Specific Disabilities Books

This is a quality product full of accurate information. But still too hard for an LD student to take the time to read. Yet, this is the right book for the parents!

I got this product right away and my daughter and I started reading it as soon as we got it. She loves it. She will stop me when I am reading and tell me "Mommy, that is me." or "Mommy, I do that."
It is an easy to read and understand book.

The Fisher/Cummings series of books on dealing appropriately with LD in school is one of the best out there. In this particular book, aimed at elementary schoolers, they demystify LD and help kids develop personal coping strategies for success in school and in life. Children with developmental or emotional disorders might also benefit from the authors' casual, spot-on approach to doing what must be done in a world where you've been labeled as different.

Now in a revised and updated edition, The Survival Guide For Kids With LD* (*Learning Differences) by University of Nevada-Reno professors Gary Fisher and Rhoda Cummings, is a simply presented and easily accessible guide written especially for those dealing with children who have "learning differences". Emphasizing that having one of the many kinds of learning disabilities or cognitive restrictions doesn't preclude a child from learning, from having friends, or from growing up to be a successful adult. The readable prose is packed with tips for dealing with teasing, providing encouragement, simple black-and-white artwork, study tips, and more. The Survival Guide For Kids With LD* is highly recommended reading for parents, teachers, tutors, day-care staff members, -- and most especially, for kids ages 10 and up. Also highly recommended for teen readers is The Survival Guide For Teenagers With LD (0915793512; [$$$]); for parents, When Your Child Has LD (0915793873; [$$$]); and for educators, The School Survival Guide For Kids With LD (0915793326; [$$$]).

This book is a GREAT way for kids to learn about their own Learning Disabilities (the book calls them Learning Differences). I read this book to my son to help explain to him why he's noticing that he's different from some of the other kids in school. The book creates such a relaxed, non-threatening attitude about LDs, and asks some really great questions to help the kids see which LD(s) fit them. It addresses ADHD as well! It has picture drawings of kids having trouble in school that my son could really relate to! He was at once interested, urging me to read more and more, even though he was learning that he was in fact "different". What a wonderful tool for families and kids to learn about each other and themselves. It's a positive book about the harsh reality of LDs - and it's written specifically for kids! Do your child a favor - read this book with them! It will open up conversations and give you both the language and courage you'll need to tackle the days and years ahead!

I found this book to be helpful when working with a child who has Down syndrome.

Excellent resource for parents, teenagers with all types of disabilities, as well as repite providers, and teachers.

Excellent book.
Great pointers for parents of little ones with Down syndrome. As a parent of an adult with Down syndrome, I found the book to be excellent in discussing sexuality and body boundries.

Thank you for making it so easy for me to get the information I need to be the best parent I can be to my daughter who was born 15 years ago with Down Syndrome. Sometimes it feels like we are in a boat with no oars. When I find books like this that actually give me some insight it makes all the difference in the world. And right here on Amazon, I don't have to go out searching and searching.
This book is very easy to navigate and find the info I need help with. Just another way to approach things helps tremendously.
Thank you

Terri Couwenhoven's book is a terrific resource for parents and teachers of kids with Down syndrome and other disabilities (including autism). The book includes lessons to use when teaching kids about safe behavior and social relationships.

I can't remember ever reading anything quite as compelling. I'm not going blind nor do I have any cognitive disabilities. However, if you are a practicing meditator as I am and are interested in the nature of consciousness itself, you will be quite intrigued with this highly descriptive account of both the visual and non-visual aspects of perception. If this book doesn't inspire you to start thinking outside the box, nothing will. That been said, the average reader will find this to be an unforgettable, beautifully written book well worth reading. Highly recommended.

In place of the word "unsentimental" often used to describe this book I'd use "Lynchian", as in David. Blindness is just the starting-off point: The book is really a luxuriant journey into the *other* four senses and the heightened reality one begins to feel -- for instance how the white noise of a sudden rain can throw your outdoor echolocation into turmoil and immobilize you at some random place. With all respect to anyone looking for a good book on the disability, this one is for the artists.

On the front cover Oliver Sacks is quoted: "Staggering. . . the most extraordinary, precise, deep, and beautiful account of blindness I have ever read." But this book is primarily a message of facing change and developing methods for coping. Of compensating, of reaching out, of accepting your plight and going forward. You sense the author's despair and frustration, but he manages to see his difficulties as challenges. He engages you in the struggles he faces and overcomes. After all, he has a wife and four children, he lectures and attends conferences. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter of all, for me, was how he faced giving a lecture when he could no longer read notes. He eventually learned how to write his speech in his mind so that he could simply read one page as the next ones were being formulated. I pictured it as something like the beginning of a Star Wars movie. John Hull has somelthing to teach us all.

Heard the taped version of TOUCHING THE ROCK by John
Hull, a moving memoir of a university lecturer who slowly
lost his vision over a period of several years . . . he recorded
his thoughts in a diary, and I must admit to being touched
about how both he and his family dealt with his
condition . . . even typing this brings teary thoughts to
mind . . . imagine having seen a child as a youngster,
then not being able to see her again as she grows up . . . or
never having seen another child from the time he was
born . . . it makes me want to hug my daughter, Risa . . . and
to appreciate all that I do have!

This book was given to me as a gift a few years ago, and while I am neither going blind nor am actually blind, I found many of the ideas and experiences and thoughts and feelings expressed in this book to be very similar to my own. I have some particular cognitive difficulties (prosopagnosia, often called "face blindness") which give me a rather different outlook on life from most people, and I was amazed to see just how much in common my outlook on life was when compared with the author's life experiences. Well, maybe I wasn't that surprized, but it was still an eye-opening (no pun intended) experience for me to read this book in that context.

Needless to say, I enjoyed this book very very much. It reads more like a personal journal or diary than an actual book, and that gives the whole book a very personal experience when reading it.

I was amazed what a page-turner this was, for a story so carefully documented. Even so I found myself frequently in the middle of a deep muse pondering what his story teaches us about communication, isolation and contingency, not to mention injustice stemming from racism and patriarchal attitudes toward the minority who communicate without speech. I noticed I was also learning a surprising amount about broader social and historical movements (American, southern, racial, psychiatric, deaf cultural, and more), without ever feeling bogged down. Truly impressive.

I learned much about the social movements that I've long found fascinating (reconstruction, Jim Crow South, the KKK), have been a part of (mental health, deinstitutionalization, disability rights & ADA) or been close to (deaf culture). How inspired of the authors to recognize that this one man's life story could illustrate so much modern American social history. I was profoundly moved by the suffering, silent dignity and enduring humanity of Junius Wilson. This is an elegant, revealing and vivid story.

i happpened to move to wilmington, n.c just when this story was coming to light in the press. i was gripped by the story and read every article that came out in follow up. when this book came out i had to have it.
to find out a deaf man was treated this way for a crime he did not commit is just.....well uspeakable.
the begining starts with a nice history of area and people. a lot of the begining is spectulaion and dead on at that. no one will ever know what junius' thoughts were in those early years. the story becomes more gripping when the facts start to arrive, via medical reports and staff and friends. it is truly a heartbreaking read. it still haunts me.
i recommend to everyone. the book is a nice piece of historical racial record. schools should add this to their curriculum.

Burch and Joyner have produced a wonderful example of what historical research can teach us. Mr. Wilson's story is heartbreaking but treated with respect and a gentle touch by this authors. The horrors experienced by this man speak for themselves and artfully told by these researchers and writers. This is a book that will appeal to many for many different reasons and leave all shaken. Perhaps it will also inspire others to help make the future brighter for others. I can think of no better use of historical facts than to improve the future.

It's a Southern horror story, and a courtroom drama, and an exploration of language and isolation, and a biography of an ordinary man caught in a senseless system. And it's all true. And it's frightening, and it's fascinating. It's the twentieth century US, through one man's story.

THis is a wonderful book. I knew Jami back in high school. We went to peer counseling camp together. She was just as she says, not very active. I am sure that today she is the same great spririted person I knew back when. She has survived and overcome.I read the book after seeing her on To Tell the Truth. I am proud to say that I know her. I truly recommend this book. It is quite a story of determination.

I was so shocked to know how she got both legs amputated. And I was so shocked to know that could happen to anybody. But her extraordinary strength of will to live gave me great courage to confront with my losses or unfortunates. While sensitively expressing a feminine part of her, she was also very competitive and eager to find her new life. Her optimism reminded me how profound our lives and possibilities are. This book will be a beautiful gift to share with all my precious friends. Thank you, Jami and Andrea.

Incredible personal narrative about what it's like to be average turned to handicapped turned to awesome source of power! I picked this book up in the library, reading back cover and was intrigued before looking at the picture on front cover and wondering, how? My brother is an amputee and I've witnessed first hand the strange way that people treat him, as an outsider from normal existance. Jami describes herself and the way others perceive her very clearly. This book is impossible to put down as you read about the terror of being stuck in a vehicle for 11 days and wondering why you haven't died yet. It is equally as difficult to put down as you read about Jami's determination to return to life as it was before the accident. This book is passionate, informed, relevant to today, romantic, inspirational, realistic, descriptive, adventurous, and well thought out. However, as a 7 months pregnant about to be first time mother, I do not recommend this book for readers under 18 years old.

As a single leg amputee I found it very easy to relate with a lot of the different trials and tribulations that Jami discussed in her inspirational story.I found on somedays not being able to put the book down just to see how she made it to the next step of her incredible journeys of adapting to her whole new world.It's also nice to know that no matter of ones differences from others, you are never alone.

This is the most amazing and inspirational story I have ever read.I read the book cover to cover. I couldn't put it down. I learned so much about living life to the fullest it made me excited about living again. I want to thank Jami for sharing her amazing journey with the world. I hope everyone gets the chance to read this wonderful book!

Aspergers Syndrome can drive a wedge between one and society... "Born on the Wrong Planet" thinks it can be enough that it may seem that the sufferer is not of this world and it's strange ways and customs. Author Erika Hammerschmidt speaks of her difficulties overcoming what many people find so easily overcome in their lives, but is an uphill battle due to her Aspergers and Tourettes syndromes. An inspirational tale, "Born on the Wrong Planet" is the perfect gift for any intermediate reader of a young age trying to cope with their own Aspergers.

Erika Hammerschmidt provides a wonderful autobiography which enables us to journey onto her "planet of Asperger Syndrome" to better understand what it feels like to live on the autism spectrum. This unique and wonderful insight about Asperger Syndrome is priceless. I would highly recommend this book for parents and educators of individuals (of all ages) on the autism spectrum especially those with Asperger Syndrome. I also think that the book provides a wonderful journey for others on the spectrum to read to see that they are not alone on this journey. By offering us this insight, Erika has opened doors of understanding for all of us as we interact together on this planet.

Thank you Erika!

Joanna L. Keating-Velasco, Author, A Is for Autism F Is for Friend: A Kid's Book for Making Friends with a Child Who Has Autism

After reading the book,I recommended it to everyone I know and don't know. It is a book you can't put down once you start. Erika has done a great job giving her life experiences that have helped me understand my son a little bit better. I have also seen her and her husband John speak in person and wow are they good. Any chance anybody gets to read the book and/or see them speak, you won't regret it. When's the next book coming out?

This is a quick read, and a fascinating book. It's a look at the world from the inside of a person with Asperger's Syndrome, Tourette's, and OCD. I found the book to be a real eye-opener, as I have a child who has PDD and may experience some of the same things as the author.

Until it happens to you, its probably hard to relate, but in this beautifully written book, Wendy Sand Eckel has done an outstanding job of showing the process an entire family will go through when a child is diagnosed with dyslexia.

From the inability of the typical educational system to cope, all the way through to the light at the end of the tunnel using specialized educational methods to confront and overcome the dyslexia, in Educating Tigers you have a fly-on-the-wall perspective of what happens to the family dynamic. Effective ways to deal with any learning disability become readily apparent as you make your way through this entertaining and enjoyable book. It's an easy read.

Drawing on her own background in family counseling, Wendy Eckel does a great job with this book. I learned so much, and highly recommended it.

I got a preview copy of Educating Tigers and once started, I couldn't put it down. WSEckel hits all the emotions that give a great read. If you feel like thinking, laughing, crying, and experiencing the feelings associated with family dynamics, give this a try. I'm already looking forward to the next one from this author.

To love and to learn is to read Educating Tigers, just as the Cunningham family draws from their love to face the complexity of their daughter Tiger's learning disability. It is a rich story - addressing the beautiful complexity of relationships and the urgent need for help for learning disabled children and the myths that can shame and frustrate families. Educating Tigers is compelling and engaging and challenging in an important way. I highly recommend it to anyone - parents, therapists, educators and relatives of a learning disabled child.

This is a fun story, despite the serious issues it raises. It is a common story among millions, but a story that has never been told so well. With up to 20% of the population affected by dyslexia (and 100% of those families!) this story should be read by every educator, by every parent of a child with a learning difference, and by every mother, no matter how "perfect" your child is. The story transcends dyslexia and reaches to the basic structure of families and relationships. On top of that, almost as a bonus, it seamlessly weaves in ten outstanding parenting tips in the form of chapter headers, which are original and worth the price of the book alone.

This book is more than information it's a Journey. I share my life with the reader though small stories of my life. These stories cover any things from not making the grade to man's best friend (Shelton in my case). After the stories is where the journey begins. Each story has a lesson for the reader to understand what I want them to take from the story, followed by a journal entry so you can apply what you have learnt. All these lesson are geared to show that we can overcome the daily challenges and find a path towards success. I only ask one thing of the reader is once your done with this book to hone your skills that you've learnt though this book and other ways. By doing that you will be further along in your pathway of success

This book is more than information it's a Journey. I share my life with the reader though small stories of my life. These stories cover any things from not making the grade to man's best friend (Shelton in my case). After the stories is where the journey begins. Each story has a lesson for the reader to understand what I want them to take from the story, followed by a journal entry so you can apply what you have learnt. All these lesson are geared to show that we can overcome the daily challenges and find a path towards success. I only ask one thing of the reader is once your done with this book to hone your skills that you've learnt though this book and other ways. By doing that you will be further along in your pathway of success

From CP to CPA: One Man's Triumph Over the Disability of Cerebral Palsy is an uplifting personal testimony of Robin Pritts drive to achieve his dreams and overcome barriers set in his path by having contracted Cerebral Palsy. Tracing his journey from a Special Education classroom to the University of Illinois where he successfully obtained CPA certification, From CP to CPA is a motivational and inspirational life journey which is very highly recommended reading for anyone having to cope with a life-altering disability, injury, or illness.

"My own path to success is not finished. I have many more dreams and goals to obtain before crossing the finish line. This is likely to be the same for you. Whether your dreams are for financial success, starting a new business, or just getting a job and starting your own family, no one can determine whether you've won or lost in this magical game of life-except yourself."
~ Rob Pritts, FROM CP TO CPA

Despite your disability, you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Despite your disability, you are a valuable and contributing member of society. Despite your disability, you are a unique and special individual the likes of which the world has never seen. Sound to good to be true? It isn't. That's the feeling you'll get while reading Rob Pritts' triumphant new self-help book, FROM CP TO CPA: One Man's Triumph over Cerebral Palsy.

As a popular and inspiring motivational speaker on the subject of disability awareness, Rob Pritts makes no apologies for the fact the he has cerebral palsy. And why should he? From the start, Rob has never let CP slow him down or throw up barriers in the way of his many hopes and dreams. From a self-contained Special Education classroom to the University of Illinois, where Rob obtained a Bachelor of Science degree, to obtaining the CPA certification, Rob's experiences have allowed him to excel into what his former teachers call a "Special Ed Success Story!"

And now that Rob has excelled at his life's ambitions, he is eager to share his positive philosophy with other people with disabilities in his new book: FROM CP TO CPA: One Man's Triumph Over Cerebral Palsy!

From special education teachers to their students, from corporate CEOs to frustrated housewives, from churches to colleges, Rob's message is the same: Don't be discouraged by the cards you've been dealt. Instead, make sure you've always got a winning hand by facing each day with a positive mental attitude-and a humble sense of gratitude.

Rob mixes personal stories of his life as a disabled child, student, graduate, and professional CPA with easy-to-digest lessons aimed at awakening the disability in us all. Followed by evocative journal prompts, FROM CP TO CPA becomes more than just a book, it evolves into an interactive journey through our very souls.

Reading Rob's book is not always easy. Whether you're disabled, or someone without a disability, facing up to your own misconceived notions or perhaps even prejudices is a direct result of Rob's illuminating prose and self-effacing humor. Yet I dare you to walk away from this book uninspired, and as such it makes the perfect tool for facing life more positively when you've been feeling down or uninspired.

In From Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones, Shari so poignantly describes the suffering she experienced as a learning-disabled child, yet her sense of humor and determination shine through. It jars the imagination to realize that a child deemed uneducable--even recommended for institutionalization--became a poised and gifted national lecturer with her master's degree in education!

Shari is one of those rare people whose speaking and writing incites a lump in the throat one moment, then bursts of laughter and cheers the next, all for a child who beat incredible odds. Her insights about educational methods that helped and hindered her will impact teachers and offer great hope to struggling students and the parents who love and guide them.

This book is excellent for revealing what is going on in the mind of a child who has learning issues. It's not just behavior (although it is always present, but never an excuse to associate as the cause for learning problems),there are valid medical tests that prove such. We are seeing more and more of these children with learning difficulities and we best be prepared with resource materials and an instructor who knows how to work with these children. Thanks Shari for sharing your life with us.

FROM STUMBLING BLOCKS TO STEPPING STONES by Shari Rusch Furnstahl was an
excellent well written book to give hope to young people and their parents who might be suffering from dyslexia, etc....and know that
you do not need to be discouraged...With determination you can succeed
and do well in life....This is a true story (and I personally know the
author)...

This author is authentic and the REAL DEAL, I was there. But what she did not know was that I was also ,and still am a medically 'special needs' individual whose life was made more brave by being a part of hers. This is a MUST READ handbook for any family with a child with 'less visible' or learning disabilities.

Mimi Gold has expertise and wisdom...and is willing to share it all! I have had the good fortune of working with Mimi and seeing her put her ideas into action. This book is a phenomenal assistant for anyone working with/living with children who require a little extra help. If offers activities and strategies to help students overcome challenges that can be extremely detrimental if not addressed. I highly recommend this book!!

Although I have no diagnosable learning disabilities, Ms Gold points out that we each learn in our own style, which can translate into stronger and weaker styles. Then she proceeds to inform on how to strengthen our weaker styles. This book is for everyone who is curious about the way we learn and for anyone who would like to strengthen their comprehension and learning speed. Great practical advice. Highly recommend. So interesting.

We recently found out our son has genius IQ, auditory processing problem and needs occupational therapy for his handwriting. Problem is, we live in Kuwait where there are no services in private schools. I ordered several books and this one has given me the most help to help him. We are working through it and he is reversing his b and d's less and learning organizational skills. So often it is assumed that kids know how to do all these things, but they need to be taught how. Thank you for putting together a sequential set of activities to help children. It is also written in an easy to understand way.

I have taught children with learning disabilities for many years and yet this book offers ways to reorganize my thinking about any student that struggles. It's not that I haven't thought about some of these things before, but this book reminds me to observe behaviors I sometimes overlook in the press of daily teaching chores. You know how special education teachers are always seeking ways "to change the brain". Well, it is apparent that it is also Ms. Gold's objective and she offers effective examples to get a teacher moving in the right direction to do this.