When Deafworks asked me, “Would I consider writing this book?”, my first thought was, “phew [shudder] – why would I consider this? I must be mad.” Why? Because there are plenty of books out there – some are good, and some are ‘ok’ – there is such a variety of BSL books out there. Why would I write yet another one? Then I thought about this again.
Laraine [Director Deafworks] kept pestering me again and again. [No] At first I thought ‘back off’ and then I reconsidered “Why not?!” My idea was out there [in the BSL market place] there are two types of books, one are dictionary type books, they are usually lists of photos, illustrations, drawings.
The other [kind of BSL books] available are linguistics. Most people who read these are baffled – it goes straight over their heads because they are too deep/academic/detailed. Then when people look at the first group [dictionary-type books], there’s no language involved. So I thought why not combine the two? I’ll try and put in elements of vocabulary and grammar together in one book and it proved really difficult. But [I have to say] I enjoyed this.
The other problem I had was how will people be able to make sense of what they read? There has to be a DVD to go with it. It must have drawings. Plus explanations (of how the grammar all works). And put it all together in one package. We can’t rely on written only, it must have all three elements combined. So the book has a DVD as well. The book and the DVD all matches.
I really enjoyed myself, but it was really difficult. I also want to thank other people with all their help, editing, support, and so on. So that’s it!
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