Specific Disabilities Books

Clarissa Willis' CREATING INCLUSIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN offers a host of research-based techniques for helping kids thrive in early childhood settings, from targeted strategies and activities to building relationships with peers. Preschool and kindergarten teachers receive all the tools needed to work with a range of disabilities from autism and vision loss to sensory disorders. A key pick for education libraries.

This brilliant book changed my life. It made me understand what teachers go through. It helped me address my own teaching challenges.

This book is an essential resource for both special education and general education professionals who work with families of children from culturally diverse backgrounds who also have a disability. The book provides an excellent analysis of culture, race and ethnicity and how these constructs may influence a family's response to working with their child with a disability and with the school system. If you think the family you are working with has been cooperative and complacent, you may want to give this book a read. There may be something else going on!

Parents are the ones who know their child(ren) best. Any information that people can acquire to help children facing special needs is welcomed and appreciated. This book is such a teaching tool. It helps dispel the tiresome cliche of "Rain Man." Sadly, many of the personal accounts show that many people's working knowledge of autism was confined to that fictional character with savant abilities. Savantism applies to roughly less than 10% of the autistic population and has ironically become a stereotype for people with autism. This book helps move beyond "Rain Man," which does not apply to most people on the autism/Asperger's spectrum.

This is one of the most heartwarming, uplifting litany of successes I have had the good fortune and pleasure to read. Ms. Stehli, whose own daughter, Georgiana was labeled "autistic" is a shining beacon of success. Now married and a mother, Georgiana was nonverbal until the age of four despite having mastered all other milestones within normal age limits. She had hyper acute hearing and literally had to learn how to synthesize her senory modes. Fluent in six languages, Georgiana is an advocate of Auditory Integration Therapy (AIT) and is also an author on the subject. Her book, "Overcoming Autism" is currently available on her web site. It is one of the best books to date on the subject of autism.

AIT is a science that is targets auditory processing challenges and, from all accounts, aims to work with clients to gradually integrate what they hear into manageable units; e.g., individual words and/or sounds at one time. AIT also helps people concentrate without being distracted by other sensory modes. A Dr. Berard has made AIT a recognized science and this book, "Dancing in the Rain" brings his work to the lay reader. This book is truly a song to the soul, a cheer to the conscience and a voice of encouragement. This book is the voice of hope for many.

Autism and related neurological disorders such as Aspergers and PDD are fully explained in Ms. Stehli's works. Unfortunately for many, "autism" and "schizophrenia" have been used as "waste basket" or catch-all labels for persons who fit no defined criteria. One costly misperception that persisted until recent years was that autism is a mental illness, which it most emphatically is not.

Another highly damning and judgmental perjorative is the word "perseverate" in any tense. While many professionals, parents included might find it to be a helpful shorthand, it is truly a negative and destructive word that has hurt many. The terms "repetitive verbalizations and/or behaviors" and "special interests" are preferable as they speak to tolerance. This book helps to undermine labels and focus on integrating people with a myriad of behaviorial as well as neurological challenges back into the mainstream.

Based on Dr. Berard's writings, autism and its related behaviors are often a curious response to an overload of sensory input. Georgiana describes AIT as literally saving her life and the stories chronicled in this book make a very strong case for AIT indeed. In reading Dr. Berard's writings, one can see that his findings certainly do appear valid; other persons once thought of as autistic such as Raun Kaufman ("Son-Rise") seem to share the challenge of sorting out sensory input.

I feel this book is quite helpful and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This book provides an abundance of sound strategies for helping studnets with special needs.

Extremely comprehensive review of Social Policy in the UK. Well written and flows well. This book is a must for anyone involved in disabilty anywhere.

Titchkosky gives readers an insider's perspective on living with disability. Disability, Self, and Society is filled with engaging(and even amusing) anecdotes about herself (a dislexic professor)and her partner (a blind professor)living in a small university town. By way of these stories Titchkosky shows how the social ordering of everyday life - from our expections about what is "normal" to the physical design of streets and buildings - shapes the experience and meaning of disability. This book is a "must read" for all academics concerned with social equality as well as for all of us who are, or will be, touched by disability (if only in old age).

This book is written for a 11-13 age group, not the baby-preschool audience promoted by Amazon. It is a book I use at the beginning of every school year with grade 7 (12-13 year old) students because there is an excellent teaching package based on Bloom's Taxonomy available, and it focusses on student diversity and building friendships. The book received The Canadian Childrens Book Centre Choice Award for its wonderful story line that focuses a wheelchair bound boy's coming to terms with the new challenges that face him every day.

This is a wonderful book for a child with dyslexia after you get to college. This has a lot of helpful information. I need a book on how to get to college and then apply this book.
Thanks

It is refreshing to find a book devoted to the experiences of dyslexic adults, since much of the available literature focuses on children. The Dyslexic Adult in a non-dyslexic world was a welcome addition to my bookshelf. It is eminently readable and combines an `academic' understanding of the issues with down-to-earth examples based on interviews with dyslexic adults. I particularly liked the fact that it gave a `voice' to many people who have previously been ignored; namely, those adults whose dyslexia was not identified at school. Their stories, told through their own words, are well integrated into the various themes of the book. As the parent of an adult dyslexic son, I was able to identify my son's experiences with many of those described by the interviewees.

This book presents a realistic view of the problems and difficulties encountered by many dyslexic adults, but gives a balanced account by also exploring the many strengths which dyslexic adults may possess. It should appeal to a wide range of readers, including non-dyslexic members of the dyslexic adult's family, teachers, employers, friends and, perhaps most importantly, to dyslexic adults themselves.