Enhance the UK is a disability charity, running since 2009, committed to helping physically disabled and sensory impaired people live rich, full lives in all areas. A lot of the charities income comes from delivering disability awareness training in schools, as we believe children are invaluable in creating a fair and tolerant society for our future.
This is where ‘The Secret Sign’ comes in.
We wanted to create a fun, informative and thought provoking book for children as an extension of our training. We didn’t want it to be just ‘a good book about disability,’ but ‘a good book, period.’
The story follows twin brothers Seth and Sammy – Seth is deaf, while Sammy is hearing – their friendship and how British Sign Language (BSL) affects their lives.
Children will learn basic BSL signs (‘Hello,’ ‘Goodbye’ and the alphabet) and how we are all subtly the same yet different – without it being boring! We hope to normalise disability for children at an early age so they are not fearful of it and allow disabled children to see characters positivey represent them.
We found a pronounced gap in the market for books of this kind while embarking on research and we are hoping to expand as a series featuring a wide representation of impairments and disabilities.
Our book is fully written and while the illustrations are nearly just being perfected. We just need the money from you kind people at Crowdfunder to print 300 copies of the book which we will be able to distribute to schools and libraries as well as make it available wholesale, and most importantly represent disabled children in literature.