I liked the book, and I really like that it was a graphic novel. I love graphic novels, but more often than not they are seen as immature or not real literature because they for older kids/adults yet still incorporate illustrations as much, if not moreso, than they do text. There's also the idea that graphic novels can only tell simple, stereotypical stories (ie, things like Superman where theres a good guy who defeats the bad guy and saves the day, etc), but El Deafo proves that a comic book can be more than that. Along with that, it is a unique way to tell a serious story about disability and I don't believe it would be as successful if it were told in any other media. Having this story be told through illustrations in which every character is a bunny brings a more light hearted element to it. Because despite this story being about a serious subject matter it is still about children and children who suffer from the same disabilities would probably feel off put if the only way their stories could be told was through grim, serious novels. So framing it like this, in a colorful, lighthearted comic makes it more accessible to children who struggle, and for children who don't suffer from disability, it makes the idea of such a thing less scary and more normalized.
The major theme of this book is obviously living with disability. Even the title, El Deafo, indicates that this story is going to deal heavily with deafness. However, this story isn't just a nonfiction tale about hearing loss and what can be done about it. Bell's main audience for this book was young children, about elementary school age. The fact that she shortened this story so it took place throughout the span of her grade school years when she admitted in interviews it took quite a bit longer for her to completely accept what had happened to her is further proof that this is supposed to be a non-threatening story about disability that can bring comfort to young kids with similar issues. However, along with that, the story is about a common struggle used in stories about childhood and coming of age: that is, fitting in and finding friends. This story deals heavily with the childhood desire to fit in with one's peers, and this is something Cece struggles with deeply as her disability and the things she has to wear and do to deal with her disability force her to stand out. This book mainly deals with the subject of deafness, but it all goes hand in hand with accessible themes for children like the desire to find friends and not feel like an outcast.
With this book, I think Cece Bell was trying to portray her own childhood struggles as a deaf person in a more whimsical light; it was a serious thing that happened to her, of course, but it wasn't the end of the world and she managed to find away to make friends and live her childhood fairly normally despite her impairment. I think she told her story in such a manner to make other children with similar struggles feel less alone. Along with that, she managed to treat deafness as if it is something powerful, and something to be proud of. A lot of times when there are narratives that focus on disabilities, it is often framed around the notion of "well, how can we fix this so the character is normal again?". But the fact of the matter is that people with disabilities are normal and their disabilities aren't ones that can simply be "fixed". Bell doesn't regain her hearing but she does find newfound confidence in the powers her deafness and is able to live happily despite not being what society perceives as normal.
I was a big fan of the illustrations in this story. I felt that the illustrations helped convey the story in a way that text simply could not. This is not the first account of disability I've had to read. When I was in grade school, we were required to read a book about Helen Keller's teacher. The teacher also suffered from sight issues that eventually lead to blindness, however, I felt that that particular story didn't do a very good job in conveying it in a way that people who don't struggle with sight issues would be able to relate to. I remember there was a scene in the book in which the teacher got surgery which helped her see better for a short period in her life. She described looking out the window and being able to see the trees as far more colorful than she ever could before, and in far more detail. This was completely lost on me as someone who doesn't struggle with vision issues. Up until this point, whenever she described what a place looked like, or more appropriately, what it didn't look like, I would just fill in the gaps in my mind and envision the place anyways, even though that wasn't accurate to the character. So when she finally got to see the colorful trees for the first time, I couldn't relate to the joy because I had already been imagining things in color up to this point. Because of this, I think Bell's decision to have her story told as visual novel was immensely effective. If this had just been a written word autobiography, it would be hard to convey such struggles with readers who don't deal with them. For example, when she began to lose her hearing at the hospital, if she had just written "and sudden everything was quiet." it wouldn't do much for us as readers, as this whole thing is a book and we're not hearing anything to begin with. So it was clever of her to have the words in the graphic novel go from black to gray to gone entirely to convey her hearing loss. By doing that, it puts the readers in the exact same position she's in. She couldn't hear anything, and she conveyed that to us by making the dialogue she couldn't hear text that we couldn't read. I think putting this story in the form of a graphic novel was incredibly successful because rather than just telling us that she couldn't hear via text we saw for ourselves that she couldn't hear when everyone else could and were put in her exact position by being unable to read the other character's dialogue, making them silent to us as well.
I think this book was incredibly successful in telling a story that is not usually told in the context of children's literature. While I learned about Helen Keller and her teacher when I was in grade school, that was essentially it. Disability was seen as this thing to overcome, something that was rare and unfortunate but also something that seemed to come from the past. The way Helen Keller was taught to us, it seemed like disability was something that was suffered from in the past but didn't happen so much today. And when it did happen today, it is out of sight as children with disabilities had to go to special schools or classes to cater to them and we never had to see it first hand. So I think a book like this is a mirror for kids who do suffer from disability and want to feel like it isn't the end of the world, that they will be able to make friends and have fun and be able to grow up and their disability isn't something to be ashamed of, but rather something that can make them special and even be perceived as powerful. This book is also a window for kids who don't deal with disability to be able to learn about it in a way that isn't framed in the context of the past or from an outsider's point of view. This book didn't portray disability as something that used to happen a long time ago but as something that happens now, to anyone, and it forced readers into Cece's shoes by making things she couldn't hear impossible to read for them as well, teaching them what it's like to feel lost and othered by a disability. This book is an incredibly important read that I think would be incredibly useful to children both with and without disabilities to understand what it's like to have them and how they can still live happy lives despite them.
