Overall, this piece is well-written, difficult to put down and offers valuable insights that can benefit those who are LD and/or work with individuals with LD.

Reba C. Shaw's "Who Is Really Disabled" expresses the courage and fight of an individual despite society's belief that people who are disadvantaged cannot compete socially or intellectally. Thank you Ms. Shaw for sharing your story...everyone who reads this story will be inspired.

An inspirational and informative account of one woman's story of living with a disbility and the obstacles she and others have encountered trying to overcome the "Stereotype" of being labled as disabled. Her stories are funny yet thought provoking and inspirational. It makes us take a look at ourselves and how society views people who are disabled.. The Author also sends us all the message that at any given time , we could become either visually impaired or disabled while encouraging us to take nothing in this life forgranted,encouraging us to count our blessings, and to live life to the fullest.

The Irish storyteller describes the residents of a small town in interesting detail, with all their shortcomings and quirks. The difficulty with this book is that there are so many characters, it can be confusing. Binchy, after introducing most of them in the first part of the book, then spends a chapter on each one but it is easy to get lost. This tale seems more loosely connected than most of the author's wonderful stories. It's not a bad read, but definitely not her best.

Like some of her previous novels, Binchy offers a collection of stories from several different characters living in a small community, anchored by a beginning and end piece to tie them together. The idea is that we get to learn what's going on behind their facades, appreciate why some people seem cold, aloof, etc. This approach was far more effective in "The Evening Class," one of her best books, IMO. In that novel, you really got a sense of how several very different people came together for a shared experience.
In this case, the shared environment is Shancarrig, a one-horse backwater in central Ireland, a place that kids leave as soon as they can to go work in London factories. Like all of Binchy's settings, this one breathes so convincingly that you can picture the entire town in your mind as you read.
These individual stories, while interesting and full of her poignant realism, don't really go anywhere and in some cases seem shallow and forced. They also become somewhat repetitive. But in most cases, I felt like they all needed about 10 more pages to bring some kind of meaningful conclusion.
The ending, which was supposed to tie these threads together, also felt quite artificial and tacked on.
Despite the weaknesses in the overall plot integration, Binchy's style is always engaging. I think she could write a refrigerator manual and make the pages flow like music.

This Maeve Binchy book was just OK. I read and loved Tara Road, Scarlet Feather (my favorite) and Quentins. I think all of her books are a little slow and hard to get into at the beginning. The Copper Beech, however, never seemed to capture my attention. It was more character study than plot and I found it a little boring; not as rich and intriuging as her others I've read.

"The Copper Beech," by Maeve Binchy, is a loving portrait of a rural Irish village told through the lives of its ordinary town folk over a twenty-five year period from the mid-1940s to 1970. There are eight main characters and almost a whole village worth of other secondary characters. If there is one minor fault with this book, it is that readers may find it difficult to keep track of all the names and relationships. At the novel's core is a huge copper beech tree that stands in front of the old schoolhouse. At some moment in each character's story, this beech tree takes on an important role.

Each chapter is told from a different character's point of view, and each forms a delightful and complete story in itself. Subsequent chapters dealing with other characters' lives, manage artfully and subtly--often by mere happenstance--to reveal relevant information about previous characters and events. This new information makes the reader reevaluate and reassess what actually may have occurred in previous chapters. Thus the chapters intertwine artfully to create a unified whole. In addition, we manage to see many of the same events from entirely different perspectives.

Overall, this book was a very satisfying reading experience--a slow novel, with considerable emphasis on realistic character development. Binchy is a master storyteller. In this work, her prose is unpretentious and easy-going, giving the reader the experience of being there, in the village, hearing a series of stories told by a sage old timer. The author is at her best when she delves into the interior emotions of her characters--their hopes, dreams, insecurities, sorrows, fears, and disillusionments. But overall with this book, it is not the characters one falls in love with, but the town. In many ways this novel is a loving lament for a place and time that is vanishing all too quickly in this pace-paced modern world.

This is one of those rare novels that I did not want to end--I wanted the author to continue telling us about the lives of each and every person is Shancarrig and carrying their stories right up to the present day--obviously an impossible task. But the author did manage to put a satisfactory ending on this heart-warming tale, and I closed the last page with a profound feeling of peace, love for humanity, and a twinge of grief for the imaginary people of Shancarrig that I would visit no more.

What a delightful read this is! It's the story of the lives of the inhabitants of a tiny Irish village from the 50's onwards, with an emphasis on the pupils of the small village school. The three roomed school is built under the shade of a huge Copper Beech tree on which generations of children have carved their initials. The pupils range from the elite of the village, the Major's daughter, the solicitor's son and the daughter of the hotel owners, to the desperately poor offspring of the town dressmaker and the town drunk, with a few adults thrown in for good measure, such as the spinster who yearns for the young priest, the school teacher couple who can't have children of their own and the hotel owners who are trying to improve their social status. Add to the plot a covered up murder, a randy bachelor and a romantic wife who's looking for some extra spice in her life and it all makes for a good, meaty read which is difficult to put down. Maeve Binchy fans will love it!

Having a child with special needs, it was comforting to read a memoir of what another has gone through dealing with this situation; the ups, the downs, the good, the sad. Also loved the last chapter. It is written by her daughter. That was very moving. When I finished the book I was encouraged for the future!

As the mother of a 10 year old with learning differences -- and yes, that IS what we refer to them as in 2007 -- I felt as if I was reading my own story. Denial. Fear. A drive to *cure* my child, who cannot be cured. Sometimes describing him to others in terms of his disabilities, instead of as the incredible, talented person that he is. Buchman doesn't have any answers; there ARE NO ANSWERS. But it is tremendously helpful to read about her feelings and her journey, to know that we're not alone.

Some comments have criticized Ms. Buchman for using her considerable financial resources to help her child, or have indicated that her story cannot be universalized because of her wealth. That's simply not true. Buchman points out that she had her daughter evaluated by the NYC Dep't of Education, and that she was receiving resources from them. In fact, Charlotte's high school, Churchill, accepts DOE funding, and I believe that a substantial percentage of its students are placed there with tuition paid by the DOE. The LiPS program that Charlotte took in California is also now available throughout the world. Finally, one poster criticized Buchman for not insisting that her daughter be mainstreamed. While my son is mainstreamed, its not one size fits all. Most of the parents I know who have children with more extreme learning differences, like Charlotte, prefer a special school, where all of the teachers know about learning differences, and are specially trained to deal with them.

This was an inspiring ,and eye opening exploration of the problems of children with special needs. It's a "must read" for both the parents of such children, and all who need positive inspiration during these troubled times!

I could relate to Buchman's experience as a mother, as a mother of a disabled child. I think all of us have gone through similar emotions and struggles. What was distracting for me - and perhaps I missed the point of the book because of it - was how easy it is for wealthy people like Dana Buchman to get prompt and expert help for their children. In fact I am resentful of the fact that I can't afford THE BEST therapy treatments for my daughter at this time, and we have no nanny, specialists, or private schools TO CHOOSE. So you see it is not really a choice at all. While learning disorders and disabilities can effect ALL children, SOME parents and children have MORE OPTIONS to deal with it. The rest of us have that much more suffering to go through.

Although I found this to be an interesting book, even with all of the assets behind these parents, they never discovered the importance of creeping and crawling for brain development.

The rich resource of The Institutes For The Achievement of Human Potential near Philadelphia that would have shown them how to better help their daughter was missed.

I believe Dana said her daughter did not crawl, but she never seemed to find out or understand how critical creeping and crawling are to brain development.

The Institutes would have taught her that, either though direct benefit of their program at the Institutes or doing the program at home, and making use of their many books and other educational materials, specifically Glenn Doman's superb book What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child, which was published for the first time in January 1974, with several updates since then and available here on Amazon.

It sems that an intensive search trying to help her child would have turned up this world renowned Institute, which has programs not just for the brain-injured child, but also for the well baby. If you want to help your child or grandchild, please see these resources I have mentioned and read their books.

The Institutes books, programs and materials will help by far more than this book, which really seemed to show the parents in a better light than they probably deserved.

They didn't seem to make an all out effort to help their daughter because they were so busy with their careers and head in the sand approach.

The most unfortunate thing then is that Dana's book about Learning Disabilities was written without being able to point parents and educators to this rich resourch of The Institutes For The Achievement of Human Potential. (see [...])

Please look [...] up on the web and here on Amazon, their founder Glenn Doman for all of his superb books, which I can't recommend enough----especially over this one which offers little concrete help for the parent, grandparent, or educator who needs all the help available.

On occasion--not predictably, too infrequently--one's world is made larger by a character from one's reading.
I do know J. Blue; I do know The Little Prince; I do know Elliot Rosewater. . .and now, thanks to this remarkable ballad, I know Miss Amelia Evans.

but I think you do yourself a disservice if you overlook her bemusement. Take these lines for instance:

People were torn between the longing for the good taste of pork, and the fear of death. It was a time of waste and confusion.

Pretty concise if you ask me. And, by the way, Mofo Moron- did you really need to go to college and read a book before you came to the conclusion that it was alright for you to hop in the sack with your cousin? The shortest distance between two points is, after all, a straight line.

The title novella of this Carson McCullers collection is much loved, although I'd be hard-pressed to explain why. It takes place in a small Georgia milltown in the first half of the century, and involves a love triangle concerning a gay hunchbacked gossipy dwarf; his cousin, the six-foot-two, cross-eyed, androgynous town despot, Miss Amelia; and her ex-husband, who robs gas stations and carries in his pocket a salted human ear he gained in a razor fight. Like the short stories and the later plays of Tennessee Williams, this novella seems to go beyond mere Southern Gothic to yet another level, more like that of what we might call Southern Baroque or Rococo; McCullers seems to be pushing herself constantly as far as she can go. It's not enough for McCullers, for example, that Miss Amelie likes to fidget with the gallstones she once had removed that she keeps in a curio case: later she has them set in a watch fob to give to her beloved cousin the hunchback. The larger (and intelligent) points McCullers makes in the novella about the nature of love, particularly concerning the roles of the lover and the beloved, seem occulted rather than clarified by the freakshow approach to the characters.

This is a shame, because McCullers is certainly intelligent, and she certainly can write, as she shows not only by her gorgeous descriptions of setting in his story but also in the fine shorter pieces here that follow the title novella. I'd recommend starting elsewhere with her fiction than this novella: here she just seems trying to top herself with outlandish details and effects rather than strive for something more honest.

Read this one years and years ago and it has never left me. It is absolutely haunting. It examines a side of love in a way most of us do not consider. This short story is indeed filled with some very strange characters, as one reviewer pointed out, yet if we look close, we can see these same characters float through our lives daily. I am not sure what is meant by the work being "art." I do know a good story when I read one though and this certainly fits the bill. The author is a true teller of stories. Recommend this one highly.

I was first turned onto Carson McCullers in a southern lit class in college. Sad Cafe was required reading, and one of the best stories I read that whole semester. I found myself reading it again and again because I just liked the way the story sounded in my head. McCullers has such a simple technique for description and writing. It's so easy to understand, and it stays with you. Unlike a lot of stories, it's uncluttered and her writing is the bare soul of her characters.

Beware, if you are new to southern lit you might want to know a few tips...stories are usually a tragedy, the characters are usually flawed emotionally and often physically, and setting plays a huge part of the story. Don't forget language either. Carson McCullers captures the true essence of all of these in her writing. Sad Cafe is no exception.

It is a story that stays with you in some way. I know it has definitely stayed with me. I find myself wanting to pick it up again and again. Whether you are from the South or not, don't miss out on this beautiful and haunting piece of literature.

The book that I ordered came on-time and in great shape. I couldn't have asked for an easier transaction.

If you do have ADD, this book won't keep your attention for five minutes. I do agree with the author's premise that ADD is just a way of being that is "different", and even advantageous in certain situations, instead of "wrong", "defective", or "sick". However this book is not the self-help manual I was expecting. Instead it is full of tedious and repetitive analysis of the supposed evolutionary roots of ADD and technical discussions of the specific genes that supposedly contribute to a tendency towards ADD. This may be of interest to some but is not the best choice for an ADDer looking for practical strategies to improve their life. I resolutely plowed through the first couple of chapters, but after seeing that it was going nowhere just skimmed the rest of the book. A couple of books that I have found more helpful are ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life and Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder.

I had high hopes for this book. It sounded like such a great idea. It really is, but would have been much better summarized in a magazine article. You get the gist from the back cover. Most of the book is either the author touting how he is responsible for coining the phrase and that anyone else is only borrowing it from him; or is a lesson on the ice age and climatology - neither of which I wanted to shell out $20 for, not to mention my precious time.

There is a lot to learn about ADHD. This is a good place to start.
Children grow so fast, they have to live with our choices, let us all work hard to help make them happy adults.

Loved it. Easy to read and fascinating new info. you won't find in other books on this topic

There were times that I enjoyed reading Thom Hartmann's "Healing ADD" and other times that I felt cheated. It is strange that one book could move me in such a way. I could resonate with some of the less technical material, perhaps more towards the books beginnings. I loved the quotes he used to begin each chapter. Words about the ambiguous ways we define "normal" as a people were welcome, for I have had those thoughts as well. Technical advice from later chapters, however, were completely lost on me. I tried to conceive of my brain as a highly-technical camera, zooming in, zooming out, contorting the image, adding smoke, mirrors, and some groovy music, but it did nothing for me. I am glad I didn't get a head ache through it all!

I am coming at the problem only late, having been diagnosed in mid-life. I am open to what the so-called "self-help" books have to say, especially the experiences of the people who write them.

The book is easily readable, and you will be more blessed if you have a the creative imagination that I don't have. Again, I cannot say enough about the material which came across as a good pep talk, material which was easily comprehensible. It was the more complicated, multi-layered concepts I could not get my head around.

I say, "give it a try".

You really need to be careful when reading this book. Understandingly, people facing the challenges of ADD/ADHD are stressed out and overly receptive to a voice like Hartmann's. Strangely unprofessional, Hartmann offers a "soft ball" lob to those looking for a feel good camp-fire-like discussion of the challenges of ADD/ADHD. This is not a productive way to approach these challenges. Overcoming these challenges takes discipline, a manner of thinking totally absent in Harmann's writing. I would go so far as to say that the author's writing style, the manner in which he presents his ideas, and the thinking behind those ideas represents the worst, rather than the most optimal aspects, of traits associated with ADD. Beware.

Thom Hartmann has written a series of books related to ADD/ADHD.

They all are wonderful easy to understand and useful books.

They introduce a powerful perspective to those labeled ADD/ADHD. ADD/ADHD, being based on labeling behaviors is challenged in many ways by these books of Hartmaan's.

Thom Hartmann's books provide a useful tool to help people recognize the psychological coping mechanism that are associated with ADD patterns of behavior. This was very helpful to me since I am not ADD/ADHD and had no idea how to relate or what I was relating to!!!

This book Healing ADD gave me some useful tools for me and my daily life! That alone was worth the cost of the book!

Bottom-line these books helped several people I know and love.

So this review is one of a personal point of "been there done that!" I learned much as did my family and friends.

These books of his help!!!

Yours in good health

nieema

This book is an amazing self-improvement resource; only rarely does a book impress me, but... I'm impressed!

Hartmann has an extremely engaging writing style, and displays great deftness in walking a very narrow path; most books gravitate toward either theories that are interesting but engender no action, or strident calls to action that would do a nagging parent proud.

Instead, his phrases twist, and turn, and *slide* through that narrow gap, right past all sorts of carefully-developed defenses, and inspire the amused reader to actually TRY some of the exercises he suggests. For some of us, believe me, that's no small task! As an added bonus, this book is also the best USEFUL quick-and-dirty introduction to NLP I've seen... I've toyed with experimenting with my internal programming before, and even seen some useful results when guided by a friend that's proficient in it, but Hartmann's descriptions and exercises immediately made sense and intrigued me.

An example - he talked of how most of us have a spatial representation of time, and picture the future extending in one direction and the past in another. Those with a less-than-functional internal sense of time have usually shifted them to a less-than-useful location and sure enough, I found my own representation to be within reason but somewhat skewed. After trying the associated mental exercise in the book, I suddenly found myself getting up, two mornings in succession, the *first* time my alarm went off - usually I'd hit "snooze" for at least an hour. As if that weren't enough, on the third day my alarm clock failed... the outlet was bad, and the alarm didn't go off. I STILL woke up at the appropriate time. This is fascinating stuff; next I'm going to play with resetting some old anchors and creating some new ones.

Whether you consider yourself to have ADD, consider yourself not to, or think it's just a negative label created to minimize people who shake things up a bit, this book is worth a read. Doubly so if you're an iNtuitive Perceiving personality type; it's a quick, entertaining, and very likely useful read... well worth a try in my book!

I found this book very interesting and useful from many different perspectives.

It gave me a better understanding of those who are diagnosed or labeled as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and the issues faced by these people. In particular, I liked the idea of looking at ADD as `a normal and natural part of the spectrum of human behavior, and that it is not as useful in modern society as it may have been in the past'. That is, a person diagnosed with ADD has characteristics more like a hunter compared to the rest of the population who are more like farmers.

This is an excellent book for students of NLP to see how NLP can be used to assist those who have been diagnosed as ADD. This however is also a short-coming of the book for those readers who have not studied NLP.

The NLP techniques and concepts, presented in this book, are adequately described for anyone who has been trained in NLP. Thus, NLP practitioners can easily use these simple and elegant techniques with their ADD clients and achieve outstanding results. However, for those readers who have not studied NLP, my concern is that the techniques are not presented in sufficient detail nor with the full understanding as to why or how they will assist a person diagnosed as ADD. Thus, some of these readers may feel the techniques are too simple or even flaky.

I stayed in the Inn that this book is based on which is where I heard about it. After purchasing it from Amazon, I couldn't put it down. If you like mystery novels, I would certainly recommend it.

I just finished this book and loved it! I really enjoyed the weaving of the past with the present. Also, I thought I knew who was responisble for the murder, but I was surprised. I think the book was an excellent read! I have to wonder what is wrong with the people who gave it a one and tossed it before they could finish. I can't imagine that we read the same book.

I liked this one. It's the story of an old house that has a history of brutal murder and suicide. Seventy years later a young couple purchases it with plans to restore both it and their marriage. The town, however, is not very receptive to their new neighbours and the search for the truth of the house's history begins.
Great characters make the book enjoyable and entertaining. The ending could have used a little bit more but overall it was a good read, with a little comedy but little spook.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I appreciated the attempt at intertwining two mysteries, separated by nearly one hundred years, into a single conclusion. Unfortunately, each character that I was introduced to, both present and past, rang hollow and flat and incapable of holding my attention. Each were little more than cliches that evoked neither care or concern from me. The "special" child, the uncaring & absentee father, the strong yet naive mother, the attractive yet emotionally stunted handyman. None of the characters ever swam in waters deeper than a desert stream.

I had hoped to be shocked, frightened or at least concerned while reading this book. Unfortunately, bored was as far as I got.

I loved, loved, loved, loved, love, loved it! It's a story that takes place in two different times. Each chapter is either in the present or in the past and the way time slides back and forth is just way,way, way cool. It's perfect for a nice summer read or even for rainy days. Kept me turning page after page after page. But I recommend you do not read it at night. Although it doesn't seem scary as you read it...you get absolutely spooked out when night comes...