I found this book a little difficult to read in that it is slow progressing. The topic of sign language and how it came to be is very interesting. I have to say I learned a lot about the history behind Thomas Gallaudet and all he did for the deaf community. ( )

I'm not a fan of biographies and this certainly hasn't swayed me. Found this in the children's room, but it seems rather dull and sort of packed (not quite dense, but packed) to me.It's told sort of like a third person close point of view story, which just strikes me a little weird. (As I said, not a biography reader.) I guess I expected 'just the facts', even if it did tell a chronological story.Gallaudet grows up, has a couple jobs, becomes a minister of some sort, heads to the UK to learn how to teach the deaf. Is denied, so goes to France instead. And he and Clerc come back and get the first school for the deaf opened in America. And American Sign Language is born.I felt I would get more and more efficiently from a Wikipedia entry, but I kept reading to find out about his lung ailment. Were we going to get a diagnosis? Was he going to be cured? Was he going to die young because of it? I never did get much closure on that. Was it 'just' asthma, or was it something else?A couple things I found questionable. The author describes the sign for 'home' like the modern sign for home, which is not even the first sign for home I learned about 15 years ago. But another sign did seem older and perhaps correct.There are a number of words used that make the deaf seem like poor souls needing to be saved or enlightened or something. I can't say that's not consistent with the times, but it might give the modern reader the wrong impression. She also used both 'deaf-mute' and 'hearing impaired'. Considering the end brings things up to the present (of 1980-whatever when this was published), she left quite a few things out that I felt she could've said.So, overall. Meh. I learned things, but not in a particularly enjoyable way. ( )