About this item
"As a boy, my father learned to speak with his hands. As a man, he learned how to turn lead-type letters into words and sentences. My father loved being a printer."The setting is New York in the 1940s. Each day the narrator, a young boy, watches as his father goes off to work in the noisy printing factory where presses the size of small houses produce the daily newspapers. But the boy's father only hears the machines' loud pounding and rumbling as vibrations through the soles of his shoes. He is deaf.Although his father communicates with a few other deaf printers through his hands, he feels largely cut off from and ignored by his hearing co-workers. Then when a silent deadly fire erupts in the noisy pressroom, it is up to the father to save his fellow workers.
About the Author
Myron Uhlberg is the award-wining and critically acclaimed author of several children's books, including "Dad, Jackie, and Me," which won the American Library Association Schneider Award, the 2006 Storytelling World Award, the IBBY Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities, and International Reading Association Teacher's Choice Award. His children's book, A Storm Called "Katrina," received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and Booklist. His latest children's book, "The Sound Of All Things," was named Best Children's Books of the Year (starred) -- Bank Street College of Education, 2017.His adult memoir, Hands of my Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Book, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a finalist for the MS Books For a Better Life, for Inspirational Memoir. And has been optioned for a theatrical motion picture. Myron was featured in the Ken Burns documentary film, Jackie Robinson. He has appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation with Neil Conan. And he was a Writer-in-Residence at Gallaudet University. He is the first-born son of two deaf parents. His first language was ASL (American Sign Language) . Myron attended Brandeis University in 1951 (when the school had not as yet had a graduating class) on a football scholarship, and was coached by Benny Friedman, two-time college All American, enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Myron started on the Brandeis football team for four years, and was subsequently inducted into the Brandeis Hall of Fame.After graduation in 1955, he served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. He then spent the next 40 years in the men's fashion clothing business. In his spare time, he ran twenty marathons, including the Boston and New York marathons, four times each.His first book was published when he was sixty-six years old; a geriatric wonder. All who knew him asked, "What took so long? "
