By WILLIAM BRANTLEY
Staff Writer
November 14,, 2004
When Sirena Carroll gets going about Harry Potter, go ahead and call the giddy patrol. The 18-year-old's voice rises and quickens as she describes her all-night reading binges, her favorite scenes from the series, her life-size cardboard cutout of Harry, her wizard-themed Halloween costumes and her request (denied by her parents) to legally change her name to Hermione.
Eventually, like someone unable to keep a secret, she bursts into a spot-on impression of Emma Watson, the young British actress who has played Hermione in the movie adaptations of the first three books. "If I can't even get a feather to rise off a desk with a simple spell, then I can't say that I'm good at everything!" Carroll says in her best Oxford drip.
Then, Sirena again, she says, "I can't wait for the sixth book. If it takes (Rowling) too long, I'm going to have to go after her."
Like many FOPs (Fans of Potter), Carroll, who attends high school in Westchester County, survives the long gaps in between installments by rereading what's already out. A quick look at the numbers: Sorcerer's Stone she's read 20 times. Chamber of Secrets, six times. Prisoner of Azkaban, 12 times. Goblet of Fire, 8 times. Order of the Phoenix, two times and counting.
That's a lot of Hogwarts, and considering that Carroll's read it all in braille, it's even more than it seems. Typically, one page of single-spaced print translates into two or three pages of braille. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth installment of the series, consists of 13 volumes in braille. On the shelf, the book is almost two feet wide.
Tracking Braille Literacy
Because of a degenerative condition, Carroll was born with sight but began losing it as a young child. By the age of 5, she was blind. She began learning braille in the first grade.
Carroll might not have learned braille, says Tanya Holton, vice president for development at National Braille Press, the Boston-based nonprofit that publishes braille editions of the Harry Potter books.
In the early 1960s, says Holton, the braille literacy rate among school-aged blind children was about 50 percent. By the early 1990s, only 10 percent of the nation's roughly 60,000 school-aged blind children could read braille.
One common reason cited for the significant decrease in braille literacy, says Holton, is that medical advances have allowed babies to survive after being born more and more prematurely, says Holton.
"While in the past, more children were born 'just' blind, Holton says, "today, blindness may be just one of many disabilities with which a child must deal." In other words, because of learning disabilities, many blind children are unable to learn braille.
Another reason that fewer blind children were learning braille, says Holton, was "the mainstreaming of blind children into public schools. For many reasons, having blind kids in with other kids has been a great thing. But what often happened was that it was considered 'easier' to give a blind child books on tape than to teach him braille."
Attitude Change
By the early 1990s, says Holton, parents and educators of blind children were fed up with that attitude. "As parents of a sighted child, you'd be outraged to have a school administrator say to you, 'We're going to give your child a book on tape instead of teaching him how to read, because it's easier,'" says Holton. "I try to urge people to think of braille in the same way as they think of print for a sighted child. A blind child is at a similar disadvantage if he cannot read braille."
Since the early 1990s, according to the National Federation of the Blind, 32 states have enacted braille literacy legislation. (New York passed such a law in 2000.) Although the fine print varies from state to state, says Holton, the purpose of the legislation is to put the onus on the state to provide braille instruction when and where it's needed. Today, nearly 85 percent of blind children attend public schools, and because of the legislation, more children are being taught braille.
"In the past 10 years, we've seen an increase in braille literacy, at least among the kids who can learn braille," says Holton."
Local and nationwide braille advocacy programs have also helped. NBP, for example, started ReadBooks!, a nationwide braille literacy program that tries to encourage parents of blind children to read with their children, to instill in them, early on, a love of reading.
Library Help
For Carroll and other visually impaired readers in New York, the Talking Books and Braille Library (a division of the New York State Library) is also a vital resource. Although she owns her Harry Potters, Carroll borrows from the TBBL, which send braille and audio books to residents of the 55 upstate counties of New York.
The library, housed in the basement of the Cultural Education Center in downtown Albany, ships out hundreds of braille books a week, plus thousands of audio cassettes.
Like many of the library's more than 40,000 patrons, Tina Murphy, an administrative assistant at TBBL, uses both braille and audio books.
"I used to prefer braille, but I started to get neuropathy in my hands," she says. "So my hands get really cold and my fingers get numb and desensitized. It's like getting blurry vision." Because of the neuropathy, Murphy uses a lot of audio material.
Still, knowing braille helps her do things she couldn't otherwise do. At work, she occasionally transcribes short pieces of text into braille. In meetings, she can take notes using a tool that allows her to write what is essentially shorthand braille. She prefers using braille cookbooks, because she can browse easily through a recipe for forgotten measurements. Plus, sometimes, Murphy just wants to feel the feel of a book in her hands.
"Every now and then, I'll order a braille book just for grins," she says. "You know, you don't have to plug it in. You can take it anywhere. And really, there's nothing like being able to hold a book and sit down and just read it."
Especially if it's a book you're going to read again and again and again.
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