Rose’s flight from home represents centuries of d/Deaf people’s desires to free themselves from forced oralism, and to claim a language and safe place of their own. The tutor’s textbook about the parts of the mouth used for speech and lip-reading is painfully familiar to older d/Deaf readers. Rose escapes her house because she does not want to deal with her tutor who teaches her oral speech. There is something so groundbreaking about seeing a young d/Deaf girl’s 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. I would say the book’s depiction of d/Deaf history and language is very accurate, with a few slight flaws.Īlthough Ben seems to be the more prominent of the two characters in the book, it is Rose’s story, set in 1927, that touched me more deeply. By the end of the book, Ben begins to learn fingerspelling and ASL. He uses oral speech and other people communicate with him through writing. Ben grew up deaf in one ear before being completely deafened through a bizarre accident (lightning struck the telephone he was holding to his “good” ear) just before his story begins. As a child, she communicates through writing, and, later, with American Sign Language (ASL) and occasional oral speech and lip-reading. Rose has been deaf for as long as she can remember. The two stories weave back and forth masterfully before ultimately coming together.

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.īen’s story, set in 1977, is told mostly via prose, while Rose’s story, set fifty years earlier, is told mostly via pictures.

A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. This is what makes the book so enjoyable and authentic.Īn overview: A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known.

What 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. Selznick published The Invention of Hugo Cabret in 2007, winning the Caldecott Medal and achieving a major movie adaptation years later, Selznick came back with Wonderstruck, which seems somehow even deeper and more multilayered.

It is, to date, the most creative and ambitious novel about the d/Deaf experience in America I’ve ever come across.

Wonderstruck selznick