From: jeanne whitehouse <jwhouse>
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 13:38:10 -0600

I'm so glad to see comics as 'early reader' material. My mother, an English teacher before she was married, always said she wasn't fond of *those* books. However, when the family learned that my younger sister was profoundly deaf (this is about 1950) Mother looked through the comics I was bringing home and gave them to my sister as soon as she could read. When questioned, she said, "how else is she going to learn slang?" Which is a good question because, as a lip-reader, my sister was rarely given 'variants' to words. She never saw
(heard) "gosh" and "wow." Mother bought us *Classic Comics* --especially as a 'bridge book' for high school reading (Jane Eyre, I remember especially). What else did we "learn" in terms of language. (Comics were, to us, a bridge to language and expression).

Jeanne Whitehouse Peterson author: *I Have a Sister, My Sister is Deaf* jwhouse at unm.edu
Received on Sat 06 Oct 2001 02:38:10 PM CDT