Joe Jacobs: How I discovered sign language illustrator Harry Ash

It is a year since my first sign language book, How to Sign Animals with Terry the Monkey, appeared in paperback. Recently, I met with a Professor of Sign Language to discuss my children’s books.

I was apprehensive before meeting with the professor. Academics tend not to be overly concerned with human feelings. (I remember the day my university tutor dismissed my 5000-word essay on Swift’s irony as ‘exhaustively long and joyless’.)

Submitting a children’s book about a signing monkey to be critiqued by one of the world’s leading experts on British Sign Language might seem like folly. I began to think so as I knocked on her door.

It suddenly occurred to me that an academic who publishes papers with names like ‘differential activity in Heschl’s gyrus’ (no, me neither) might find my drawings of a signing monkey a bit frivolous.

The professor didn’t hold back with her criticism, but all of it was constructive. We discussed the signs that are most useful to children, deaf and hearing (Terry the Monkey needs to sign more action signs), and we talked in depth about the history of sign language drawings.

For centuries, artists have grappled with the problem of how to represent sign language in two dimensions. I was shown an archive of signing illustrations, and I discovered my new favourite sign language illustrator: Harry Ash.

Harry Ash was born in 1863 in Bridgewater, Somerset and was deafened by scarlet fever at 18 months.

He produced books and pamphlets (many of which can be found in the Action on Hearing Loss library at UCL) of bonneted Victorian ladies and of gentleman sporting moustaches, demonstrating British Sign Language. The men all look a bit like Terry the Monkey. The genius of Ash’s drawings is that they require no words.

One of Ash’s best-known illustrations (below) shows Queen Victoria signing with a bedridden lady on the Isle of Wight. Queen Victoria learned to fingerspell so that she could communicate with her daughter-in-law, Alexandra, Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra), who was deaf from her teens.

In terms of public popularity, Queen Alexandra was the Princess Diana of her day. A deaf Queen of Hearts. Princess Diana also learned to sign.

Earlier this year, after reading about the royal family’s association with sign language, I decided to post a copy of How to Sign Animals to the Duchess of Cambridge, in the hope that Prince George would be seen leafing through my book during the royal wedding.

I received a reply from Kensington Palace on beautiful stationary (one thing you can say about the royal family, they have great stationary) thanking me on behalf of Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

So, my book is either in a charity shop in Kensington or on a bookshelf in the royal nursery! I hope that they have kept it, and that it might encourage the royal children to learn their first signs and grow up to be patrons of sign language charities.

A year on from the publication of How to Sign Animals, I continue to search for ways to make my sign language books more engaging for children, from braving the opinions of academics to looking back for inspiration from illustrators of the past.

Joe Jacobs’ children’s books include How to Sign Animals with Terry the Monkey, How to Sign Halloween with Terry the Monkey, How to Sign Christmas with Terry the Monkey, How to Sign Food with Terry the Monkey and How to Sign with Babies with Terry the Monkey. Joe is hearing and lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children.