Tomás and the Case of the Mysterious Missing Dog

This video is posted online with the following chapter markers:

Chapter 1. How the Book Came to Be
Chapter 2. Story Time!
Chapter 3. Resources Online

Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and

Description End.
Transcript Start

[Music]

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Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI.

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Chapter 1. How the Book Came to Be

Scott: Good afternoon, everybody out there in TV land. This is Scott Baltisberger
and with me is --

Chrissy: I'm Chrissy Cowen.

Scott: And we are consultants with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually
Impaired outreach department. And thank you for joining us today for this webinar.
We're going to do something a little different, well, very different than I think
most of our typical webinars.
We are going to present a booklet that we designed and it's called Tomas and the
case of the Mysterious Missing Dog.
So it was a lot of fun to do this project and I think -- I hope it's a lot of fun
for everyone to watch this, but also to use this booklet. So we were looking at
ways to address the needs of low vision students. And one thing when I was -- back
in the olden days when I was a teacher for students with visual impairment, one of
the materials that was is a available to us was a booklet called Monocular Mac. Do
you remember that, Chrissy?

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Monocular Mac by Anne L. Corn
Content: Figure 1: The cover of the Monocular Mac book. A drawing by artist Dianne
Dawson of a young boy named Mac looking through a handheld telescope.
Description End:

Chrissy: Yes, I do, Scott.

Scott: And this booklet, it must have been in the '80s.

Chrissy: '70s.

Scott: '70s, '80s. Anyway, it was written by Anne Corn and a lot of guys may know
Anne Corn or certainly heard of Anne Corn.

[ Slide end: ]
She's been quite an influence in our field for many years. And so she developed
this booklet with some wonderful drawings by an artist by the name of Diane Dawson.
And the -- so the understand behind this book was to show -- the book was written
for children and it was to show a young man who uses low vision equipment in a
variety of situations.
And so why don't we look at some of the pictures, just a little few examples from
the original Monocular Mac.
So anyway, it's a boy and his name was -- what was his name, Billy, I believe.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content: Figure 2: A page from Monocular Mac shows the young boy looking at a tree
and tire swing through his telescope. Text from the book is on the right of the
page.
Description End:

And for some reason he got a monocular and for some reason he named his monocular
Mac. It was never clear to me why the monocular was named Mac, but it was named
Mac. And they went around and it was a series of vignettes where Mac and he would
go about and for example, here in this picture he's using his monocular to look for
a tire swing. And I think in the next picture we've got him -- let's see what we've
got next.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content: Figure 3: A page from Monocular Mac shows the young boy watching other
children play baseball through his telescope. Text is at the top of the page.
Description End:

Here he's attending a baseball game and he's using a monocular to observe some of
his friends playing baseball. What else did he and Mac get into together?

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Years Later...
Content: • Updating the concept
• Elements of the new story
o Adventure!
o Multiple optical devices featured
Description End:

Chrissy: I think that's all the pictures we have from that, but this is a little
book that I like to use when I was beginning monocular training with kids.

[ Slide end: ]

And I started them quite young, younger than what Monocular Mac would have been
appropriate for, but when I had those kindergarten, first grade, second graders, I
would interest the book, get them excited about the monocular. Some of them would
end up naming their monoculars Mac, and putting stickers on their monoculars, but I
would read the book by way of introduction to the monocular and then I would leave
the book with the classroom teacher and suggest that they read it during story time
as a way to introduce the rest of the class to what the monocular was and why the
student that was in their class was going to be using it.
So it was a really helpful public relations kind of book to use with kids.
Unfortunately it's no longer in publication.
So we thought well, it's time that we introduce something a little new that people
can put their hands on and so thus the idea of this booklet that we're going to
talk to you about.
Scott: Yeah. It actually -- I originally -- I originally thought of this when I was
a TVI and a colleague of mine, another TVI, her name was Patty voting, some of you
guys may know her. She had Monocular Mac with one of her students who was not an
English speaking student, who was mono speaking Spanish speaking student and she
asked me to translate it for her into Spanish. And I did that. In the meantime we
were having a discussion and she said why don't you update it, why don't you come
up with another version of this?
And I thought wow, that's a great idea. I'll do that. But it never happened because
I was a TVI and I didn't really have time to sit down and devote energy to it.

And so years later -- so I showed up here at outreach a few years ago and I told
Cyril about that idea. Cyril who used to be our boss. I told Cyril, you know,
Cyril, I have this idea about updating Monocular Mac and she said that's a great
idea. Do that.
So this went on -- that was at my conference, right? So then the next year went by
and she says, did you do Monocular Mac? And well, no. This year do it.

This went on for two or three years until finally you and I talked about it and
actually put some meat on the bones so to speak.
So the thing about it was the way we approached it because we didn't want to just
retell the story of Monocular Mac. I think some of our ideas about it were, you
know, one is we wanted it to be more of a narrative, right? Because the original
Monocular Mac it was a series of vignettes.

[ Slide start: ] Repeat previous slide

Like Mac would go out and do this and do that and he wasn't connected to
necessarily a story line. And we thought well, if it was more of an adventure, more
of, say, a mystery, it would maybe draw kids in. So that was sort of the idea
behind that.
I guess the other thing that we had thought of was maybe expanding the idea of
Monocular Mac and making him use a variety of low vision devices and a variety of
strategies for accommodating for low vision and incorporate that into the story. So
that was another part that we brought in.

[ Slide end: ]

And I guess finally we kind of thought about the age group of the students we
wanted to address and the type of student we wanted to address with that.
And so we thought of like kind of middle elementary age, so it would appeal to a
wide age group of kids. We did make Tomas, we decided to make him an Hispanic male
because Chrissy, of course, in her wisdom realized that that is the largest
population among low vision students, that's the largest population.

Chrissy: In Texas.

Scott: In Texas. So that's where we were with that.

What else? Was there anything else I left out about that, Chrissy, about our
creative process?

Chrissy: Well, we also -- as the book is going to be read on this presentation, we

also wove in a lot of names of people who have contributed a great deal to this
field that we have worked with. We couldn't do a whole bunch, but we worked some
in. So see if you recognize some of the street names, for example. You will see one
of the wonderful pictures that Scott drew with some street names that you might
recognize and then some of the characters are names as well, and you might
recognize those.
Scott: Yeah. We decided -- one thing we thought about trying to draw, again, trying
to get kids' attention because I think we had another slide here. We decided
that -- let's go to the next slide. No? Never mind.

Chrissy: Are you talking about the dog?

Scott: Yes, I was talking about the dog.

Chrissy: Okay. So on the next slide we're going to introduce you to another key
character, and that is Luna. And Luna is Tomas' dog. Luna was the name of one of my
first dogs. Did you have a dog named Luna?

Scott: Chrissy: I knew of dogs named Luna.

Chrissy: All right.

Okay.
So Luna is the dog and we wanted a dog in this story because kids love dogs. And
it's going to add to the mist of what happens to that dog -- to the mystery of what
happens to that dog.

So on the next slide we wanted to have Tomas featured in several different

settings, and so you're going to see some school settings for this book. You're
going to see some -- this is the school setting and I believe that teacher is
Ms. Acorn, is that right?

Scott: Yes.

Chrissy: That's Ms. Acorn.

And so we'll be putting him in different situations in the school.
And if you look at the next slide we've got him in the community. I want you to
notice the detail in these pictures, and Scott illustrated all of these. There
were, what, about 42 slides, 42 pages?

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Tomás in His Community
Content: Figure 7: An illustration of a city park. The young boy and his friend
look confused at the activity in the park. A boy throws a football toward two other
boys, three girls walk together, a person rides a bike, and two people talk.
Description End:

Scott: Around 42.

Chrissy: Around 42 slides that he used -- what was the process you used? It was ink
and --

Scott: It was just ink. Ink pens.

[ Slide end: ]
Chrissy: Yeah, yeah. So it really was amazing, and we talked about it, it took us a
few years for to us get it to this point and part of that was finding an artist.
And we had envisioned finding an artist, and we never could. [ Laughter ].

Chrissy: So Scott did it.

Scott: Yeah. We tried to -- I guess the idea behind the drawings was to just have
something that was black and white, it was more -- perhaps would be more readily
visible.
Chrissy: Visually accessible to the low vision student. So we felt like a black and
white drawing was one of the easier kinds of pictures for kids to be able to
access.

And then, you know, as a teacher you can certainly take these pictures and use a
magnifier for them to find details within the pictures themselves. There's not too
much detail. And so in this picture, for example, there's a trashcan in the back
with a tail coming out which figures in the story. So as a teacher you would be
able to use these drawings as part of your instruction with the optical devices
themselves.
So on the next -- I think on the next slide we have -- this is just an example of
another community picture. They are actually running around looking for Luna and
you will hear the story in a minute.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Tomás Searching for Luna
Content: Figure 8: The young boy and his friend look at a sign on the wall that
reads "Notice: Dog Found!" The young boy looks through a magnifying glass to read
the sign.
Description End:

And here's an example that I like of Tomas holding a hand-held magnifier and then
you will notice a monocular on a lanyard around his neck, which is what we try to
encourage kids to do when they go into the community.

So we tried to work in little elements to this story that were something we --
behaviors we wanted kids to use to develop in their skills with optical devices.

[ Slide end: ]

Scott: It's sort of the age old story of the low vision student who tries to avoid
using their low vision equipment for a variety of reasons. And comes through this
adventure, comes to the understanding that the low vision equipment actually is
quite handy and quite helpful.

Chrissy: That's right.

Scott: And such will be encouraged to use it in the future.

Chrissy: So we had -- once we wrote the story, Scott and I wrote the story, he
illustrated the story, I think you came up with the idea of having student actors.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Meet our Actors
Content:
left-side photo: Rey Garza as Randy.
center photo: Devon Gutierrez as Tomás.
right-side photo: Miriam Miramontes as Tomás’ Mom.
Description End:

And so we wrote the script out specifically for these actors.

And so one of the characters is Randy, who is one of the friends of Tomas, is
played by Rey Garza or read by Rey Garza. A and then Tomas, the major character, is
going to be read by Devon Gutierrez. Both are students here at TSBVI.

You'll notice that Devon is reading the script in Braille. And so he -- he was --
both of these actors were recommended by Robert Pearson who he's --

Scott: Theater arts teacher.

Chrissy: Here at TSBVI. So Scott approached him and said do you have some guys that
could do this? And he gave us these two guys who were really wonderful.

And so -- and then we have the part of Tomas' mom played by -- read by Miriam
Miramontes who worked here in outreach.

And then another person who contributed just hugely to this book is on the next
slide, and that is Lowell Bartholomee who is -- what is Lowell's role here? I don't
know. He's just amazing. And for the purpose of this book and this presentation he
was the director.

So what that looked like is Devon primarily had lots and lots and lots of script to
go through and Lowell directed him through that. And it was amazing to watch.
Lowell is also an actor, and so he knows -- he knows the language, he knows how the
business works, and I really appreciated that he approached the whole production of
this through that slant.

So as Devon was reading, Lowell made sure that he read it with interest, with
excitement, and the right tone whenever it was called for.
So you will definitely hear that as Devon is performing this book.

Okay. So -- and the next one, slide, is this guy right here, the illustrator, Scott
Baltisberger. And he also brought the book to life, I think.

Chapter 2. Story Time!

Okay.

Scott: Without further adieu...

Chrissy: Yes?

Scott: Let's take a listen to the story.

[ Video start: ]

[upbeat music]

Tomás: Hi! I’m Tomás! I guess I'm pretty typical for most third graders: I've got
cool friends, a teacher, Ms. Acorn, who's pretty nice, but I think she gives WAY
too much homework, I love computer games, pizza and riding my skateboard.
But, we've all got something that makes us a little different from each other. My
friend Jim can speak Chinese, my friend Natalie wears a hearing aid. And then
there's Randy. Randy likes to eat TOMATOES! No kid likes to eat tomatoes! But
that's okay 'cause differences ROCK! If we were all the same, that would be BORING!
I guess something different about me is I have this thing with my eyes called optic
atrophy. What happened was when I was about three years old my mom noticed I sat
REALLY close when watching TV.
She also wondered how come, when we were reading a book together, I'd push my nose
right up against the pages to look at the pictures.
We went to the eye doctor and that's when he said I had optic atrophy. I got
glasses but even when I'm wearing them, it's sometimes hard for me to see certain
things.
For example, when Ms. Acorn puts something on the board or the overhead screen, my
friends can read it just fine, but for me, well, it looks kind of fuzzy and blurry.
Fuzzy and blurry unless I use my telescope. I take it out, put it to my eye, point
it at the board and twist it a little to get it focused. Then, I can read just like
everybody else.
Another thing is books and worksheets. I've got to put them really close to read
and that makes my eyes tired and gives me a headache. So, I pull out a magnifier
and then I can read just fine.
That's when Ms. Left, entered my life. She's a "teacher of students with visual
impairments". I just call her my "vision teacher". She's the one who showed me how
to use the telescopes and magnifiers and some other cool stuff, too. She and I get
together once a week and we work on ways of making it easier to see things.
I've got a few different kinds of optical devices, too, for looking at different
things.
My friends think the magnifiers are awesome. They want to check them out sometimes
but I tell them no 'cause these aren't toys... I gotta have 'em with me at all
times so I can get things done.
I didn't really like using all this stuff as often as my teachers thought I should
because I felt it made me look different. Sometimes I just preferred to squint.
Until one day....
Like a lot of kids, I've got a dog. She's a great dog. Her name is Luna. I got her
when I was just a baby, so we kind of grew up together. She's super-cool. She can
run really fast and catch a Frisbee in the air. She likes to wrestle too! And she
sleeps with me in my room at night. My friends like her, too.
So... You can imagine how I felt one day when I came home from school and she was
GONE!!! I couldn't figure out what had happened until I saw the gate to the
backyard open and I remembered I hadn't closed it that morning after taking her for
her walk. She must have seen it was open and gotten out. I was so mad at myself!
Our street is not too busy but still, there are cars and tough dogs and mean kids
and.... DOGCATCHERS!!! Man! I felt awful! I had to make a plan and quick!
I wondered if someone might call Luna's vet if they found her. Gosh! Where would I
find that number! OH! On Luna's pill bottle! I don't know if you've looked at any
labels lately, but the size of the print on those things is amazingly tiny! I
pulled out my pocket magnifier. Good thing I had it with me 'cause I found that
number right away.
The vet said she hadn't heard anything but they'd call if Luna turned up. It looked
like I was going to have to take matters into my own hands!
I got on the phone and called Randy, Natalie and Jim. They immediately agreed to
help and said they be right over.
While waiting for them, I did a web search for a city map on my mom's computer.
Whoa! Another trip to Tiny Print Town! I'd never be able to read letters that small
but luckily I have a program loaded on there that can zoom in, making things large
enough to read.
I used it to find the names of the streets where I thought each person should
search. I printed out some maps to give to each of my friends.
Finally, everybody arrived and we got to work. I handed out the maps and we paired
up and picked the streets we would search.
Randy and I headed over to the City Market when Randy found a clue... It was a
found dog notice taped to the window. Randy is great at math but some words are
hard for him to read. I pulled out my magnifier again.
NUTS! The notice said this dog was a Dalmatian, NOT a yellow lab like Luna. Onward
with the search!
Suddenly Randy hollered,

Randy: Wait a minute! I think I see Luna across the street!

Tomás: I took off running!

[tires screeching]
I almost got taken out by a big truck! I had forgotten to check the traffic signal
like my orientation and mobility specialist, Mr. Bill, always tells me.
So I pulled out my telescope real quick and saw that now it was safe.
But when I got near the dog, I saw it was a German Shepard.
But... Just ahead we saw a collar laying on the ground!
I got to it first, snatched it up and whipped out my magnifier.... It was Luna's
collar!
This meant that Luna had come this way. We were on the right track but it also
meant she didn't have any I.D.
We had to get to her before the dogcatcher!
Things just got REAL!
We looked on our map and saw there was a park a couple of streets over. Luna loves
to chase squirrels. Maybe she went there...
We got to the park and GOSH! There was a LOT going on! I had to stand back and
scope it all out.
Look Randy! Over there! In that trash can... Is that Luna?
We ran over.
Yikes! It was a big, ugly, mean CAT! And it smelled! It hissed and swiped at us
with its claws!
We took off running!
We ran right into Jim and Natalie. They hadn't had any luck either. It was getting
late, so we decided to head home.
I was really bummed!
When I got home, I told Mom about Luna. She said,
Mom: Oh, that’s too bad! Now why don’t you go put the dirty laundry in the washing
machine.

Tomás: I slowly walked to the laundry room, thinking about how much I was going to
miss Luna sleeping in my room that night. Then I bent down to pick up a blanket…
And there was LUNA!
She was asleep in the laundry!
She must have come back from her little squirrel chasing adventure earlier, where
she lost her collar.
That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about the day’s adventures. I don’t think I
could have done as much as I did without my telescope and magnifier!
The next day, I couldn’t wait to tell my friends that I’d found Luna.
They congratulated me and we went to class.
As I sat at my desk, I began to think again about how much my optical devices had
helped. I wondered if Ms. Left was right... Maybe I was missing things in class
when I didn’t use my magnifier and telescope.
Just then, everyone turned to look at the back of the room.

Ms. Acorn: Class, we have a new student today,

Tomás: announced Ms. Acorn.
Ms. Acorn: Her name is Millie.
Tomás: Randy leaned over and whispered,
Randy: Wow, the new girl is really cute!
Tomás: I raised my telescope…

[tiny bell rings]

[upbeat music]

[ Video end: ]

Chapter 3. Resources Online

Scott: Okay. So that is Tomas and a dramatic reading of Tomas and the Case of the
Mysterious Missing Dog. You may have noticed various things going on. There was the
issue with him not wanting to use equipment, there is the issue of his peers
wanting to look -- play with his, borrow his equipment to look at it. There was the
Zoom screen magnification software, monocular, using it to check street crossings
before you go. We wanted to throw that out for all you orientation and mobility
instructors out there.
So a lot of stuff going on. So you guys that are watching if you have any comments,
any critiques or any ideas, if you want to write that into the chat that would be
very cool.

Chrissy: I think also that this book again is a nice intro to the kinds of things
you can use the optical devices for. Scott mentioned street crossings. The school
being able to read the board was one thing too. But you know, the print on -- he
mentioned the pill bottle for Luna, maps, he mentioned maps, posters and circulars
in the community, those are all the kinds of things that you can then build off of
this book to take the student into those kinds of situations or if you can't take
them some place, have the kinds of daily living objects that you can work on with
the student and their magnifier.

Scott: Yeah. So yeah, you guys may be wondering where can we get this? Where --
where do we buy this book? How much -- here's my checkbook's open, I'm ready to buy
a copy.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Download the Book!
Content: tsbvi.edu/tsbvi-publications
Click on the picture of Tomás and Luna to access the books
Description End:

Well, this book a available for free downloads on our website. What you will do is
go to the TSBVI publications page and right now you will see a picture of Tomas on
the publications page. And if you click on there it will come up.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Content: thumbnail of the webpage: tsbvi.edu/tsbvi-publications
Description End:

And there's several -- it's available in a couple of different formats so you can
get it in English or in Spanish. You can also access it -- you can download it into
two different forms.

[ Slide start: ]
Description Start:
Title: Download the Book!
Content: tsbvi.edu/tsbvi-publications
Click on the picture of Tomás and Luna to access the books
Description End:

You can download it into English and Spanish, you can also download it into a
booklet form, which is I have a copy here.

[ Slide end: ]

So it fits into this nice little booklet form that you can staple it in the back,
makes this nice little shape. You can also download it in a larger format, so
single -- one image and one text per sheet. It's also if you have a student who
uses a screen reader you can access it that way and all the pictures have alt text,
so when the student wants to read this with a screen reader it has alt text. So we
want to thank Jim Allen for doing all that and getting it up on the website.

So it's there for you to use however you see fit. We have a couple of dements here,
I think.

Chrissy: I have one comment. Thank you, Ann. Nice work. And then from Sandy, I only
saw the Spanish version on your handouts. Where do we get the English version? And
do you have it in Braille?
It is not in Braille, but it is the English and Spanish versions in different
formats are.

[ Slide start: ] Repeat previous slide

If you go to the link that the publications page link that is listed there and you
click on the picture, that very first picture at the top was Tomas, when you click
on that then you go to a -- it takes you to several links of different downloadable
versions.

Let me see if I can share my computer and show you just where I'm talking about.

[ Slide end: ]

[Screen start:]

Can we do that? No?

All right. So if I go to the TSBVI website and I click on publications, this should
be a familiar picture to you. This is Tomas and you click on that. And then when
you scroll down it gives you a little description and then right below this here
are all the different downloadable forms of the book.

And we're going to be able to have the -- I don't know if it's going to be -- if
the video is going to be here that we just saw, but that's going to be on our
website as well.

Scott: It looks like he's planning on putting the video in there.

And I think as sandy mentioned a Braille version, that's a good idea, just looking
into getting a downloadable Braille file to go along with this.
I think that might be pretty neat.

Chrissy: Okay. So here's the English version, PDF booklet, that's what Scott showed
you of the little folded booklet. And then he also showed you the eight and a half
by 11 that looks like a handout.
So the English are at the top and the Spanish the same thing are at the bottom.
We -- Scott also did the Spanish. He is a multi-talented person, I tell you. I'm
going to stop sharing my computer.

[Screen end:]

I guess that happened for me.

[ Laughter ]

Magic!
But Scott also did the Spanish version and then Miriam Miramontes looked it over
and maybe tweaked it a little bit.
So this really was a collective effort. So many people on this campus helped with
this and it was just a whole -- it was just a whole lot of fun.
So someone says "My screen is showing."

So I don't -- I don't see that it's being shared.

Hmm.
Okay. All right. Thank you, Ann.

And then Deanne says I really like that this book would be a great -- I really like
that this book would be a great way for a student with low vision to explain to his
classmates about devices and his vision needs.
That's exactly the intent of this book. So thank you for that comment, Deanne.

Scott: Yeah. If you guys -- if you guys download it and use it it would be really
great to get feedback on that if you could get that to us you can mail either me or
Chrissy at TSBVI and let us know how it works, what worked or maybe what didn't
work. Because we're thinking if this was something useful, maybe something we could
do another run of or another -- or perhaps a further adventure.

It's just I know when I was a kid a really loved comic books and there are still
people who use comic books to instill a love of literacy. So it seems like it would
be something that would be appealing to a number of kids. It would be interesting
to see how it actually goes over.

Chrissy: Okay. Well, I think that we're done here. [ Laughter ].

Unless some -- oh, here we go.

All right.

Scott: Okay.

Chrissy: So are there any other comments?

We hope you use it, use the book, and like Scott said, let us know how it goes.

Scott: Okay, thanks everybody for showing up and happy reading.

[Silence]

Fade up from black.

Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI.

Fade to black.