I have been a counselor and director at a Deaf Camp for over 20 years. Having seen how many of our campers have discovered and embraced their Deaf identities at camp, I couldn’t wait to see how Deaf author Anna Sortino tackled this story.
Lilah’s story is both effective and affecting, touching on many hot topics in the Deaf community: cochlear implants, hearing social media influencers, interactions with law enforcement, feeling “not Deaf enough”. But the story is firmly grounded in Lilah’s singular experience.
Through Lilah’s interactions with campers and counselors, Sortino highlights the diversity of the Deaf community and the disabled community, with many different language preferences, communication styles, abilities, educational backgrounds, and perspectives coming together. And it’s got a sweet summer romance to boot!
Jenny Han meets CODA in this big-hearted YA debut about first love and Deaf pride at a summer camp.
Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least, that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes—when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change.
When Lilah becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community. There are cute British lifeguards who break hearts…
How I adore this book! The author’s gorgeous use of imagery puts us directly into Selah’s point of view.
I felt the itchiness of that school uniform and smelled that sour milk big-box store smell. Every detail, from Selah’s dragon metaphors to Pop’s four-colored pen to a through-the-bathroom-stall-wall conversation at FantasyCon, is pitch perfect.
A debut novel-in-verse about understanding and celebrating your own difference. Selah knows her rules for being normal.
This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.
Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.
As her comfortable, familiar world crumbles around her, Selah starts to figure out more…
This beautifully written novel full of adventure, magic, and romance grabbed hold of my heart and never let go!
Marguerite is a compassionate and resourceful heroine who knows who she is even when the world tries to define that for her. I never knew how much I needed a story about textile magic until I read this book! The author wove her own experience as a deaf/hard-of-hearing individual and ASL interpreter into Marguerite’s story, and the results are a gorgeous tapestry of political intrigue, swordplay, romance, and feminist magic.
"A lovely tale for readers in search of magic, adventure, and romance."- Kirkus Reviews
Deaf. Princess. Witch. Some identities you embrace. Others will get you killed.
Sixteen-year-old Marguerite knows her uncle doesn’t like her. True, she’s in line for the throne before him and he contends she’s too deaf to rule, but she’s known since he broke her hand to keep her from using sign language. Now, as the kingdom’s Bishop-Princep, Uncle Reichard has declared war on magic and Marguerite must hide the fact that she’s a witch.
While witnessing her first witch trial, Marguerite rescues a child from death…
Raisa was just a child when she was sold into slavery in the kingdom of Qilara, where reading and writing is reserved for the highest nobility. She carries her heart verse, written in the sacred language of the gods, and given to her by her father – but she can’t read it. When she is selected to replace the last Tutor-in-training who was executed, Raisa gets the chance to learn the language of the gods and find her connection to her past – but she is also swept up in a forbidden romance with a Qilarite prince, a linguistic mystery, and – if she is brave enough to stand up for her people – a revolution.
