Give Me A Sign

Sortino, Anna. Give Me A Sign. 2023. 303p. ISBN 9780593533796.

Lilah has hearing loss. She is not profoundly deaf, but she has a hard time following multiple conversations at the same time, or when music is playing, or even sitting in the back seat of a car. But because she can still hear some, she feels like standing on both side of a large divide. She's not deaf enough to fully master American Sign Language or to understand the intricacies of the deaf community. She's too deaf for a society organized for the hearing. 

The spring of her junior high school year, Lilah is observing her friends all making plans for the summer. Due to her poor grades, her mother has enrolled her in a tutoring program, so Lilah is facing eight weeks of struggling with courses that don't really interest her. On a whim, she applies to work as a counselor-in-training and the summer camp for the deaf and the blind she attended when she was a child. To her surprise, she is hired and soon finds herself in the woods with campers. Not fluent in American Sign Language, Lilah has difficulty communicating with the profoundly deaf, including Isaac, the super attractive Deaf counselor.

Though Lilah was not looking for romance over the summer, she finds herself intensely attracted to Isaac. But with many campers to supervise, a non-deaf Youtuber who enjoys a level of notoriety with her sign-language videos, and other counselors who have a serious history, Lilah is soon overwhelmed with the complexities that are present in the Deaf community. Will Lilah finally be able to find her voice?

The diversity of the deaf culture is explored in Give Me a Sign, and all of the characters are realistically written and convey accurate emotions and relationships. Fans of light romance and interpersonal relationships will enjoy exploring a different culture.

Time to Roll

Sumner, Jamie. Time to Roll. 2023. 208p. ISBN 9781665918596.

Ellie suffers from celebral palsy, which means she has plenty of issues with balance. She spends most of her time in a wheelchair, and that's just fine with her. Her mother has been dating Ellie's gym teacher, and now that they are getting married they will be heading off on their honeymoon, leaving Ellie to spend the summer with her estranged father.

Then her best friend Coralee decides to enter in a beauty pageant. Coralee's got it all. She's tall and pretty, she has an amazing voice, and she oozes confidence, all things that do not describe Ellie. She'd rather be home cooking or baking. But when the beauty pageant organizer notices Ellie and asks her to enter the pageant as well, Ellie is taken aback. Coralee supports her, and despite the fact that her mother would not approve, Ellie borrows the money from her grandmother and enters the pageant. Ellie's other best friend Bert agrees to serve as her manager and help her prepare.

The pageant's organizer clearly support Ellie's candidacy, and she never hesitates to put her front and center. But Ellie is not ready to march to the tune of someone else's drum. If she's going to do this pageant right, Ellie wants to figure out for herself what it means to be talented and beautiful.

A light read that takes the dive into the world of beauty pageants, but from the perspective of a differently abled individual, Time to Roll provides the valuable lesson that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

All the Light We Cannot See

Doerr, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See. 2014. 531p. ISBN 9781476746586.

Marie-Laure lost her sight at age 7. Living in Paris with her father, she spends her days wondering the Museum of Natural History, where he works as a locksmith, learning about the past and the present of animals and man's relationship with nature. Marie-Laure is especially attracted to seashells and the ocean, even though she's never been. Grumbles of war threaten their existence, however, as Germany rearms and seizes territories in Eastern Europe. Following France's declaration of war in September 1939 and a swift German invasion in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee to Saint-Malo, where he has family. Her father has been entrusted with a cursed jewel from the museum's collection, and he has been tasked with protecting it.

Werner is a German orphan. Growing up, he is destined to work in the coal mines. Using scraps, he fixes a radio, and suddenly the orphanage catches music and words from around the world. Especially fascinating is a regular broadcast in French aimed at children, which the woman in charge of the orphanage translates for the children. His affinity for electronics and radio allows him to escape his future. He instead finds himself training in the German army to locate radio signals. Having left his little sister behind at the orphanage, Werner knows he is not suited for war, but fears the mines more. In 1944, following D-Day, his unit is sent to Saint-Malo to track down the signals of a resistance cell that is broadcasting German secrets to the allies.

Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel is a gem appraiser who has been tasked by the Nazis to identify jewels and turn them in to the government to finance the war. von Rumpel searches for the gem that was hiding at the Museum of Natural History. Even though it is rumored to be cursed, causing no end of suffering for the person who owns it, it also possesses curative powers, and as he is dying from cancer, he would gladly trade suffering for healing.

As the allies intensify their bombing of Saint-Malo, the story of these three characters become intertwined in a deadly confrontation ...

Ball Don't Lie

de la Peña, Matt. Ball Don't Lie. 2005. 280p. ISBN 9780385734257. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Sticky has been in and out of foster care following the death of his mother. Some families find him distant, others find him difficult, so he ends up bouncing around like a basketball. Lacking stability in his life, basketball is his only love. Sticky can play a mean game of basketball, and could probably earn a scholarship to college. Sticky finds refuge at the Lincoln Recreation Center, a busy sports complex. There, Sticky can let go and do magic with the ball.  And the Rec Center provides him with the family he craves for.

But playing at the Rec can be tough. Most of the guys are African-American, and they are good. Sticky has to compete with them, but he also has to compete with himself. His obsessive compulsive disorder means that he's got to follow the same ritual, and perform the same actions multiple times. Sticky is not mental, he's just got issues, but if he can work through them he might be able to reach the top of the basketball world and move away from the name Sticky to his real name, Travis Reichard.

Told in alternating chapters with his life as a child and meeting his girlfriend, Sticky's story vividly describes basketball sequences, without overdoing it. The characters are realistically portrayed, and share relatable stories. Fans of sports literature will be cheering on Sticky as he finds his way through life.

Because You'll Never Meet Me

Thomas, Leah. Because You'll Never Meet Me. 2015. 344p. ISBN 978-1-61963-590-6. Available as an ebook from Overdrive and at FIC THO on the library shelves.

Ollie barely survived his birth. Plagued with a deadly allergy to electricity, Ollie now lives in a cabin in the woods of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan with his mother, away from the comforts of civilization. The only other person who visits is Auburn-Stach, his doctor. It is a solitary life, but Ollie makes the most of it by reading books and enjoying strange hobbies. When, at twelve, a girl shows up on the porch to play, Ollie is flabbergasted. Soon he and Liz become friends, meeting every Wednesday on the long driveway leading to his cabin. Liz spends time with her uncle, who owns a junkyard next door, but still quite a distance through the woods.

Moritz is blind. He was born without eyes, and has gaping holes where eyeballs should be. Moritz has developed echolocation skills, and is able to "see" everything around him, including hearing heartbeats and the shifting of hair. Weak of heart, Moritz has a pacemaker that regulates his heartbeats after he died once. After leaving the lab that was built around him to study him, he ends up in a German high school with other students who are not expected to go anywhere in life.

These two are connected together by Auburn-Stach, who puts them in touch like the penpals of old. Through an exchange of correspondence, they both get to learn about the other and learn from each other. Ollie wants to explore the world, but also wants to learn more about his father, a secret his mother holds tightly. Moritz does not want the pity that he receives from people, and he wants to discover why his mother abandoned him. The two of them are deeply hurt and have large chips on their shoulders, and they hurt those who love them. But through it all, they continue their letter exchange, and eventually discover truths that change their lives forever ...

Told from each of the teen's perspectives, Ollie and Moritz offer an exploration of teen angst, love, desires, and hopes not often present in realistic fiction. Fans of coming of age stories will appreciate this dark but hopeful tale and will cheer for Ollie and Moritz as they attempt to escape the bonds that are holding them to the past.

The Silence Between Us

Gervais, Alison. The Silence Between Us. 2019. 320p. ISBN 9780310766162. Available at FIC GER on the library shelves.

Maya is stressed. She has just moved across the country for her mother's new job. She's left her best friend behind. She's going to a new school mid year, sure to be the center of attention for a few days. And Maya is deaf, and this will be her first time in a "normal" high school. Since she became deaf when she was young, all of her schooling has been done in a non-hearing school. Returning to a school where people can hear makes her nervous.

At her new school, Maya is provided a sign language assistant that will help her translate what is being said. Maya is pretty good at reading lips, and because she could hear when she was a child, she speaks normally. Her classmates are therefore surprised she can't hear, and constantly forget. Beau Watson, president of the class and do-gooder extraordinaire, goes out of his way to make Maya feel welcome. She chalks it up to him being eager to burnish his credential, hey I helped a deaf girl college application, but when Beau begins learning American Sign Language and practice it with her, she notices that maybe Beau really is interested in her after all.

Being deaf brings on challenges, such as finding employment and navigating the treacherous waters of a high school social scene, but Maya is ready to confront and defy all expectations!

Maya and Beau are accurately portrayed and are often awkward with each other. The supporting cast of high schoolers is well integrated, while Maya's mother and the relationship between the two showcase a supportive parent who nevertheless does not want her daughter to pity herself or her circumstances. Fans of realistic fiction will appreciate hearing the world from the perspective of someone who can't. 

Stick Pick

Sandor, Steven. Stick Pick. Part of the Sports Stories series. 2017. 127p. ISBN 978-1-4594-1219-4. Available at FIC SAN on the library shelves.

Janine is the top middle school hockey player at her school. The captain of her team, she leads them to a championship, but on her way back home with her parents an incoming car slams in their vehicle, and Janine is left paralyzed from the waist down, while her mother is also injured. Despondent and angry, Janine spends a few months in the hospital but is unable to regain the use of her legs. Forced to return to school, she now must ride in the handicapped bus with another student, who is really happy to be with her. Unfortunately, Janine is not in a good place and she hates every minute of the ride.

Even at school, life is difficult. The elevator is usually filled with stuff that is being moved by the custodians. The handicapped bathroom is always used by other students. It’s hard to maneuver through the halls when there are lots of people there. Janine just can’t accept her handicap. When she goes to the arena to watch her old team practice, she notices people playing sledge hockey, and she realizes her father and her best friend’s ploy to interest her in this new sport. She’s mad at both of them, but she agrees to try it out. It turns out that all of the upper body workouts to move her wheelchair has prepared her well for this sport. Now it is up to Janine to commit to this new life, even if it is not the life she had dreamed for herself. With so many obstacles in front of her, both on the ice and in life, will she stand up for herself and face this new challenge head on, or will she continue to hope for a life that no longer exists?