Lindsey Carriker

This book focuses mostly on children, more specifically school aged, with hearing loss that use BTE hearing aids with an FM system. This book also focuses more on hearing loss within the school rather than at home or socially. This is most likely because the book is written by an educational audiologist who wrote this for her students in school. The recommended age and reading level are not on Amazon and I couldn’t find one posted anywhere. I am surprised that a children’s book would not have a recommended age or reading level, since most children’s books do. In my opinion I think this book would be appropriate for kindergarten to first grade age children. The lesson of this book is to teach children with hearing loss what they can do to better advocate for themselves in the school environment. It goes through many different scenarios that can occur at school and what the child can do to better advocate for what they need or take responsibility for their learning. Some of the scenarios in this book are social so it explains what a child can do to explain their hearing loss to their friends as well as their hearing aids. There are a few examples outside of the school that are included as well. One of the great things that this book adds is an illustration of a hearing aid care kit and names all of the pieces included. There is a FM troubleshooting checklist which would be very useful for a child in classrooms. Lastly, my favorite thing about this book is that the last two pages are spaces for the child to draw themselves being a boss of their hearing loss and a space to list how they are the boss of their hearing loss. Although this lesson is conveyed well, there are some things that didn’t align with this purpose. There are some pages that seem to take the story out of first person and into third person as if talking to the parent. I found this to be a distracting addition that isn’t appropriate for a children’s book. I also wouldn’t want to read a book that was supposedly just for me but then occasionally spoke about me. For example, every page starts with “I’m the boss of my hearing loss because…”, but there are pages in red font that speak about the child. When explaining FM systems one quote is “The purpose of an FM system is to bring the teacher’s voice to the child’s ear.” This book’s whole premise is that “I am the boss of MY hearing loss” and then takes that lesson and completely negates it. The rest of the book is in first person for the child. The book doesn’t read as well as I would hope it would for children who are deaf or hard of hearing because of the lack of flow in the story. Due to these inconsistencies and how it reads, I would not recommend this book. Other than these few discrepancies, I did enjoy the story and lessons being taught. If this book was rewritten for only the child, then I would definitely recommend it. Of course, the information they provide to the parents is very important so I think a better way to go about getting them this information would be for this book to come with a parent version to include the other information that isn’t fitting for the child or the lesson they are trying to convey.