Available! Handy user’s guide with sample conversation prompts and activities! Free with purchase of book. Click here to request your free user’s guide!
“Wake up” someone’s brain with every turn of the page in this delightfully engaging resource. Featuring fun images of children, this picture book for adults is to be shared between a family (or professional) caregiver and a person with memory loss to encourage meaningful emotional connections and conversations through therapeutic brain stimulation.
Research demonstrates that sensory integration in the brain reinforces and excites neural connections. Using the principles of sensory integration, occupational therapist Rae-Lynn Ziegler presents photographs that trigger multiple and varied sensory reactions: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and vestibular and proprioceptive (motion and movement). Test with people with middle to late Alzheimer’s disease, Ziegler’s work demonstrates that spending time with an interactive picture book can help keep people with memory loss connected and engaged.
Users of Let’s Look Together are encouraged to
- Relate to the feelings suggested by the photos
- Reminisce about situations triggered in the person’s memory
- Describe what might precede or follow in the photo’s action
- Tell a story about the child or image
- Find pleasure in sharing the book together
Twenty-nine full-color photographs portray an array of easily recognized emotions and activities. Joy, tears, surprise, contentment, and stubbornness are interspersed with edible delights, unexpected encounters, nurturing family interactions, and more. Simple conversation starters are provided for each image. It all comes together to create a new visual and emotional journey for each person every time the book is opened. Let’s Look Together is for use one-on-one or in groups—at home or in formal care settings ranging from adult day services to hospitals and nursing homes.
Rae-Lynn Cebul Ziegler, OTR, is currently an independent contractor of pediatric occupational therapy services based in Wake Forest, North Carolina. As a licensed occupational therapist certified in sensory integration she has worked in a variety of settings with developmentally disabled children and geriatric clients who display physical, psycho-social, and cognitive disabilities. Ms. Ziegler emphasizes “out of the box” thinking in working with her clients’ disabilities, and she encourages her clients to do the same in adapting to their unique circumstances. The prototype for this book was first developed for Ms. Ziegler’s mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease. It gave mother and daughter an opportunity to connect when the disease’s progression made communication increasingly difficult.
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” . . . a top pick for senior health collections.” – The Midwest Book Review
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“This book provides a wonderful vehicle for creating a meaningful connection with a loved one experiencing Alzheimer’s or memory loss. It is a gift to both the caregiver and the family member, decreasing a sense of isolation and hopelessness, and replacing it with compassion, love and honoring of shared life experience.”
-Jane Koomar, Ph.D., OTR/L, FAOTA, Executive Director, Occupational Therapy Associates in Watertown, P.C., and Board President
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“Persons with cognitive decline hunger for meaningful connections. Rae-Lynn Ziegler addresses this need with ‘two gifts for the price of one’ in her picture book that is a rich sensory feast as well as a recipe for side-by-side, emotionally present exchanges between ‘best friends’ over the shared feelings and emotions of the pictures. Magic moments are sure to follow from this rich interaction.”
-Virginia Bell, MSW, co-author, The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care
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“For anyone of any age who wonders what to say or what to do when visiting someone with significant memory loss, these pictures open possibilities for pure pleasure in the moment.”
-Lisa P. Gwyther, MSW, Education Director, Bryan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Duke University Medical Center and co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan
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“This book provides individuals living with dementia a failure-free, friendly, emotionally rich, and familiar way to open up and share using their remaining abilities. It is supportive communication at its best and provides the person with memory loss the opportunity to tell old stories, share momentary thoughts, reflect on what they are feeling, or absorb some new information that has value and meaning. Together with the data that Rae-Lynn Zeigler provides regarding the impact and effect of the book on people within an assisted living special care unit, this resource can be used to help guide others as they seek to connect and communicate with those experiencing memory loss.”
-Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA, Dementia Care & Training Specialist
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“As a member of the Board of Trustees of the Alzheimer’s Association Cleveland Area Chapter and the daughter of someone who lived with Alzheimer’s disease, I keenly appreciate how hard one must work to communicate with a loved one, particularly in the late stages of the disease. Let’s Look Together fosters communication with individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, encourages self-expression, and permits connections between caregivers and individuals with the disease. I know that caregivers will appreciate this structured approach to maintaining meaningful interactions.”
-Nancy Hooker, board member, Alzheimer’s Association Cleveland Area Chapter
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“From both the perspective of a medical librarian and a person who has experienced a family member with Alzheimer’s disease, I find Let’s Look Together: An Interactive Picture Book for People with Alzheimer’s and Other Forms of Memory Loss to be of potentially great value. The book is an especially appropriate tool to include in a medical library collection for the use of health practitioners treating or being trained to treat Alzheimer’s and other individuals with memory loss. It is equally useful in a personal setting as a resource for family and friends to use informally to stimulate and engage those with memory loss.”
-Suzanne Porter, MA, MSLS, Medical Librarian, Duke University