Elsa and The Motmot

Elsa Toussaint lies in bed, finding it difficult to sleep with the excitement of knowing she will be staying with her grandparents at their beachside home in Toco, Trinidad, for a month. From the time her parents drive Elsa through Toco and she sees her old friend Nora, Elsa understands that the holiday will be fun. Elsa and Nora soon re-unite, and Elsa develops a new friendship in the form of a parrot her animal-loving Aunt Lily had adopted, Simon. The trio of friends work together to save the life of a baby bird that has fallen out of the infamous mango tree, gaining another friend in the process, a Motmot bird that Elsa later names Motty. When rescuing the baby Motmot, Nora enlists the aid of one of her friends, Colin. Colin is a nice boy but still immature enough to both make fun of Elsa being deaf and the fact that he saw her underwear when she climbed the mango tree.

Danielle Thompson-Ochoa is an Associate Professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., and the first deaf woman from Trinidad and Tobago to hold a Ph.D. Besides teaching, she flies yearly to her native Trinidad and Tobago to work with the deaf and to empower both deaf children and adults to excel in academics and pursue their dreams. This is her first book and reflects her childhood. At the present time, she is the only deaf person from the Caribbean to have ever written a book for young readers. She hopes her book will 'spark' excitement among deaf children to read!