C. L. Reid

Emma is a cute, 8 year old girl with very cute dresses! She has a pet goldfish, loves tacos and likes to swim! And, the little girl is hearing impaired! She has a cochlear implant and communicates using American Sign Language.

The story is sweet - she's going to a friend's birthday party and is worrying. She gets there and everyone is friendly and the birthday party shenanigans ensue!

For one: ASL ALPHABET?! I am thoroughly impressed. This little piece of diversity and visibility makes me SO HAPPY. I think this would be a great tool for learning but just me as an adult taking in the information was cool. Words like "mermaids" are spelled out, which I thought was just super cool! At the back of the book there's different hand signals for common words kids would use, which I thought was super useful and cool as well.

My interesting question: would she sign when she talked to her fish?

I honestly hope more people pick up this book and give it a read. It's a sweet, little, picture book that will absolutely be a hit. It's sweet, quick to read and packed full of educational tools. ASL is something great to learn and to help little ones understand sometimes their friends are different than them. I truly hope I get to pick up more books featuring Emma so I can learn more about ASL.

Five out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Picture Window Books for giving me an opportunity to read this marvelous little book!… (més)

Emma, a fictional little deaf girl, uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate, in addition to having a Cochlear Implant. This book for very young readers explains what both of these are, and begins with a visual guide to the manual alphabet of ASL.

In the story, Emma’s dad is taking her and her friend Izzie to the apple orchard. Izzie has learned ASL in order to communicate with Emma. Throughout the book, some words are also shown in ASL.

The girls pick apples but they fell out of the tractor trailer on the way back from the orchard. Back at the farm’s store, the girls met Candy, the farmer’s daughter, also deaf. She gave them replacement apples. It was a perfect day.

At the end of the book there are illustrations of some ASL words, a glossary, and suggestions for discussion. We also learn that the author has been deaf-blind since childhood.

Illustrator Elena Aiello used a kid-friendly, cartoon-like style to create diverse characters in the book.… (més)

Easy readers are often overlooked in the search for diverse materials, which may be one reason why there just isn't much in that arena. However, those who specialize here should be familiar with Capstone Publishing, specifically their Picture Window imprint, which specializes in intermediate easy readers focusing on a wide variety of diverse characters, from ethnicity to disability.
This new series, Emma Every Day, presents a brown-haired white girl who is Deaf. She uses both sign language and a cochlear implant. The book opens with an introduction to the characters - Emma's parents and older brother, her best friend Izzy (Black), and her pet goldfish. She likes lots of typical 8 year old things, like reading and swimming. There's a manual alphabet for fingerspelling and a simple description of Emma as Deaf and using ASL and a Cl, both of which are written out.

The story is very simple, focusing on Emma and Izzy taking a trip with Emma's dad to the apple orchard. They learn that Farmer Bell has a daughter who is Deaf, pick apples, ride the wagon, and then there is a little confusion when their apples are spilled and spoilt and the Farmer says Candy will fix it - who turns out to be his daughter! The story includes several words in fingerspelling, and at the end there are some additional signs used in the book. There's a glossary and some discussion and writing questions.

One notable thing about Capstone's diverse offerings is their dedication to own voices. The author and illustrator bios at the back introduce C. L. Reid as a Deaf person, who uses both ASL and a Cl.

This is a higher level easy reader, 490 on the lexile scale, which would make it intermediate for my collection. It would appeal to readers who like other titles in this imprint, like Katie Woo, Sofia Martinez, and Pedro. Personally, I find them rather bland (except Sofia, which is quite funny), but a lot of kids like these simple, comforting slice-of-life stories.

Verdict: I'm excited to see Capstone branching out into disabilities as well as ethnic diversity. We have a large, historic school for the Deaf in the neighboring town and quite a few kids in my town are interested in sign language and learn it to talk with friends, so this will be very popular in my library.

ISBN: 9781515871828; Published 2020 by Picture Window/Capstone; Borrowed from another library in my consortium… (més)