Signing Everyday Phrases by Mickey Flodin is one of the best books I have seen on learning how to communicate with sign language. As a youth, I had brief issues with my hearing and had to learn some brief sign language in order to get through a few weeks of hearing loss. This sparked my interest, and for a game, my mother and I would try to communicate while riding on the city bus or in a waiting room. It was fun, but we weren’t very good at it. I have to admit that this nostalgia piqued my interest as soon as I saw this book.

With easy-to-follow illustrations, large font and clear instructions along with an extensive index for quick referencing, readers will find learning the more than 3,400 words in this book is virtually effortless. Readers will find everyday greetings, introductions and expressions; shopping, money, sport, travel, time, weather, holidays and other situations in life are addressed with very comprehensible lessons. I was pleasantly surprised to see all the signs for technology, government and health conditions.

Mickey Flodin is no stranger to writing in this genre. He has authored and co-authored five other educational books on sign language. His illustrations are simple yet life-like and quite easy to figure out. This paperback book has 286 pages are chock-full of illustrations. Signing Everyday Phrases was first released in 1996 by Perigee books, a trademark of Penguin Group, Inc., and was recently reproduced in October 2007. I could not find any ecological information on this book, such as being printed on chlorine or acid-free paper or recycled content – and because I personally find this a very important aspect to modern book publishing, I feel I have to dock the book by 1/2 a star.