A Button in Her Ear

Litchfield, Ada B.. A Button in Her Ear. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman & Company, 1976.

In her book, A Button in Her Ear, Ada B. Litchfield tells the story of a girl named Angela who is hard of hearing and discovers this through her gradual loss of hearing. She often misunderstands her friends and family, which are the indicators of her hearing loss. After visiting her doctor and an audiologist, Angela gets a hearing aid, which she calls a “magic button” that helps her hear what people around her are saying to her. In her Note about the story, Litchfield explains that hearing aids do not work for every person who experiences hearing loss: “children with more severe hearing loss may need training in using visual clues and in their own speech production. If loss is profound, other means of communication using visual clues, sign language, and finger spelling may be employed.” Angela is presented in a relatable way for children who go to school and play sports just like she does. Perhaps the best part to support acceptance of deaf or hard of hearing children by hearing children is near the end when Angela’s teacher introduces Angela’s presentation of her hearing aid to the class by saying, “Just as Ann and Doug and John and I are wearing glasses to help us see better, so Angela is wearing a hearing aid to help her hear better.” Students can see through this that just because someone is wearing a hearing aid does not make them any less competent, as the aid functions in a similar way to something as accepted as glasses. We see that Angela accepts her hearing loss in a positive way with support from the adults in her life and continues to lead a normal life of a young girl, going to school, playing sports and playing with friends.