Mike Sciacca As Janina Radogna’s fingers glide...

Mike Sciacca

As Janina Radogna’s fingers glide effortlessly along the page of a

children’s book, her translation from touch to mind, then spoken,

enraptures children, who they watch and listen in wonderment.

Radogna, 22, blind since just after birth, reads Braille to

children at the Learning Circle Preschool Day Care Center in

Huntington Beach.

The youngsters, about 80 of them, are in two groups,

kindergarteners and first-graders, and second- and third-graders.

Each group gets to hear the expressive Radogna on alternate Fridays

during each month.

“This has been really good for the children,” said Judy

Coglianese, co-owner of the preschool day care center. “They have

such a narrow view sometimes of the world, and getting the chance to

have Janina read to them opens up their world just a little bit more.

“This gives them the chance to see that there are ways that a

person can read something, other than with just the eyes,” she said.

Radogna has been reading at the center for just a year. She and

her mother, Elizabeth, select rhymes and stories from the Braille

Press in Boston, shorter stories that will pique the interest of the

children.

The rhyme and story books contain pictures for the children to

see. On the flip side of that page, Janina Radogna is given a worded

description of what the picture contains.

What would be a 50-page book for sighted readers is more than 100

pages of Braille for Janina Radogna.

The Radognas have been collecting books written in Braille for

more than 20 years.

Janina Radogna said she gets great pleasure from showing these

children the wonders of Braille.

“This gives the children the opportunity to see what a blind

person can do, how we read Braille and how we get along in the

world,” said Janina Radogna, who turns 23 this month. “They are

allowed to touch the books, and they get to ask me questions at the

end of the story time. I get a lot out of this, and I know the kids

do, too.”

Janina Radogna was born prematurely at Hoag Hospital in Newport

Beach, weighing only 1 pound 3 ounces.

Elizabeth Radogna said she was told that Janina had made hospital

history as the tiniest baby to survive such a birth.

She was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County,

where she spent the first six months of her life.

“That was an incredibly overwhelming time for us,” Elizabeth

Radogna said. “Doctors couldn’t tell us anything. She was so, so

tiny, and all I could do was put lotion on her. Not getting to really

hold her was the toughest thing. She was placed on oxygen for such a

long time, and that actually damaged her retinas. I am kind of like

her eyes in the world.”

But Janina Radogna is a survivor.

She went on to attend the Blind Children’s Learning Center in

Santa Ana and later went to school in the Ocean View School District,

which, Elizabeth Radogna said, “worked with her needs.”

It was when she reached Edison High School, where she graduated in

1999, that she began to “feel grounded,” her mother said.

Janina Radogna has a yearning for learning, she said. Not only is

she fluent with Braille, which she began to learn in the first grade,

she is fluent in Polish, the first language that she learned.

She enjoys studying Asian language tapes, which she checks out

from the local library, and can speak some Japanese, Vietnamese and

Korean.

She’s also taking voice lessons and, in the near future, would

like to sing with her church’s worship team.

Janina Radogna says she’d eventually might like to make an album.

For now, though, she’s relishing reading Braille to sighted

children.

“I truly feel the children enjoy it,” she said. “When they first

meet me, I think they are in total awe. My mom says that they really

concentrate and watch my fingers run across the page. They think my

books are magical.”

* MIKE SCIACCA covers sports and features. He can be reached at

(714) 965-7171 or by e-mail at michael.sciacca@latimes.com.