Preschool children experience literature early on through nursery rhymes, being read to, and tales told by parents and grandparents. This introduction to the literature of a child's culture, family, and times should be a most comfortable experience. On reaching school, however, the child will find that the demands of pedagogy become insistent over…

A literature-based rationale for teaching American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary language system for deaf children elaborates on the following points: Sign languages are visual-manual; spoken languages are oral-aural. Competency in a first language tremendously increases a person's ability to learn a second language. Deaf children have not…