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It's Harry
Potter Time! Seeing With Your Mind.
Newsweek, July 18, 2005
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https://www.bridges4kids.org.
At the stroke of
midnight on Friday, Harry Potter fanatics will descend on
bookstores to claim "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,"
the sixth installment of J. K. Rowling's best-selling series.
Although Ashley Bernard, 12, says she has read the first five
books "at least 15 times each," she will not be among the
midnight crawlers. Blind from birth, she has always faced a
torturous delay of at least three months to get a Braille
edition. "I don't like to be kept waiting," she says, worried
that her friends, who chatter ceaselessly about the book, might
give away its ending. Ashley won't have to avoid her pals for
long. Thanks to the National Braille Press (NBP), a nonprofit
publishing and printing house based in Boston, blind children
across the country will receive Braille editions only three days
late. Scholastic, the publisher, agreed to give NBP the precious
text early this time; last week the press-with all 51 staffers
and 23 volunteers began working round the clock to complete the
Braille edition. The text must be transcribed into Braille,
printed on special paper, proofread twice and then collated by
hand to protect the delicate script. Printing a single Braille
version costs $62, but it will sell for the standard retail
price of $29.99 ($17.99 for preorders). NBP estimates it will
lose more than $32,000 after its first press run of 700 copies.
"This isn't about charity, it's about parity," says NBP's Tanya
Holton. "It's our job to make up that difference." Local
businesses help. The largest donor, Lumber Liquidators, a
hardwood-flooring retailer, donated $100,000 to fund the Braille
"Harry Potter" series earlier this year.
A cultural phenomenon like "Harry Potter" can go a long way to
improve literacy among blind children. According to Diane Croft,
NBP's vice president of publications, only 20 percent of blind
children can read Braille by the fourth grade. "If you tell a
good story, the readers will come-and that goes for blind
children too," she says. They also learn to read faster due to
the length of the "Potter" books. Because Braille text is large,
it takes four pages of Braille to cover the same material as one
page of print. The Braille "Half-Blood Prince" will run 1,100
pages-in nine volumes that will weigh at least 11 pounds
altogether.
Connie Bach, 15, has to carry the 13 volumes of "Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix" in a small suitcase. Still, she
prefers the Braille books to compact audio versions. "If I get
confused, I have to rewind and try to find the spot," she says,
"but with Braille I can just go back and reread." Besides, she
says, a reader's inflection can color her interpretation, making
it hard "to form my own images." She can't wait for those
wizards to tell their story-and now she doesn't have to.
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