El Deafo by Cece Bell

 El Deafo 

Bell, Cece. 2014. El Deafo. New York: Amulet. ISBN 9781419710209. 

Plot Summary 

This autobiographical graphic novel is told from the perspective of young Cece, who gets sick with meningitis and loses most of her hearing. Since she is only four, she doesn’t realize at first that she can’t hear. At school she wears a bulky Phonic Ear under her clothes and must give her teacher a microphone to wear that allows her to hear her teachers clearly, even when they aren’t in the room. Cece is forever conscious of the cords sticking out of her clothes and never wants to point out when people are talking in a way she can’t understand. To deal with these insecurities, she imagines herself as a superhero, El Deafo, powered by her powerful hearing device.  The book documents Cece’s journey through elementary school, where she feels like she is always struggling to fit in. As she meets new friends at school, some of them take advantage of her or treat her differently because of her disability, such as Laura and Ginny, but she eventually finds a true friendship with Martha across the street. 

Critical Analysis 

Bell uses a great deal of humor to address her disability and to show how she navigates through the unknown territory of finding friends. One example is the labeled diagram of Cece wearing her Phonic Ear. Other parts of the book are meant to be more educational, such as when Cece is in kindergarten and learning how to use lip reading and visual, context, and gestural clues to understand what people are saying. The speech bubbles throughout the book illustrate Cece’s difficulty hearing; the way the words are misspelled shows exactly what she hears and allows the reader an insight into her frustration. The novel shows Cece’s wild imagination and her perseverance in learning to live a normal life with her disability. 

Review Excerpts 

2015 Eisner Awards Winner 

2015 Charlotte Huck Award Honor 

2015 John Newberry Medal Honor 

2014 Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature Finalist 

Horn Book Guide Starred, 4/1/2015  “At age four Bell contracted meningitis, leaving her deaf. This graphic-novel memoir relates how she adapted to deafness, others' attitudes toward it, and to a cumbersome assistive device. At the heart of her story is an experience relevant to most children: finding the ‘True Friend,’ a falling out, a reunion.” 

School Library Journal Starred 9/1/2014 “This warmly and humorously illustrated full-color graphic novel set in the suburban '70s has all the gripping characters and inflated melodrama of late childhood: a crush on a neighborhood boy, the bossy friend, the too-sensitive-to-her-Deafness friend, and the perfect friend, scared away.” --Sara Lissa Paulson 

Connections 

Readers may also enjoy other books about disabilities such as The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael Lopez ISBN 9780399246531 or Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper ISBN 9781416971719.