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Wonderstruck
By Kitty | January 4, 2012
The 630 page book was read cover to cover within two days. Can you tell I enjoyed it? Unlike Hugo, where the illustrations and text tell the same story in progression, the illustrations and the text in Wonderstruck
I don’t want to give away the story, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I found it uncanny and a bit surprising (causing wonderment) that the main characters in the book were deaf or partially deaf. The friend who recommended it knew me before my hearing loss began, so had no idea that I now have severe-profound progressive hearing loss, and therefore, may one day find myself unexpectedly part of the deaf community. There were many parts of the book where I absolutely could relate to the characters, and when the illustrations of ASL finger spelled letters spanned the pages of the book, I had to grin since I knew exactly what they said.
Another really fascinating aspect of the book was found in the Acknowledgements. The book was inspired when Selznick saw a documentary about the history of Deaf culture in America, specifically related to cinema. He notes:
I was especially fascinated by a section about cinema and the new technology of sound, which was introduced into the movies in 1927. Prior to this, both deaf and hearing populations could enjoy the cinema together. Sound movies, for the first time, excluded the deaf.
This is SO true! I think the last time I went out to a movie in the theater was 2005, when Garrett and I went to see King Kong, thinking I wouldn’t really need the dialogue much. Even in a movie like King Kong, missing the dialogue made it not worth the $9 to see in the theater, and since then we’ve just patiently awaited the arrival of blockbusters on dvd. Even still, we often get Netflix movies that don’t have subtitles or captions, which is so frustrating. It is impossible for me to follow a movie without the subtitles, ruling out “going out to the movies” as a form of entertainment since most hearing people just don’t want to be “distracted” by the subtitles along the bottom of the screen. I think it’s awesome that Selznick took this inspiration and ran with it to create an amazing and moving story that can (and will) be appreciated by people of all ages.
Wonderstruck
Who wants to read it next?
Topics: Life with Hearing Loss, What are you Reading? | No Comments »