It is such a wonderful read for ALL students.Įl Deafo is a powerful and impactful novel that offers a unique perspective on the experiences of the hearing-loss community. I also believe that you don’t have to have hearing loss to relate to and love this book. Cece doesn’t just focus on the negative, she embraces her differences and turns them into a superpower to draw people to her.

If the only message that you take away from this story is NOT to turn up the volume for those with hearing loss, the world will be a better place! That’s not the only message, as there were so many I could relate to, including isolation, feelings of shame, embarrassment, avoidance of situations, putting up with things and people only due to fear, and on and on. The message that volume does not equal better hearing was strong in this book, and it is a message that the hearing world really fails to understand and yet, really needs to! Talking louder, talking slower, talking more pronounced DOES NOT HELP! It makes it much more difficult for those like Cece and myself who rely on lip-reading to understand. It’s like so many of the things she was saying I have said or felt so many times! The book highlights how Cece embraces these struggles and turns them into a superpower! Even though Cece is in elementary school in the book and I am well beyond that age, I found myself shaking my head in agreement and relating to Cece like I never have before in any other story I have read. El Deafo is the autobiographical story of Cece Bell’s struggles with hearing loss told in a graphic novel format that is a perfect way to get the true feelings across. I have lost many things due to my hearing loss, including my teaching career. It is a daily struggle to communicate with my family and the world. I have been living with hearing loss for over 25 years. ordered the novel to read and am so happy that I did! She said her students overwhelmingly love the Newbery Honor-winning graphic novel. She was curious about how real and factual it is to a person who walks in the shoes of hearing loss, such as me. While discussing my feelings on Facebook, another person asked if I had read the novel El Deafo by Cece Bell.

I addressed this in my novel study by adding a non-fiction article to help portray the real side of hearing loss so that students reading the novel understand the mistakes made by the author. Now, I love the book Wonder and feel it has a solid needed place in the classroom, but how the author addresses hearing loss is concerning. A while back I partook in a discussion on Facebook about the factuality of the novel Wonder.