THE GALLAUDET ELEVEN: The Story of NASA's Deaf Bioastronauts

Little Brown, & Company, 2026

  I first learned about the remarkable GALLAUDET ELEVEN several years ago when Gallaudet University mounted a fantastic display of their achievements, DEAF DIFFERENCE + SPACE SURVIVAL. If this review or anything about the program catches your curiosity, I urge you to click that  title above and learn more from the wealth of videos, articles, and other resources about these fantastic young contributors to essential space research.

That's what I did at the time when  news was breaking about the G-11 program from fifty years earlier. After watching, reading, and researching more about the program, I contacted two of the original ELEVEN who were active and eager to share the hidden history they had carved. 

During the ensuing years I corresponded and worked with Harry (Sonny) Larson and David Myers, two of the three members of the team who were still alive more than half century after their work ended. Once our manuscript for a picture book was ready to submit, another author had been doing the same research and beat my submissions to a contract. These things happen. Kerry O'Malley Cerra is a multi-award-winning children's author who also happens to be deaf. Her picture book about these unsung heroes released last month. THE GALLAUDET ELEVEN: The Story of NASA's DEAF Bioastronauts is written by Cerra and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann. 

Cerra's approach launches by indicating the excitement and appeal of early space exploration, including students at Gallaudet College (now University).Those students faced disappointment when it became clear that their deafness would eliminate them from applying  as astronauts.Several pages reveal space race pressures, the dangers of motion sickness, and the need for  understanding and treating motion sickness in anyone attempting to travel in space.  The NASA doctor working on this problem visited Gallaudet College to recruit and test  volunteers for immunity from this effect. Some (not all) Deaf people have damage to the vestibular system in their inner ear. This allows them to experience movement without dizziness or nausea. Eleven men qualified and became decade-long volunteers to undergo tests that would-be astronauts would also take, serving as the baseline goal for tolerating the movement without sickness. 

Spinning, swinging, bouncing, zero-gravity, and living in a rotating room involved measuring eye movements, blood work, and comparing accuracy and speed in operating manual devices. All eleven young men had other jobs and often participated during vacations or by taking time away from work and family. Their days were long and exhausting, with complications that none of the NASA crew used ASL, American Sign  Language. But they committed to serving their country and this important program. They continued for more than a decade while America's first manned flights led to the Apollo moon program and the eventually moon landings and exploration. With the current ARTEMIS Moon program well underway, foundational data from  original G-11 studies, along with the medications and adaptations those tests led to, remain the basis for safety for today's astronauts.

Not unlike HIDDEN FIGURES (Black women who made the calculations that assured safety for these flights), the efforts of the GALLAUDET ELEVEN remained unknown to all but a few until the exhibition was finally presented more than fifty years later. Now this new picture book makes the men and their contributions known to generations old and new. More details are found in back matter, along with an introductory letter provided by Barry before his death. I'm excited to say that the book launch was at Gallaudet University and both David Myer and Harry Larson attended and signed stacks of books for their new-found fans. Our goal all along was to document their program efforts in ways that could find readers of any age.

I hope you'll find and read this new book and become as much a fan of these bioastronauts as I am. This was never a "secret" program, but was an underreported aspect of a very glamorous program. Let's all celebrate the men who quietly and generously dedicated themselves to the program because they had, as Harry says, "The difference they needed."

MARA HEARS IN STYLE: A Welcome Story of Fitting In

Speaking from the aging end of life's stages, I know plenty of senior folks who recognize their own need for hearing aid support but who resist wearing the devices. That can be related to wearing them consistently enough to adjust to the sensations and effects so that their benefits can be fully appreciated. There is also a tendency to not want to be "seen" wearing hearing aids, even though there seems to be no such concern about wearing glasses, which are much more obvious. Seniors who feel this was would do well to take a lesson from Mara, a delightful new character.

BEAMING BOOKS, February, 2024

MARA HEARS IN STYLE is written by author/teacher Terri Clemens, and illustrated by Lucy Rogers. In this story, Mara sits at the early-onset stage of hearing loss, needing support not for aging deterioration but for other reasons. Readers meet her lively personality as she prepares for school in her bedroom. Her flashy purple aids and hot pink ear molds reveal her favorite colors and stylish personality. She loves them! And yet... on the first day of attending a new school, she second-guesses herself, wondering if they might go unnoticed if she had chosen a plain color to blend in with her skin tones.

Front and back endpapers represent swirling sounds using blue swoops, droplets, and musical notes. I found the images and blue color choice perfectly represented the conflicting emotions and reactions Mara experiences. The blue conveys her worry and sadness when the aids generate overwhelming cacophony in echoing hallways/lunchroom, and when a new classmate rudely (and loudly) points out how "different" Mara is. The musicality and flow reflect Mara's balanced and upbeat approach to school, including new friends and teacher in her mainstream class and supportive learning in her speech and sign language classes. Within a few spreads, Mara faces both challenges and encouragement, developing friends whose genuine interests in fingerspelling, sign language, and lip reading open more doors for communication and connection and make her feel at home.

Despite the many ways in which more and more young readers are able to find themselves portrayed and included within the pages of picture books (and beyond), the proportion of differences from the dominant culture and established "norms" still shows considerable underrepresentation. At the lowest level of such appearances, especially in leading roles, are sensory disruptive conditions, among others. Things like white canes, hearing aids, and braces appear as tokens or even become signifiers of "lesser" capacity, becoming minor props in the background of the main story. No such issue exists for Mara. 

The great strength of this new picture book is that Mara interacts with the world with some adaptations and extra skills, but shines through it as fully aware and involved in making the most of her new opportunities and owning her own talents and interests. Her desire to fit in, to form friendships, to understand her world, and to be seen as WHOLE are one hundred percent the same as every other child's, as characters, as readers, as neighbors, and classmates. 

The illustrator's page (click above) indicates that she is deaf, which likely strengthens how well she is able to tell a visual narrative in these pages. Young audiences who show an interest may also want to read the graphic memoir/novel and other titles by deaf author Cece Bell, EL DEAFO.

This releases at the end of February but is available for preorder now. The publisher provided a review copy with no promise of a post, but I am excited to share this new and appealing picture book with readers here. I hope you'll read it and do the same with your friends and families.