Research has shown that very young children can learn sign language before they learn to speak. Teach Your Tot to Sign: The Parents’ Guide to American Sign Language provides parents and teachers the opportunity to teach more than 500 basic American Sign Language (ASL) signs to their infants, toddlers, and young children. Hearing children, deaf children, and children with special needs can benefit from learning the elementary signs chosen for this handy pocket-size book. Young children who can communicate using simple signs become less frustrated and also bond in a special way with their parents. In teaching ASL to parents of toddlers and preschool teachers, author Stacy A. Thompson recognized the need for a book that could be used at home and in the classroom. Her book features fundamental signs of great appeal to young children and concise instructions on how to sign, including the critical importance of facial expression.

Teach Your Tot to Sign anticipates all of the common desires and interests of young children — food, pets, planes, trains, cars, and boats, games, holidays, vegetables, family — in short, nearly everything. Reflecting children’s endless curiosity, the vocabulary chosen ranges from signs for “baby,” “broken,” “clown,” “dinosaur,” “firefighter,” “gentle,” “hot,” “hurt,” “ketchup,” “pacifier,” “rooster,” “sad,” “spaghetti,” “wagon,” “water,” “wet,” to “you’re welcome,” and even “McDonalds.” This lively assortment of signs will help every child convey earlier in their development their thoughts, feelings, and desires to their parents and teachers.

Volume 10 of the series explores sociolinguistics in various European Deaf communities. Editors Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen present a wide array of research inspired by the Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 held at Ghent University, Belgium, in April 2002. Noted contributors from Finland, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom offer insights gleaned from the languages of their countries.

Part One of this five-part volume investigates multilingualism and language contact among Finland-Swedish Deaf People. Part Two looks at regional variation and the evolution of signs in Flemish Sign Language, as well as gender-influenced variation in Irish Sign Language. Language policy and planning receives consideration in the third part, with a study of sign language lexical variation in the Netherlands and an analysis of the risks of codification in Flemish Sign Language. Part Four examines the implementation of bilingual programs for deaf students throughout Europe, and updates research on language use visually oriented in Swedish Deaf education classrooms.

The final part of To the Lexicon and Beyond: Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities presents data on language attitudes, including a census of sign language users in Spain that reveal a changing language community. The last chapter of this fascinating assembly assays British Deaf communities and language identity in relation to issues of transnationality in the 21st century.

From Reviewer's Bookwatch, a publication of The Midwest Book Review Compiled and edited by Ceil Lucas, Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is the eighth volume in the outstanding Gallaudet University Press "Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series." The ten contributors bring to their work an expertise in their subject matter and an ability to present their material with a careful balance of scholarship and accessibility. The essays include Kristin J. Mulrooney's "Variation in ASL Fingerspelling"; Bruce A. Sofinski's "So, Why Do I Call This English?"; Paul Dudis' "Grounded Blend Maintenance as a Discourse Strategy"; Mieke Van Herreweghe's "Turn-Taking Mechanisms and Active Participation in Meetings with Deaf and Hearing Participants in Flanders." The final article, "Deaf People in Bilingual Speaking Communities: The Case of Deaf People in Bareclona," is the impressive and collaborative work of Esperanza Morales-Lopez, Delfina Agliaga-Emetrio, Jesus Amador Alonso-Rodriguez, Rosa Maria Boldu-Menasanch, Julia Garrusta-Ribes, and Victoria Gras Ferrer. Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to Signing and Sign Language academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists. Ceil Lucas is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Interpretation at Gallaudet University.