Signing fun American Sign Language vocabulary, phrases, games, & activities

Gr 4-8-Following the same format as Warner's excellent Learn to Sign the Fun Way! (Crown, 2001), this trove of American Sign Language vocabulary and games expands the scope of that title to include more signs and phrases of interest to middle school students. Vocabulary is arranged in thematic chapters ( animal signs, health signs, school signs, scary signs, etc.), and each chapter ends with a series of illustrated practice sentences demonstrating how to put the signs together. The line drawings are far livelier than most sign language dictionary illustrations, and if the arrows showing the movement of the signs are sometimes difficult to decipher (a pitfall faced by any attempt to capture a three-dimensional language in two dimensions), the written descriptions go a long way to help clarify things. A section of 43 games offers original inventions like "Combine a Sign" and "Match Signs" as well as sign language twists on old favorites such as hangman, charades, bingo, and truth or dare. This book is a great resource for readers who want to learn more signs, or for teachers and librarians looking for fun ways to share them with kids.-Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Carroll County Public Library, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.