We publish books for deaf children

Our books feature bold and optimistic deaf characters (we call them super hearoes), who are proud to sport their cochlear implants and/or hearing aids and love using their voices to communicate - sometimes with the help of their hands too! Alongside their friends, teachers, therapists and families, our super hearoes encounter and overcome diverse challenges. These may be specific to their listening and spoken language learning journeys, their sign language journeys, or general life experiences. Starring deaf champions and filled with fun, purposeful content, our books can help inject a little extra magic into the hard work of learning to listen, read and communicate, while boosting children’s self-esteem and sense of belonging, and supporting their cognitive and social development.

We publish parents’ voices

Most professionals working with deaf children will tell you that, alongside optimally functioning cochlear implants or hearing aids, parental input is the single most important factor determining a child’s success in learning to listen and speak. After all, parents know their children better than anyone else, including their strengths and weaknesses, and parents tend to spend more time than anyone else with their young children at the critical age for language development (0-5 years old). Each therapy session may last an hour once or twice a week/fortnight, but for a child to learn to communicate well, strategies (whether for listening and spoken language or for sign language) need to be integrated by parents into every aspect of everyday home life (and by teachers into school life). Therefore, while they may not be professional speech and language therapists, parents do become experienced practitioners. Sharing their experiences, either through biographical works or figuratively through fictional stories, can help other families of deaf children traveling along the same path and facing similar hurdles, whether related to speech and language or general social development.

We create awareness to foster compassion, acceptance and inclusion

Our books are designed to help deaf children attain specific speech, language, social development and cognitive milestones (as viewed from a parental perspective). They also discuss how to cope growing up with a physical disability, challenging hearing readers to imagine what it must feel like to be deaf, thereby creating a better understanding of deafness and a greater acceptance of those children who might be viewed by others as ‘being a little different’. We hope this greater awareness will help hearing children to understand that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with being deaf. Deaf children, like all children, can go on to achieve great things - they are not to be pitied or treated like victims. Nonetheless, there are small but significant things their friends can do to make life easier for them, and in our stories we aim to foster consideration and compassion, ultimately resulting in a more accepting, inclusive and supportive environment.

While featuring deaf characters, our books will also resonate with other children who may feel different for one reason or another, whether they are coping with a physical disability or have other challenges such as autism (ASD) or developmental language disorder (DLD). Our stories can also support these extra-special children’s learning adventures, while building a sense of pride in who they are (after all, they are perfect just the way they are) and a strong sense of identity, not based upon their so-called disabilities but upon their abilities.

Our inspiration

Our founding author Tanya Saunders is inspired by Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) techniques for teaching deaf children with cochlear implants and hearing aids to listen and speak and by her own family’s journey with AVT. While not all our writers are professional therapists, we all have a personal connection with deaf children, either as parents, carers or professionals and have significant experience of integrating listening and spoken language development strategies into everyday life, having traveled this road with our own deaf children and/or the children we work with. Our aims are aspirational - we believe the sky is the limit for deaf children today, provided they have access to appropriate technology, a strong support team and a determined, resourceful and loving home environment.

Learn more about auditory verbal therapy

Hearing is complex

We understand that hearing is a complex process, and by extension, hearing loss is complex too. There are many degrees of hearing loss, from mild to profound deafness, and many different causes - some known, some still unknown. Many deaf children find that hearing aids significantly improve their hearing levels, while cochlear implants allow more severely deaf children to access sound. Not all children will benefit to the same level. Despite the miracles of modern ‘magic ears’, it is not an absolute given that hearing technology will allow every deaf child to learn to listen and speak, because there are so many different factors involved - some related to hearing loss, some unrelated. Other families choose to follow the sign language route, or a combination of both. We acknowledge it is important to recognise individual needs and appropriate strategies based on each particular circumstance. Nonetheless, we believe that, whatever the path chosen, it is important to inspire hope and ambition in every child to be the very best version of themselves that that they can be - and that is the spirit imbued in our books.

Respect for different approaches

We acknowledge that there are many different approaches to deaf communication (including but not limited to sign language, listening and spoken language, lip reading, cued speech and total communication). We fully respect that there is no categorically right or wrong approach; which option to pursue is a deeply personal choice for each and every family based on their own values, aspirations and what works best for them.

Looking ahead

We believe that practice through play is key to a child’s success in learning to communicate. We are developing fun and engaging play-to-learn resources to accompany our books, alongside supplementary activity guides. Combining the experience of parents with professional expertise gives us the opportunity to create fun and effective learning resources of maximum benefit to deaf children following a listening and spoken language approach or learning to sign.

We will also be expanding the range of authors we work with, seeking people with particular areas of experience, expertise or stories to tell, whether they be deaf writers themselves or their siblings, parents, therapists, audiologists, surgeons or teachers.