I originally started reading I Can Hear You Whisper because I thought some of our students might be interested in this book as a non-fiction reading selection. I was fascinated by Denworth’s description of the discovery and reaction to her son’s hearing loss. A science journalist herself, Denworth interviewed numerous experts, including neuroscientists, language specialists, and educators.
This is a book about hearing, but it is also about listening, speaking
and reading – with a chapter on the reading brain which stresses the value of
rhyme and poetry to develop reading skills and presents research on how hearing
and dyslexia may by intertwined. Denworth provides numerous references to past
and current research while being very forthright in explaining the various
perspectives regarding choices like sign language and use of cochlear implants.
She includes scientific findings and language, but also is a talented enough
writer to succinctly describe issues related to hearing in memorable, easy to
understand ways: -- “Speech production is a motor skill like kicking a ball or picking up a raisin. We don’t think of it that way …”
-- “When you speak or sing, you hear yourself in two ways: through air conduction and bone conduction. The recorded sound of your voice sounds unnatural to you because only airborne sound is picked up by the microphone and you are used to hearing both.”
-- A startling statistic? “95 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing children are … born to hearing parents …”
Says Dentworth, “I realized that my son might have a cultural identity – should he choose to embrace it – that I could come to appreciate, but I could never truly share.” This book deserves wide readership, and will be especially valuable to families with members who are deaf or who have experienced hearing loss.
Update: 7/23/2015: A new study shows ways to use hearing tests to predict literacy.Full academic study, "Auditory Processing in Noise" is published in PLOS Biology.
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