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Homemade Braille edition of Little Brother from Detroit public school teacher

Patricia Smith is a teacher of visually impaired students in Detroit's public school system. She mailed me a copy of my YA novel Little Brother that she had run off her school's Braille embosser and supplied to her students. She reports, "What I could not enclose is the gratitude from my Braille reading students. For various reasons, most books in Braille are aimed at younger children. My students are all between the ages of 12 and 15 and have no real interest in reading a Kindergarten level book. I was finally able to give them something interesting, compelling, and, most importantly at their grade level." Patricia notes that she was able to do this only because the text of the novel is available as a free, Creative Commons licensed download (though US copyright law grants her the right to prepare a Braille edition of any book, the cost of doing so from a traditional printed book is prohibitive, and converting from a DRM-crippled ebook is technically difficult).

Braille Little Brother, courtesy of Patricia Smith of the Detroit public school system, the office, Clerkenwell, London, UK

10 Responses to “Homemade Braille edition of Little Brother from Detroit public school teacher”

1. Pranesh Prakash (pranesh) 's status on Tuesday, 25-Aug-09 11:09:15 UTC - Identi.ca says:

   August 25, 2009 at 3:09 am

   [...] of open licensing! ♺ @doctorow: Little Brother converted to Braille by school teacher http://craphound.com/?p=2314 [...]
2. Bill Tozier says:

   August 25, 2009 at 4:03 am

   Thanks again, Cory, for the innovation underlying this all.

   Patti Smith is a friend of ours, and I just wanted to point out that there's a subtle but important part of this that should be added: The Braille edition was created ultimately by social forces, not merely out of Patti's need but as much because Trek Glowacki and other members at the Workantile Exchange community here in Ann Arbor connected the dots after hearing her problems.

   It's explicitly about the unexpected beneficial network effects of our collective diversity, in other words.
3. Hassan Ibraheem (hassanibraheem) 's status on Tuesday, 25-Aug-09 15:02:22 UTC - Identi.ca says:

   August 25, 2009 at 7:02 am

   [...] ♻ @creativecommons: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother converted to Braille by Detroit public school teacher http://craphound.com/?p=2314 [...]
4. TeacherPatti says:

   August 25, 2009 at 9:39 am

   Thanks again to everyone, esp. Trek, the Toziers and my friends at the Workantile Exchange. This was truly a collaborative effort and one I would never have thought of on my own!
   Now! My next goal is to someone get books written that are about kids who read Braille!! :)
5. Joe from AASFA says:

   August 25, 2009 at 6:46 pm

   Oddly enough, this was a title that we wanted to send to Patti's kids, but it wasn't available. Now it will be the next time we donate... ;-)
6. Joe from AASFA says:

   August 26, 2009 at 5:00 am

   ... And, AASFA has a program where we donate age-appropriate SF/F books to middle and high school libraries in, roughly, Southeast Michigan. In Patti's case, we hooked her up with a bunch of Braille books, but the available selection is really limited.

   So:

   1. People should do more of this

   2. If you know a school library in our area that could use SF/F books, please contact me

   3. If you're interested in doing something similar, we're happy to share info
7. keyan bowes says:

   August 27, 2009 at 2:49 am

   This is an amazing story.
8. Patrick says:

   September 2, 2009 at 5:26 pm

   I'm rather pleased with the fact that your books are available as drm free pdfs. I've read all of your books through Daily lit, and it inspired me to buy some of them, and eventually check some out from my university library. (if I had more money I'd buy all of them) It's rather nice to see that such practices benefit people other than financially viable college students. I'm also rather pleased that your attitude towards your work provides a good example to the literature industry as a whole. you're rather good proof that giving away something for free is a good way to make money. eg, I wouldn't have read any of your books if I couldn't have gotten a free pdf of eastern standard tribe.
9. Julie Hendrix says:

   September 7, 2009 at 5:09 pm

   Cory, this is great! I plan to share this with the AR School for the Blind. And I also added you to my blogroll over at my site where I've finally committed to posting on a regular basis. Keep up the awesome work. Thanks, Julie
10. Copyright versus the Blind says:

    September 8, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    [...] post by the sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow: Homemade Braille edition of Little Brother from Detroit public school teacher, in which he notes that he was sent a Braille copy of his young adult novel Little Brother, by a [...]

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