![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/wonderstruck-300x453.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>Selznick published The Invention of Hugo Cabret<\/i><\/a> in 2007, winning the Caldecott Medal and achieving a major movie adaptation; years later, Selznick came back with Wonderstruck<\/i>, which seems somehow even deeper and more multilayered.<\/p>\nWhat makes it different from other books about the d\/Deaf experience written by hearing authors? Simply this: Selznick approached the project not as a writer who wanted to write about characters with disabilities, but as a writer delving into an historical novel about Deaf Culture and language. This is what makes the book so enjoyable and authentic.<\/p>\n
An overview: A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known. A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room, and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to New York City to find what they are missing.<\/p>\n
Ben’s story, set in 1977, is told mostly via prose, while Rose’s story, set fifty years earlier, is told mostly via pictures. The two stories weave back and forth masterfully before ultimately coming together.<\/p>\n
Rose has been deaf for as long as she can remember. As a child, she communicates through writing, and, later, with American Sign Language (ASL) and occasional oral speech and lip-reading. Ben grew up deaf in one ear before being completely deafened through a bizarre accident (lightning struck the telephone he was holding to his \u201cgood\u201d ear) just before his story begins. He uses oral speech and other people communicate with him through writing. By the end of the book, Ben begins to learn fingerspelling and ASL.<\/p>\n
I would say the book\u2019s depiction of d\/Deaf history and language is very accurate, with a few slight flaws.<\/p>\n
Although Ben seems to be the more prominent of the two characters in the book, it is Rose\u2019s story, set in 1927, that touched me more deeply. There is something so groundbreaking about seeing a young d\/Deaf girl\u2019s life story told only in expressive drawings that are not static but rather move along quickly, like a flip book or a silent movie reel.<\/p>\n
Rose escapes her house because she does not want to deal with her tutor who teaches her oral speech. The tutor\u2019s textbook about the parts of the mouth used for speech and lip-reading is painfully familiar to older d\/Deaf readers. Rose\u2019s flight from home represents centuries of d\/Deaf people\u2019s desires to free themselves from forced oralism, and to claim a language and safe place of their own. She runs to a theater in NYC to see her absent mother, actress Lillian Mayhew; her subsequent flight from that place, too, is representative of d\/Deaf children\u2019s inability (to this day) to communicate meaningfully with their parents \u2014 though Rose does find an ally in her brother Walter, who learns to sign with her.<\/p>\n
The trajectory of Rose\u2019s life is ultimately hopeful. She becomes an accomplished d\/Deaf adult who is able to reach out to a Deaf child (Ben) who faces struggles in modern society similar to her own.<\/p>\n
Ben\u2019s story is also remarkable. Certain elements, mainly concerning Ben\u2019s attempts to communicate, didn\u2019t exactly ring true to me. Ben\u2019s oral speech doesn\u2019t appear to be affected by his sudden total deafness \u2014 no one seems to realize he\u2019s deaf when he opens his mouth to speak.<\/p>\n
Ben also lets people talk to him for extended periods of time without explaining that he\u2019s d\/Deaf. I wondered, if his oral speech is clear, why he doesn\u2019t say he\u2019s deaf. I appreciate that Selznick is showing readers how confusing and frustrating it is when hearing people unknowingly use oral speech with d\/Deaf people, but Ben is a survivor (of the telephone accident and his mother\u2019s death) \u2014 I would expect him to more quickly develop coping skills.<\/p>\n
There are also issues with the written communications. When young Rose writes notes to communicate with non-signers \u2014 such as the fraught exchange with her mother \u2014 they are necessarily brief. When Ben meets a young hearing friend (Jamie) behind-the-scenes in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, they talk by writing back and forth.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s realistic, but anyone who has done the same thing in real life knows that you can\u2019t keep up the conversation in long, English prose sentences. Even if you are patient (and that\u2019s a necessary virtue for this form of communication) you start to abbreviate quickly. Then there is the issue of ASL having a different sentence structure from English.<\/p>\n
That wouldn\u2019t affect Jamie\u2019s written communications, because he doesn\u2019t know ASL. But when older Rose tells young Ben her life story, she practically writes a book. Her story is well thought out (she attends a residential school that teaches oralism in the classroom and ASL among her peers) and the exposition is necessary, and it is not unrealistic that Rose would write perfect English, but I couldn\u2019t help but wonder if it could have been done in a more creative way.<\/p>\n
In The Deaf Poet\u2019s Society: an online journal of disability literature, Issue 1: August 2016<\/em>, Raymond Luczak, the renowned Deaf gay writer and poet, includes this author\u2019s note before his prose piece, \u201cNeighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n What you are about to read may sound odd and unusual, perhaps a bit incoherent. Actually, the story is told in American Sign Language, or ASL gloss. What does that mean? Simply put, it is not a translation. ASL is not English on the hands; like any other foreign language, ASL has its own grammar, vocabulary, idioms, and so on. What you are about to read is,\u00a0I hope, a clear delineation of how ASL can be structured sentence-wise.<\/em><\/p>\n The first six lines of \u201cNeighbors\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n House-house-house that-way neighbors new move-there. These-two move i-n eight-nine months ago, not sure exact when, eight-nine-months approximately. First meet, me-think okay-okay. Both hearing, facial-expression-extreme-show-teeth-for-lipreading not, nice. Themselves dress-fancy not. Man pants s-w-e-a-t-pants purple, T-shirt purple same, but strange what? <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I am not faulting Selznick for not glossing Rose\u2019s written communications, or even including English grammar errors, but I\u2019d like to see books for young readers that reflect the kind of ASL-English mash-up that I often see (and participate in) in social media d\/Deaf communication, if only because it is precisely this creative written English that keeps the \u201cilliterate\u201d and even \u201cdumb\u201d labels on native signers. I have seen innocent exchanges cruelly mocked by outsiders and I have been complimented because I don\u2019t (always) write in Pidgin English.<\/p>\n (Speaking of the familiar \u201cdeaf and dumb\u201d label, Selznick\u2019s choice of the book title, Wonderstruck<\/em>, can certainly be seen as a clever, deliberate subversion of the common term, \u201cdumbstruck.\u201d)<\/p>\n Selznick has carefully worked out the challenges that young Rose and Ben would face in their eras. For example, going to the movies was a collective experience for Americans, including the d\/Deaf, during the silent period. Rose is visibly distraught when she sees a poster announcing the exciting new talking pictures.<\/p>\n The facial expressions in Selznick\u2019s peerless illustrations are cues (as they are in real life) for the d\/Deaf to understand context. Rose\u2019s eyes are translucent pools, absorbing the stress around her, and reflecting her hopes and fears. There is a memorable two-page profile of Lillian Mayhew in stage costume; her anger and the rejection of her daughter are written cruelly on her face.<\/p>\n Wonderstruck<\/em> is such a beautiful story that one can suspend disbelief with minor issues. The entire book is an amazing act of sympathetic imagination on behalf of author\/illustrator Brian Selznick.<\/p>\n But Selznick didn\u2019t just use his unique imagination; he did extensive research to create Wonderstruck<\/em>.<\/p>\n There is another aspect to Selznick\u2019s understanding of the material. In 2015, Selznick delivered the 46th<\/sup> Annual May Arbuthnot Honor lecture. In it, he referred to the \u201cqueerness of being deaf.\u201d Selznick saw a similarity between his experiences as a young gay man alienated from Queer community and history, and the experiences of many deaf people who grow up in hearing families and must survive isolation to seek out Deaf Culture and history. He referenced Andrew Solomon\u2019s theory of \u201chorizontal identities\u201d \u2014 which are identities linked to others outside the families and communities of our childhoods. Growing up both d\/Deaf and lesbian, I find this concept fascinating, and worthy of an essay in itself.*<\/p>\n Selznick\u2019s Wonderstruck<\/em> is a gift that keeps on giving. In May 2015, it was announced that acclaimed filmmaker Todd Haynes would direct an adaptation of the book, with a screenplay by Selznick, to release in 2017.<\/p>\n I was delighted to see a casting call for young Rose, specifying that the actress must be d\/Deaf or Hard of Hearing (HOH). A d\/Deaf actress from Utah, Millicent Simmonds, was hired. An entertainment news source added: \u201cThis section of the narrative [young Rose\u2019s story] will see an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to add to that! Wonderstruck<\/em>, which won the ALA Schneider Family Book Award in 2012, has set the bar very high for hearing children\u2019s book writers as well as publishers of youth literature. The same can be said about Cece Bell\u2019s El Deafo<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been waiting my whole lifetime for these books. Selznick and Bell used, respectively, Deaf Culture resources and personal life experiences to create their narratives.<\/p>\n