June 13, 2018
Author and illustrator, Cece Bell, known for award-winning book, El Deafo. El Deafo has received a Newbery Award and an Eisener Award. Cece Bell grew up in Virginia, where she attended William and Mary perusing her dreams graduating with an art degree. She continued her education and got a master’s in design and illustration at Kent State University, where she met her husband, Tom, also a children’s book author. They currently live in Virginia with there children.
El Deafo is a graphic memoir about a young girl who gets sick with meningitis and as a result, has significant to complete hearing loss. Through her incredible story you get to see, read, and understand the struggles Cece Bell and the deaf community face. “Knowing your weakness is you GREATEST strength.”
Summary:
In the beginning, Cece Bell a visual metaphoric bunny, known as Cece, lives a healthy life with her family. If you pay close study (as many of you probably did), you may have noticed she immediately used past tense verbs. This immediately pulls the reader (me) in and makes them want to find the ‘why.’
Cece starts getting sick and her family rushes the four year old to the hospital. Cece wakes up in the hospital with little hearing. She heals up in the hospital but as a result, loses all of her hearing. Her family takes her to the audiologist, where she is fitted with a Phonic Ear. Cece is worried that she will not fit in Kindergarten. She is then placed into a special class, where she learns to read lips. Cece soon realizes through contextual and visual clues, how to start communicating with people. She starts to learn how to read lips, but finds it tricky because “words sound similar and people’s lips look the same when they are saying them: Jerry, cherry, sherry.”
After Cece has started to make friends in her new class for deaf children, Cece is sad to hear she is moving to another school in Roanoke, Virgina. Although this breaks her heart, she is optimistic for the new beginning.
Roanoke starts off as a lonely beginning for Cece. She is friendly to the kids in her school, but she immediately feels they do not like her. The kids do not want to play with her and they stare at her. Cece starts to feel lonely and out of place that is until she meets, Laura. Laura and Cece become best friends, but Cece is quick to notice the pushiness and bossiness Laura has over Cece. Laura and Cece grow apart, when their friendship is tampered with bulling. This is when Cece and Ginny become friends.
When Cece Bell introduces Ginny, this was a great insight for me because I always thought by talking slow, you are helping — not so much!
Ginny turns out to be the complete opposite of Laura. She is too SENSITIVE to Cece’s hearing loss. Ginny does what most people would do, or at least what I thought was correct, she talk too slow for Cece. Instead of helping her, this makes Cece feel dumb and it also makes it hard to be understood. Cece decides to stand up for herself by telling Ginny she does not like when she talks to her like that, and in doing so, ends up in a small fight with Ginny. This later is resolved with Cece being invited to a sleep over for Ginny’s birthday.
Cece Bell did a great job explaining as soon as she got to the party, how she felt out of place. She also depicted a casual tv interaction with young girls, as difficulty for her. One girl even asks, if they should turn the tv louder, but Cece did a great job showing the audience, the sound will only be louder, but still unclear through her speech bubbles.
At the end of the night, where typically, most casual reflection of the slumber party went, the girls turn the lights out and everyone is laughing. Cece doesn’t know if they are laughing at her or something else. She can not read there body language or lips. This perspective makes young Cece feel out of place and wanting to go home.
Soon, young Cece makes friends with Martha, a sweet, third grade girl from across the street. The connection is immediate and authentic. Martha doesn’t treat her different by talking slow, nor does she boss Cece around. The two girls become inseparable and areThey play until one day, Martha accidently hurts Cece’s eye.
During the hiatus time from the accident with Martha, Cece finally gets enough courage to talk to Mike. She lets him in on her secret, she has superhero powers, El Deafo. This courage allows Cece to finally use her weakness as a strength. She was able to captivate the interest of her classmates to make both good and bad choices that every young person should make.
This book was a fast read for me. I will be honest, I was hesitant to start because I saw it was a graphic novel and I do not enjoy them. This book however, is one of my favorite children books, because it was captivating from the beginning, he was humorous and relatable for both people that are deaf and people that aren’t.
Author’s Use of Language
- Cece Bell used visual metaphors, like when she used bunnies as the characters. This depicts animals that are normally great at hearing to have a problem with their strength. She also used precision in her speech bubbles to help the reader/audience understand her thinking at the time. She also used some foreshadowing, when you read the first introduction pages, you knew something was going to happen because of the immediate past tense verbs.
Instructional Lessons
I would use this book to introduce different types of writing. We could dissect on what a memoir is. We can also write our own graphic novels as a way of writing narrative pieces. By allowing the kids make their own graphic novels, they will have to focus on making speech bubbles, focus on points of view, and attention to details in their illustrations.
Mentor Texts
- Inferences: We would start the beginning with making predictions on what they think is going to happen
- Point of View: In first grade, students need to recognize how is talking, this would be a great way for kids to understand how they know the author is talking.
- Speech Bubbles: We would use the speech bubbles to help us in our narrative writing to make our writing more interesting
- Connections: I would use this text as a reflective topic on how to treat others that are different than us.
Life Changing for Children
This book could be life changing for students because it shows them to have compassion for others. It shows them to self-correct when they are in public places and see people that are deaf or signing to each other. This book can give them insight on what they are feeling as the world is watching them.
How are family relationships depicted?
- In the book you can see that Cece learned a lot from a family that didn’t have background knowledge on what to do with a deaf child. They were supportive by taking he to the doctors. They enrolled her in lip reading classes, where she learned to communicate with society. Her mother also enrolled her in a signing class that was evident she did NOT want to be in. But her mom was understanding throughout this book. She picked her up when she called to come home from the ominous party. She wanted Cece to have a life that was normal. She pushed her to play outside and meet new friends.
What roles do women and girls have — based on their own intelligence or initiative or on good looks/relationships? how are problems presented, conceived, resolved?
- The main character, Cece, plays the role of a deaf girl that encounters many obstacles to get to a comfortability of herself. She faces conversational problems, where she has to learn to use contextual clues to speak to people. She is presented with multiple people that take advantage of the fact that she is different but overcomes her mistreatment. She also resolves her own problem that she is deaf. She comes to terms that she is different and uses it as a superpower.
Who or what was included and who or what was left out of the scope of the book?
- This book includes a girl that faces many challenges over the course of her elementary school years. Cece Bell did a great job with her illustrations and speech bubbles to include what she was thinking during the time of grade school. What I would love for her to include as a sequel, is what life was like in middle school and even college. What technological advancements made it easier to fit in to society for her? She made it well known that she was not a fan of the Phonic Ear. So I would ask is there something now that makes it easier for her internally?
Charissa's Kid Lit. Chronicles 