Book Highlight: El Deafo

This graphic novel by Cece Bell is a loose autobiographical account of Cece’s childhood. After an intense bout of menengitis, she lost her hearing in bith ears thus sparking a long journey into the hearing-able/deaf world and the difficulties of growing pains alongside being considered “different” and disabled.

Since this autobiographical, Bell obviously has a sense of what she is talking about. She can precisely explain and draw such visual tools as hearing aids and phonic ears, and how they aid the person in hearing. And being a grpahic novel, she gives the beginning signs of ASL (American sign language) she learned when her mom took her to sign language class.

It is also filled with real pathos. Every child I think has a time when they feel different and misunderstood. She felt more so with her hearing loss, and how it affects how people treated her. Friends were either super “helpful” treating her like invalid instead of a capable person, teachers who didn’t understand that speaking louder doesn’t mean speaking clearly and the frustration of what feels like living in a silent bubble where you can’t hear anyone. All she wants is to be “nomal” like everyone else.

But there is something to be said about embracing your differences as you can tell by the cover, that Cece does begin to see her hearing aids as a superpower when- – well you’ll have to find out yourself, but the imaginative superhero spots are adorable and delightful. That plus the visuals of everyone as bunnies is sure to keep young readers engaged.

I personally enjoyed and related to this book a lot as I too have hearing loss and had to deal with those bulky hearing contraptions and feelings of loneliness (seriously I thought the game of Telephone was specifically made to torture and make fun of me. I was very insecure that I couldn’t hear things that well). So even though this one story and cannot represent the hearing impaired/deaf community as a whole, I found a lot that would be relatable myself and thus educational to anyone who wants to know a bit more about it.