Community Projects

As part of our commitment to eye care education for the public, Pediatric Eye Care of Maryland, formerly Dankner Fiergang Eye Associates has sponsored the “Amazing Animal Eyes” exhibit at the Baltimore Zoo and the “Whale Vision” exhibit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. We have also sponsored the “Flight into Sight” exhibit at the Maryland Science Center and The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and the Capitol Children’s Museum in Washington, DC. As part of our ongoing commitment to the community, our doctors regularly speaks on pediatric ophthalmology issues to parent-teacher organizations, child study groups, primary care providers, day-care providers, and other organizations.

Flight Into Sight

Imagine a little astronaut embarking on an imaginary journey into frontiers “where no man has gone before” or no bear for that matter. Flight Into Sight, Adventures in Ocular Space is a story about Eye Care Bear, who miniaturizes himself and takes a pretend spaceship ride through the human eye.

Written by one of our pediatric ophthalmologists, Dr. Stuart Dankner (and illustrated by Julian Smith), Flight Into Sight uses bright cartoon-like drawings, colorful diagrams and easy to understand text to explain how the human eye works.

During the course of his journey, Eye Care Bear has to “dematerialize” to get through the cornea, switch off his headlights to enter the iris, and set his spacecraft full throttle to get through the vitreous humor in the interior of the eye. He later finds himself exploring a magical forest of rods and cones, which help explain the mystery of color vision, and then pilots his craft over the retinal landscape and toward the optic nerve.

Entertaining as well as educational, Flight Into Sight is appropriate for preschoolers and is a great resource for older children (and adults) who want to learn how we see. The book is the published version of the immensely popular Flight Into Sight, Adventures in Ocular Space museum exhibit, a full color display developed by Pediatric Eye Care of Maryland which was an exhibit at the Maryland Science Center and the Franklin Institute of Science in Philadelphia and the Capitol Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C. As an added measurement of Flight Into Sight‘s effectiveness in entertaining and enlightening children of all ages, material from the book has been adopted by the National Institute of Health for use in the “Vision” program, a health curriculum which is being taught in grades four through eight in public schools nationwide.

Profits from Flight Into Sight are donated to the Maryland Society for Sight, a group that has championed the cause of preserving vision in the state of Maryland for the last 100 years. Each year the Maryland Society of Sight, for which Dr. Dankner serves as chairman of the Eye Safety Committee, has provided vision screening for over 5000 preschool children and 3600 adults in the state.

To order your copy of “Flight into Sight” contact us or order from Amazon.