Recommended Reading

Taking Hold: My Journey Into Blindness

by Sally Hobart Alexander

For grades 6-12. Alexander’s story of her adjustment to blindness reads like a gripping suspense novel. She was a perfectly healthy third-grade teacher when she first noticed a black line flit across her eye and disappear. After a series of doctor appointments, temporary vision losses, and hospital stays, she gradually realized that at some point she would be completely blind. She began to learn Braille and eventually checked into a center to learn new life skills. Her emphasis is not on the hospitals and the rehab center but on coming to grips with her disability and all the accompanying emotions of fear, anger, despair, and acceptance. Her rocky relationship with her boyfriend is realistically and poignantly portrayed. Since the ending downplays the serious obstacles she has yet to face, the story is uplifting, and readers will find the pages turning quickly.

Although intended for a much younger audience, Alexander’s Mom Can’t See Me (1990), in which life with a blind mother is described by her nine–year–old daughter and shown in photos by George Ancona, may interest readers of this autobiographical account. Susan DeRonne Copyright © 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Father Carroll

Blindness: What it is, What it does and How to Live with It

by Fr. Thomas J. Carroll

Transcripts of Father Carroll’s BVA Speeches

Transcripts for all of Father Carroll’s speeches given to the Blind Veterans Association are now available through our website for download in Microsoft Word format. See a list of all available transcripts.

Books for Providers, Consumers and Parents

Cooking with Feeling…and other useful senses

by Deborah DeBord

Deborah DeBord, an experienced blind cook, shares 180 adaptive culinary techniques for the visually impaired in her handsome cookbook entitled “Cooking with Feeling … and other useful senses.” Not only does this cookbook contain favorite recipes from such renowned cookbooks as “The New Basics Cookbook,” “Moosewood Cookbook,” and “Country Gourmet Cookbook,” it also describes, in detail, absolutely every adaptive technique you will need as a blind cook. You’ve never had this much fun in the kitchen! Available in Braille (5 volumes) or large print. Book description from www.amazon.com.

Facing the Wind: a manual for teaching blind and visually impaired persons to sail

by Arthur O’Neill

This is a how to publication, designed for sighted persons to introduce the art and science of sailing a boat to persons who are blind. It addresses the very basics, including how to guide a blind person on the dock, into the boat, rigging the boat, simple adjustments and under sail.

Videation-Spatial Relationships

By Robert Amendola

Robert Amendola was one of the “originals” at Avon Farms, Connecticut developing the methodology for rehabilitating the newly blinded WWII veterans. Trained as an artist, a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and Yale’s graduate School of Fine Arts, Amendola had been drafted to work on airplane engine design at Pratt Whitney, Connecticut during the wartime effort. On weekends, he drove to Avon Farms to assist Father Carroll with the young veterans. Out of these experiences Amendola developed exercises and a curriculum on keeping one’s recollections of imagery alive and using sound cues to orient one’s self in a new environment. Ultimately, Amendola wrote these into a series of lesson plans. This book is the culmination of the years of work with the hundreds of veterans, and later the newly blind adults who came to the St. Paul’s rehabilitation center that Father opened in 1954. Amendola and Fr. Carroll called this new course in sensory development, Videation, which they defined as what you would see if you could see, using non visual information to perceive the immediate environment in your mind’s eye.

Sensory Development

By Nancy Campbell

Nancy came to the Carroll Center as a trained art therapist hoping to contribute to the rehabilitation of newly blind persons. As Amendola was nearing the end of his career, timing was perfect. Amendola worked with Nancy to impart his techniques and methodology. Nancy in turn developed her own lesson plans based on Amendola’s pioneering work. Her lesson plans are divided into three booklets: a discussion of Sensory Training, Mapping, and Selected Exercises. These books are her lesson plans.

Dancing in the Dark: A Guide to Living With Blindness and Visual Impairment

by Frances Lief Neer

Neer suffered from low vision throughout her life and eventually became blind. Just as she lost her sight totally, her adult son died and left her his 13–year–old daughter to raise. So Neer’s story about coping––how to travel, shop, socialize, read and write, and run a household––has information for people of all ages. Neer talks like an old friend about attending plays, cooking for dinner parties, becoming street savvy, and, literally, dancing in the dark. Her upbeat, practical tone would prove a blessing for anyone dealing with sightlessness. Denise Perry Donavin, Booklist, Copyright © May 1, 1994, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Equals in Partnership: Basic Rights for Families of Children with Blindness or Visual Impairment

Produced jointly with the Hilton/Perkins Foundation, this parent handbook is a comprehensive compilation of educational advocacy materials to help parents better understand the special needs of their children with visual impairments and to assist them in accessing appropriate services for their children. It provides practical information about federal special education law pertaining to parents; and childrens’ rights. The steps and process to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) are given, as well as documents and articles written by specialists in the vision field. The book was compiled and written by Pamela Crane, Diana Cuthbertson, Kay Ferrell, PhD., and Hazel Scherb. 166 pp. 1997. Book description courtesy NAPVI
h3. Ordinary Daylight: A Portrait of an Artist Going Blind

by Andy Potok

This is the story of Potok’s remarkable odyssey out of despair. He attempts to come to terms with his condition: learning skills for the newly blind, dealing with freakish encounters with the medical establishment, going to London for a promised cure through a bizarre and painful ?therapy? of bee stings. He wrestles with the anguish of knowing that his daughter has inherited the same disease that is stealing his own eyesight. And then, as he edges ever closer to complete blindness, there comes the day when he recognizes that the exhilaration he once found in the mix of paint and canvas, hand and eye, he has begun to find in words. Book description from www.amazon.com.

Planet of the Blind

by Stephen Kuusisto

A masterful coming out story in which the author’s secret life involves not sexuality but blindness. Kuusisto, with a condition of the retinas that left him legally blind at birth, was raised by parents who denied his handicap. Consequently, he grew up disavowing his blindness and pretending to be able to see much better than he really could. He sees, he writes” through smeared and broken windowpanes, his impressions of the world “at once beautiful and largely useless.” A ridiculed child, at first obese and later anorexic, he developed a love for words, especially poetry. Despite his limitations, he graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, was a Fulbright scholar in Finland, and taught creative writing at Hobart College for seven years. When that job ended, Kuusisto, alone, unemployed, and desperate, found himself face–to–face with the undeniable fact of his blindness, and he at last reached out for the help he’d always needed. After accepting the stigmatizing white cane of the blind that he had rejected ten years earlier, and learning to relish the safety and mobility it gave him, he moved on to Corky, a guide dog that changed his life entirely. Today, Kuusisto is director of student services for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a training school where the blind are matched with guide dogs and trained to use them. He no longer pretends he can see what others see; at age 39, he says, he has chosen to be blind ``in a forceful way.’’ Although portions of this memoir have appeared in various literary magazines (Antioch Review, Harper’s, etc.), the presentation here is seamless. An astonishing, occasionally dismaying, and sometimes heart–breaking glimpse of life on the planet of the blind. (Author tour) –– Copyright © 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sight Unseen

by Georgina Kleege

Georgina Kleege describes first–hand the daily experience of visual impairment and how it has affected not only her view of the world but also the world’s view of her. She considers a wide range of issues that affect the blind, including stereotypes in fiction and film, education, and social status. Book description from www.amazon.com.

To Love This Life: Quotations

by Helen Keller

With a forward by former president Jimmy Carter, and a preface by Keller Johnson–Thompson, the great–grandniece of Helen Keller, To Love This Life is an inspirational work that offers the penetrating and memorable observations of Helen Keller, one of the world’s most admired heroes and a woman who above all wanted to make a difference ion the lives of her fellow men and woman. Reflecting the main facets of her personality, this varied collection of quotations reveals Helen Keller in her entirety–the determined woman who became a symbol of indomitable strength in the face of diversity, and who was an acute and sensitive observer of human nature and the world around her.

The quotations–many from previously unpublished letters and speeches–are accompanied by 18 photographs from the Helen Keller Archives at the American Foundation for the Blind, the organization to which Keller dedicated more than 40 years of her life. Offering profound statements on the meaning of being human and on life in all of its complexity, this enlightening work reveals the eloquence, wit, and insight of an exceptional individual. To Love This Life is a book for those interested in social justice and human rights, and anyone moved by the courage of the human spirit. It will also be available as an audiobook narrated by Patty Duke, known for her stunning portrayal of the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. Book description from AFB Press.

Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness

by John M. Hull

Shortly after John Hull went blind, after years of struggling with failing vision, he had a dream in which he was trapped on a sinking ship, submerging into another, unimaginable world. The power of this calmly eloquent, intensely perceptive memoir lies in its thorough navigation of the world of blindness –– a world in which stairs are safe and snow is frightening, where food and sex lose much of their allure and playing with one’s child may be agonizingly difficult. As he describes the ways in which blindness shapes his experience of his wife and children, of strangers helpful and hostile, and, above all, of his God, Hull becomes a witness in the highest, true sense. Touching the Rock is a book that will instruct, move, and profoundly transform anyone who reads it. Book description from www.amazon.com.

Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man’s Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye Can See

by Erik Weihenmayer

In this moving and adventure–packed memoir, Weihenmayer begins with his gradual loss of sight as a very young child. By the time he became fully blind in high school, he had already developed the traits that would carry him to the summits of some of the world’s highest mountains as well as onto the frequently hazardous slopes of daily life: charm, resilience, a sense of humor, a love of danger and a concern for others. His eloquent memoir exhibits all these traits. Weihenmayer––a thrill seeker who skydives, climbs mountains and skis––devotes the first half of the book to his adolescence, punctuated by his loss of sight, his mother’s sudden death and his diligent efforts not only to pick up girls, but first to figure out which ones were attractive. With its many tales of pranks, adventures and the talents of his guide dog, this half alone is worth the price of admission. He goes on to chronicle his young adulthood, including his teaching career and his passion for climbing, seeded during a month–long skills camp for blind adolescents and blossoming on his harrowing ascent of Mount McKinley. He describes fearsome ascents of Kilimanjaro––with his fiancée, so they can be married near the crater summit––El Capitan and Aconcagua’s Polish Glacier. Weihenmayer tells his extraordinary story with humor, honesty and vivid detail, and his fortitude and enthusiasm are deeply inspiring. With the insightful intimacy of Tom Sullivan’s classic If You Could See What I Hear and the intensity of the best adventure narratives, Weihenmayer’s story will appeal to a broad audience. Book description from www.amazon.com.

Voices: Interview with Handicapped People

by Michael D. Orlansky and William L. Heward

This 263 page book describes interviews with children and adults who have a variety of disabilities.

Books for Children

Louis Braille: The Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind

by Margaret Davidson

Blinded at the age of 3, Louis Braille developed a superb memory that enabled him to do well in school. But that wasn’t enough––Louis wanted to read. Finding the alphabet impractical, he invented the raised dot alphabet, Braille, now used throughout the world. Book description from www.amazon.com.

My Friend Jodi is Blind

Published by the Lighthouse, Inc., this is a 15–page booklet for elementary age children about playing and learning with a child who is blind. In black and white, can be used as a coloring book.

The Night Search

by Kate Chamberlain

This is the story of a little girl who discovers the need for using her white cane. Available in print or twin vision book (Braille and print).