Hello

Andrea Posantes
5/23/13
“Apple is My Sign” by Mary Riskind
Book Report

Harry Berger is a 10-year old boy who comes from an all-Deaf family. He was sent away to a deaf school in Philadelphia by his father because his father didn’t want him to reside on the apple farm and become a farmer like him. His father wanted him to get the opportunity of an education that he wasn’t able to get when he was younger. Once he got to the school, Harry was upset, angry and homesick. He missed his brother, Ray and his sisters’, Veve and Anna. He felt alone and out of place until he meets a boy from the school, Landis, and immediately become good friends. One of the main aims of the school is to teach the children a trade. When Harry's interest and talent in drawing is made evident to the Headmaster, Mr. Bertie, he gets moved from the print shop to tailoring.
Harry came from a family of apple farmers and was given the name-sign Apple by his older brother, Ray, because of how he loved to pick up the apples from the ground and carry them around in his pockets. He misses his family at school, but he has a few adventures to take his mind off of it. He sees his first motorcar on the way to a local hearing church on Sunday. He is taken by surprise and amazed to see something like that before. He seeks out to find another motorcar or something similar to it, maybe even find one in Muncy. He enjoyed this new sport of football that he learned in school and helped strategize a way to beat a team from a hearing school who came to play. With this type of interaction with other students from the school, Harry has managed to make new friends from his classmates. He also endured tutoring from Mr.Bertie to help teach him how to speak. At first, he wasn’t really interested in learning anything and easily became bored. But when Mr.Bertie took him to the stable and showed him how to stop a horse from running by just yelling, he became open to the idea of learning. Harry rapidly absorbed everything that Mr. Bertie taught him about yelling. When Christmas vacation came, Harry went home to the farm. He finds that some things have changed, but he also gets to show off a bit of what he's learned at school. He shares all his stories and adventures that he had with his new found friends and all the interesting things that he saw in his surroundings including the hearing peoples’ motorcar. On the way to a town event, a hearing boy named Freckles, that he was friends with before he left for school meets up with him and brings some other hearing boys, all eager to learn how to fingerspell. Harry finds it a bit strange, but is willing to teach them. He has a moment to think about the possibility of becoming a teacher in the future because of the way he enjoyed teaching his friend Freckles and the other boys. However, the day of the fair at Muncy, at the spell down event, he sees Freckles fingerspelling words to one of the other boys that was with them the other day. Cheating! To Freckles it was just a joke, but to Harry it felt humiliating. Harry couldn’t believe it, but at the end of the day he couldn’t stay mad; like his mother would say, “Sometimes hearing have funny ways.”
Harry comes to learn what it's like to be the only child to be sent away to school. He also starts understanding a bit more about his family’s and his own relationship with the hearing world.
In my opinion, I really enjoyed this book. I was able to get a sense of how a 10-year old deaf boy feels away from home, lonely and in the process of making new friends. I like the fact that he is exposed to the hearing people environment and is eager to learn more about their customs (speaking, motorcars) and even the possibility of becoming a teacher to educate in sign language. I really liked that Harry thought about going outside of the box with becoming a teacher; that way he doesn’t always think just because he is deaf it means there are restrictions for him in the things he can and cannot do with his life in the future.