Meet Ananya, a girl who is profoundly deaf and wears cochlear implants but, like her hearing peers, has multi-identities. She is a daughter, a sister and a friend who likes Minecraft, tennis and the piano! With its positive representation of deafness, 'A Girl like Ananya' will appeal to families of a deaf child as well as forming a valuable hearing loss awareness resource for mainstream schools with deaf pupils.
The book, aimed at 6-8 year olds, provides an explanation of Ananya's listening devices and encourages the reader to try to understand the nature of her deafness:
"If you know a girl like Ananya, she may tell you that she needs to wear her cochlear implants
every
day. When she takes them off, she can hear nothing at all.
Take a moment to think about this. Can you imagine hearing nothing at all?"
A Girl Like Ananya challenges our perception of deafness and disability, beginning with a discussion point:
"Before you read this book, explore the following question:
Do the two phrases below mean the same thing?
1. the deaf girl
2. the girl who is deaf"
This is revisited at the end of the book, where there is an activity for children to complete about their own multi-identities.
'A Girl Like Ananya' is Karen Hardwicke's first book. Karen is a parent of a young deaf adult and has been a Teacher of the Deaf for over ten years. It is important to her that deaf characters are represented in a positive way and that her stories carry an affirming message for children and their parents. The inspiration for 'A Girl Like Ananya' was an extraordinary past pupil, Ananya, whose hearing loss did not stop her learning to read, to write and to achieve all the things that her peers can do and more.