Disabilities Books

This text is a must for any professional who works with individuals with multiple and severe disabilities. Well written, wonderful examples and illustrations, helpful ideas for developing modifications to meet the educational needs of these students.

A must for an orthopedically impaired teacher. Gives a complete guide to physical, sensory, and health characteristics.

If your daughter or grand-daughter has this dehabilitating syndrome, I strongly recommend you read this book. I am a grandmother whos grand-daughter has Rett Syndrome. Not knowing the unknown will hamper, push you away, make you wonder what's she's thinking and what for you to do? This book will give you so much advise, and answer the unknowns, and give you more insentives to your knowings. This book will give answers that doctors cannot even tell you. (They most likely have not walked in your footsteps.) How the family will cope, together, with your daughter. This book is a must for any and all families dealing with a female with Rett Syndrome. I cannot stress it enough. Anyone close to her, should take the time to read this knowledgeable, factual and inspiring book. I gave this book to the mother, and told her that she MUST read it. I promise you, that you'll see light at the end of a darken pit. This is why I gave this book 5 stars.

We have an 11 year old daughter with Rett Syndrome named Meredith. We only recently heard about this wonderful book. For so many years we wondered what was going through Meredith's head - this book answered that question and many more. It was life changing. It is a MUST READ for parents, teachers and all other professionals that come into contact and care for our special children.

If one more person tells 12-year-old Gabe Livingston that he needs to learn to "float above" his feelings or to "rise above" his anger, he'll lose it! Especially since all he ever wants to do is dive below the rest of the world...way below, like into a deep sea canyon. Gabe longs to be a marine explorer, like his hero, Jacques Cousteau.

Not only is the world below the surface beautiful and full of interesting life, it's nowhere near as chaotic and confusing as people. If the kids at school wouldn't make him so mad, if his mother wouldn't push him to go outside and play games he can't stand, everything would be fine. But, Gabe's constantly forced to deal with people and situations he wants nothing to do with, and he has to find a way to survive somewhere besides Underwater.

This character-driven novel has a strong voice in its main character. Gabe is a typical boy with typical problems, but they'll resonate deeply with young readers.

Like most kids this age, Gabe finds it difficult to control his emotions and anger. Things that make sense to him don't even seem to be on the radars of the people around him, and vice versa. He has frequent blow ups and feels frustrated and confused when he has to deal with the consequences. Especially when other kids seem to have everything go their way. Again, something to which nearly everyone can relate.

Watching Gabe Livingston learn to navigate the real world along with his beloved deep sea diving video game is priceless. Levy's character building and story telling skills are exceptional from page one. They make a quiet book speak volumes.

Reviewed by: Julie M. Prince

My mom and I read this book and it's really good. I liked the main character in the story named Gabe. He doesn't really like sports and he sometimes has a hard time getting along with kids at school. In the book, Gabes learns he has his own special talents and doesn't have to do what everybody else does. And that's a good thing.

This is a great book for anyone who contributes to charities. I don't think that all charities are bad, but you do have to think about where you contribute.

An interesting point brought up in this book is that any organization considered "charitable" is immune from careful scrutiny - questioning their activities is akin to an attack on the poor sick or needy themselves. So for congress or the public to investigate any kind of wrongdoing or excess is difficult.

The book also details how the big charities use guilt and emotion to get people to contribute money, how some such as the American Cancer Society try to suppress alternative research, and how much of the "profits" go to the execs who work there, as there is a lack of accountability at these types of organizations.

That being said, it reinforced my belief that charities such as Heifer International are the way to spend my charitable dollars since they focus much more on the underlying cause to a problem than on chasing a "cure". Give money to them and it will buy an animal for an impoverished family, who can then use it's milk for food as well as income, and give away it's offspring to other families in need. It's self-perpetuating and lasts virtually a lifetime.

On the other hand, give money to the American Cancer Society, and it will likely be spent on a needy executive to fly around the country and tell us that a cure is "just around the corner".

"Unhealthy Charities: Hazardous to Your Health and Wealth" is a damning indictment on America's most "prestigious" health charities. While these charities are quick to award themselves with glowing accolades, the authors document numerous examples of inefficiency, inappropriate and improper spending, suppressing or ignoring promising research into "unconventional" modes of disease treatment, and an incestuous, tightly-knit network of executives and researchers who direct funds towards research and projects that support the charities' own preconceived ideologies and goals.

The book focuses on the "Big Three" charities--the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. It describes how these and other health charities spend much time and money on things that have nothing to do with research and aid to disease victims--like crying poor and pleading for donations when they are in fact hoarding hundreds of millions in money, real estate, cars, stocks & bonds, paying their top staff 6-figure salaries, holding 'conferences' at luxurious hotels, exaggerating the benefits of their programs, exaggerating the amount spent on research and public education, enlisting government support to drive out smaller competing charities, using donations to fund further education for medical professionals even though they are amongst the highest income earners in the US and are more than capable of funding their own further eduction (as most other professions must do)--and on and on.

The only flaw is that the authors seriously seem to believe that all these flaws occur despite charities having the "best of intentions". The very real possibilty that these charities are just another arm of our corrupt, profit-obsessed, drug-centered sickness industry does not seem to occur to them.

Nonetheless, it still reveals much that health charities would prefer we did not know...

A beautiful little girl and her family and all that Victoria does, at school, playing games with her friends, at ballet, at the farmer's market, etc. in her busy day. Just gorgeous pictures throughout and a wonderful presentation of inclusion. I love that the Down syndrome aspect is only mentioned on the back page. My two young daughters love it!

I recieved Victoria's Day by Maria de Fatima Campos as a gift, and what a delightful book. I wish I had this book when I was a Special Education Paraprofessional. Inclusion is not only benefical for Victoria, but to all those she interacts with. Because she has Down's syndrome doesn't mean she can't take part in educational or social activites. This book show her interaction with peers, and hopefully these experiences will be the foundation they need to make them more sensitive and emphathic to others during their lifetime. We need more books that cover Down's syndrome and the successful transition to independance and adulthood. Great job, and wonderful pictures!

It isn't easy to encapsulate the enormous scope and import of this book in a short review. It is a seminal work on what its title states - a treatise on those who have always been every society's ideal victims. The work includes comprehensive chapters on the history of such abuse, explanations on how it can flourish away from public consciousness, the factors that contribute to it and threaten it, and suggestions for change. The author had many years' personal experience working in an institution for developmentally disabled adults, and is the director of the Developmental Disabilities Center at the University of Alberta, where he is also a professor of educational psychology.

Note added 5/8/06: This book is now extremely rare because it is out of print, very few copies are circulating, and very few people seem to want to get rid of their copies. Over the last 2 years, I've seen offers for it go from $100 to over $750 for a used copy. If you can afford it, it's far beyond well worth it (especially if you're an institutional buyer). This is the definitive book on abuse of people with developmental disabilities. It is incredibly thorough, researched and referenced. It is also the first comprehensive book on this topic, to my awareness - I have searched WorldCat (a catalogue of many libraries across the world) and have found nothing like it.

"Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities. The End of Silent Acceptance?" provides the reader with a real insight into the "helping world" of people with disabilities. The author does not just speculate on the issues of violence and abuse, he provides statistics that should make those employed in the human service industry ashamed. I would highly recommend reading this book regardless of your field or profession. I would hope that this book would inspire people to initiate and make changes in both the individual live's of people with disabilitis and the systems governing their services.

Walking on a Rolling Deck: Life on the Ark

Berken's first book is amazing! I didn't want to put it down! It hits on everything: spirituality, disability, family, community, cancer, humor and simply living life. Life on the Ark is very real and very down to earth.

What makes this book so great is that anyone can read it, and find something to relate to. Anyone who knows someone who has dealt with cancer. Anyone who knows someone with a disability. Anyone who has dealt with divorce, and family, and starting over, and then incorporating the power of spirituality into all of those things.

This book is amazing, and no matter who you are, or where you are on your journey, you will learn something from this book... and no doubt you will laugh and cry.

Walking on a Rolling Deck: Life on the Ark is the true-life memoir of author Kathleen C. Berken, of her life-changing choice to work as a live-in assistant in a L'Arche community in Clinton, Iowa, aiding men with developmental disabilities. A deeply spiritual testimony, Walking on a Rolling Deck tells of the inevitable difficulties of adjusting to change, confronting the specter of breast cancer, but most of all, of the benevolent power of God's love - a power all too often ignored, neglected, or obscured in today's world. Ultimately a simple story of Christian life and the resonance of faith, illustrated with a handful of black-and-white photographs, Walking on a Rolling Deck is highly recommended for Christian readers and anyone seeking to quietly contemplate the mystery of God that permeates even the most mundane aspects of daily life.

A great read for everyone. I could relate to this book and found it to be inspiring.

Once in a life time you get to make contact on a personal level with people that you admire. This is not just a book about people's challenges, but it serves as a personal guide for anyone looking for the best in human nature. Where others
would throw in the towel and quit, these people take their disabilities and weave them into a silver-lined cloud. Before reading, I thought the book would be depressing, but on the contrary, this book brings me up everytime I'm feeling down.

This book manages to be funny, touching, provocative and informative. Wilson writes frankly and sometimes wrenchingly of the daily life of living with an adult son with autism, but he does so without self pity and with a bracing sense of the comic. His son Sam emerges as a powerful individual who insists on getting the respect that he surely deserves. Sam's intelligence and irony shine through. What Wilson also adds interlarded in the personal memoir is the fruit of his years of research into autism. What was new to me were the blogs that Wilson cites which are written by autistic people. Some of these bloggers are funky and feisty and they refuse to be counted out; I gained a much greater appreciation of their struggle. Also the book moves quickly and is a good read; I highly recommend it.

Sentimentality can run amok in father-son memoirs, but Jim Wilson's "Weather Reports from the Autism Front" is a remarkably well-written, honest and insightful narrative that peels back the psychic skin of a loving relationship that just happens to be complicated by the son's autism. Incorporating personal anecdotes (often laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes poignantly sad, but always enlightening), the author blends meticulous, current research with the refreshingly unfettered insight of autistic bloggers, shucking mainstream ideologies of this increasingly analyzed form of neurodiversity. I thoroughly enjoyed this narrative journey that explores the multi-faceted dimensions of living with an autistic loved one. Sam, the author's son, comes to life in these pages. From his fascination with weather and rap music to his chatty socializing with new people and his spontaneous barking in lines at fast-food restaurants, Sam is presented here as the real and complex self that he is, with no apologies or lamentations from his father, who has learned--and who is still learning, in fact--how to cope with the unpredictable "slippery slope" of raising an autistic child. I highly recommend this book to parents, families and professionals who feel that the existing literature on autism may fall short of the full story.

This product is a must have for principals, college students, general education teachers and special edcation teachers. It is explain so that all could understand even the most challenging issues pertaining to special education.It is a great reference that could be used by general education teachers,to become familiar with the many acronyms used in special education.

The collaborative work of educators and academicians Margaret J. McLaughlin and Victor Nolet, What Every Principal Needs To Know About Special Education is a foundational resource of basic information that every school principal needs to master with respect to overseeing special education students -- especially in this modern era of accountability imposed by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and the No Child Left Behind Act. Essential information concerning the legal foundations of special education; how to use data for school improvement; fostering an optimum learning climate; applicable features of effective special education practices, and a great deal more, present What Every Principal Needs To Know About Special Education as an excellent and "must-read" reference. A means to the worthy bottom line of how to get better education and better results for the special education students who need it most, What Every Principal Needs To Know About Special Education is highly recommended as a core addition to public school administrative reference shelves and reading lists.