Literally Graphic reviewed El Deafo by Cece Bell
Review of 'El Deafo' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
A lovely little all ages graphic novel that I tracked down recently as part of my push this year to read more comics/graphic novels by authors with disabilities. Something I'm still having a bit of trouble tracking down, so if you have any suggestions feel free to pass them along.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, even if it wasn't putting me on the edge of my seat at every flip of the page haha. The story is about Cece's life in elementary school, so it can seem kind of silly at times to me as a grownup, but I really appreciated her honesty. When it comes to books based off of people's lives I have a much higher tolerance for looser stories. Sometimes people's lives just don't work out as neatly as fiction and that's OK. This was an important journey for Cece to go through and I do …
A lovely little all ages graphic novel that I tracked down recently as part of my push this year to read more comics/graphic novels by authors with disabilities. Something I'm still having a bit of trouble tracking down, so if you have any suggestions feel free to pass them along.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, even if it wasn't putting me on the edge of my seat at every flip of the page haha. The story is about Cece's life in elementary school, so it can seem kind of silly at times to me as a grownup, but I really appreciated her honesty. When it comes to books based off of people's lives I have a much higher tolerance for looser stories. Sometimes people's lives just don't work out as neatly as fiction and that's OK. This was an important journey for Cece to go through and I do think there's a lot we can learn from it.
That said, it would have been nice if she could have put some of her personal experiences into the larger experience of deaf culture in general from time to time. While she does put a short disclaimer on the end reminding us all that this is not the be all end all of every deaf experience ever, but it would have been nice to read more about her feelings around ASL (for example) as a side bar or something, while it's happening, rather then waiting until the end.
Of course, since I don't actually read all that much all ages comics or comics that deal with disability, I really have little to no idea how this fit into the larger market in 2014.
As far as the art goes I really enjoyed Cece Bell's style. The choice to make everyone over into rabbits was really delightful and David Lasky's colors really popped off the page in a classy way.
