Learn a Secret Language: Introduction to Fingerspelling with The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery by Jerry West
“Could you write another book about the Happy Hollisters sharing a mystery with a deaf boy and I would like to be that deaf boy.”
In December 1960, Happy Hollisters author Andrew Svenson received an intriguing suggestion from John Andrew Darby, a 16-year-old deaf boy at the Ulster School for the Deaf and Blind in Belfast. The young man hoped that a new Happy Hollisters book could feature a deaf character.
Andrew Svenson (also known by his pseudonym, Jerry West) was between books when this letter arrived—The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Little Mermaid had been published earlier that year, and the manuscript for The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery at Missile Town was in final production for release in early 1961.
The idea of a deaf character, and the related plot options it offered for his mystery series, appealed to Andrew, and he acted quickly. Within a few weeks, he and his assistant, Grace Grote, arranged to visit the Bruce Street School in Newark, New Jersey. What follows is a transcription of the notes from their visit.
January 26, 1961
Visit to the School for Deaf Children; 45 Bruce Street, Newark, N.J.
Miss Gladys Fish; Mr. Samuel Berliner; Mrs. Beckwith (whose son is deaf)
How they learn to speak and read lips:
The teacher takes the child’s hand and speaks the word close to the back of it, so that the child can feel the exhalation of breath in sounds such as t and p. Then the teacher holds the child’s hand close to its own lips and it tries to make the sounds by matching the same feeling of breath on the hand. Some sounds are done by vibrations, a voiced one such as o is taught by placing the child’s hand against the side of the teacher’s throat to feel the vibration, then putting the child’s hand to its own throat.
We saw children learning top and colors—one little boy had a blue tie. After teaching the word blue by the above method, the teacher shows child a chart on which he points to blue and then he goes to a box, picks out a blue chalk and colors a picture of the tie on the blackboard.
The letters of the alphabet—are divided into groups: the breathed ones such as T and H and K; the voiced ones such as B and O; the nasal ones, M, N, and NG. The child learns them by feeling them and watching how the lips look when the sounds are being made.
The teacher can get attention best by stamping with her heel on the floor. The children feel the vibration and respond.
Most difficult problem—is getting child to have a sense of language. He can learn words, especially those which stand for objects or demonstrable ideas, but learning abstractions is very difficult. The idea of make-believe, for instance, is hard to get across. He tends to speak in one word or two.
He can write simple sentences and some eventually speak simple sentences.
The voice remains high and somewhat monotonous.
A twelve year old (average) will speak only one or two words at a time and probably read at the third or fourth grade level.
They are good at anything concrete, such as math and spelling.
But the intelligence is not affected. Many of the children we saw were extremely eager to communicate once the first shyness wore off, and they try to talk, improvise with their hands, run for books to show pictures of what they mean. One very bright little girl even made a pun by pointing to the light above her when the answer concerned something light in weight. Then she laughed and was quite pleased when she saw some of us got the joke.
Equipment: Special equipment in the school included microphones connected with hearing aids or earphones. The desks or chairs were usually placed in a circle around these mike units. Didn’t see them used. There were phonetic charts, also. Otherwise school seemed about same as others.
Notes for Hollisters story:
Hearing aid—is worn in a bag by most partially deaf children. Bag protects mike from accidental contact with cloth or other materials which may make a sudden loud and unpleasant sound or vibration. Also protects mike from damage.
Sign language: many modern schools do not teach it, but child usually picks it up outside by the time he’s in his teens. Idea is to make them able to read lips, as signs will limit them to their own kind.
Two kinds: Sign language: uses hand to convey whole idea. I go downtown. This is got across in three units of movement.
Finger alphabet: uses the fingers to make the letters of the alphabet and words are spelled out.
Two-handed alphabet is old fashioned. Now all deaf who “sign” use one hand.
Hollisters—want secret language in Detective Club, and make up a clumsy sign language. Deaf boy teaches them the one-handed finger alphabet.
Verb—is “to sign.”
Dangers:
- Child can’t hear anyone coming up behind him. Ex., Joey Brill comes up behind him while he’s trying to ride a bike and upsets it.
- Can’t hear fire crackling or water running. Often leave water running.
- Can’t hear automobile horns.
- Can’t understand any speech that they can’t see lips moving for.
Compensations:
- Child develops use of peripheral vision. May, for example, see auto coming out of corner of eye, while hearing person would not notice. Child could seem to respond to auto horn for this reason, while actually not hearing it.
- Usually good spellers, or perhaps good in math.
- Can concentrate in noisy places. (Good in printing shops)
- Can pick up sounds from some distance away which are chiefly vibration and are “tuned out” by hearing people. (Story of Mrs. B’s son who was disturbed by boy tapping his feet at the end of a row of auditorium seats.)
- Often know when airplanes or trucks go by—perhaps by the vibrations.
- We noticed that the children seemed to be very sweet-tempered. Despite the handicap, they were eager to be friends.
- Exceptional children do manage to read lips very proficiently: one boy “heard” a phrase in the dark which was thrown over the teacher’s shoulder while they were riding in a car. Mrs. B’s son was able to go to college and become an architect. Others go into the trades and have been considered very dependable and competent as a general thing.
- Deaf boy can teach Hollisters one handed finger alphabet instead of their clumsy system. They can communicate in front of anyone (villains perhaps) without being understood.
- Deaf boy can “hear” something out of hearing range by using binoculars to read lips.
Background: There are only ten public schools for the deaf in the country, though there are private classes and schools. Hawaii has a school for the deaf. In most of the Residential State Schools (child lives in), they also learn sign language.
Finger alphabet invented by Frenchman in Paris in the 17th century.
Prohibitions: Deaf-mute is not an acceptable term. As long as the speaking equipment is unimpaired the child is not, they say, referred to as mute.
Andrew Svenson worked many of these notes into the plot of The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery, volume 21 in the series. When Pete Hollister sees their new deaf friend, Charles Belden, communicating with a friend using fingerspelling, Pete encourages all of the sleuths to learn it as a “secret language” for their detective club. A graphic depicting the 26 letters of the alphabet is printed next to the table of contents for this volume, so that young readers can learn it too.
The description of Charles Belden, who attends a school for the deaf near the Hollisters’ home, aligns quite closely with the observations made during Andrew Svenson’s visit to the Bruce Street School. When we first meet Charles, he doesn’t hear Joey Brill approaching from behind on his bicycle and is knocked down by the rude bully. Charles is able to read Pam’s lips easily, as she speaks “slowly and naturally,” and later in the mystery he provides some valuable clues by reading, through binoculars, the lips of two faraway villains.
Although the book, originally published in 1962, refers to Charles’s deafness using the outdated term “handicap,” The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery is an excellent introduction into deaf culture. It gives young readers a better awareness and understanding of the lives of our deaf population. The Hollister children, meeting a deaf person for the first time, absorb Charles effortlessly into their detective club and incorporate his abilities into their mystery-solving methodology.
Jerry West received several thousand letters from his young fans between 1954 and 1975, and many of them cited The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery as their favorite book in the series. Even the author himself counted it as his personal favorite!
Beginning in 2011, when the book was reissued in paperback, we began hearing from our friends on social media who posted comments about how this book had impacted their lives. Several who read the book as children went on to learn American Sign Language and became interpreters as adults.
“The book I had was about a deaf boy and had the deaf alphabet in it, which I memorized and used a lot. This book planted a love for the deaf in me, and I became an interpreter. All because of that one book.” ~Kat V.
“When I read this book and learned the manual alphabet, I had no idea that I would one day be stepmom to a deaf girl. My daughter is grown and married to a deaf man and two of her three girls are deaf. So is the dog! He doesn’t spell very well, but the manual alphabet I learned from the Happy Hollisters as a kid helps me communicate with my family all these years later.” ~Wendy L.
“I think this is where my interest in sign language first began. I have been an interpreter for 35 years now.” ~Robin G.
We were unable to locate a current address for John Andrew Darby of Belfast, but we suspect that he—and Andrew Svenson—would be pleased to see the amazing and enduring legacy that grew out of his childhood dream to read about a deaf character in a Happy Hollisters book.
Additional Resources:
American Society for Deaf Children
Association of Late-Deafened Adults
Ulster School for the Deaf and Blind (see Jordanstown School)