Starting a new school is scary, even more so with a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest. At her old school, everyone in Cece's class was deaf. Here she is different. She is sure the kids are staring at the Phonic Ear, the powerful aid that will help her hear her teacher. Too bad it also seems certain to repel potential friends. Then Cece makes a startling discovery. With the Phonic Ear she can hear her teacher not just in the classroom, but anywhere...

Mary Lambert has always felt safe and protected on her beloved island of Martha's Vineyard. Her great-great-grandfather was an early English settler and the first deaf islander. Now, in 1805, over a hundred years later, many people there -- including Mary -- are deaf, and nearly everyone can communicate in sign language. Mary has never felt isolated. She is proud of her lineage. But recent events have delivered winds of change. Mary's brother died,...

Three years after being kidnapping from her home in Martha's Vineyard, fourteen-year-old Mary Lambert receives a letter from Nora O'Neal, a servant in the house where she was held, who tells her of an eight-year-old girl where she is now employed whom Nora believes to be a deaf-mute, but who is being treated as insane, and asks Mary to come and teach the nameless child; a little scared, but intrigued, and bored with domestic life, Mary agrees--only...

"As a young teacher on Martha's Vineyard, Mary Lambert feels restless and adrift. So when a league of missionaries invite her to travel abroad, she knows it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Paris is home to a pioneering deaf school where she could meet its visionary instructors Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc--and even bring back their methods to help advance formal deaf education in America! But the endeavor comes at a cost: The missionaries'...