LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE THIRTY-FIRST

Tell Me How the Wind Sounds | Leslie Davis Guccione

Today I finished reading Tell Me How The Wind Sounds by Leslie Davis Guccione. It's not complicated. I read it when I was nine, got it from one of those book fairs from school. I loved it then, and I love it now.  

So, yes, it's not complicated. It's a young adult coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, budding romance of two mid-to-late teens discovering each other's worlds. One is the deaf son of an island fisherman. The other is the spoiled daughter of a well-off professor, spending the summer with her family on the island in a rented cottage. The worlds collide, and obviously there are going to be several main points that a story like this couldn't do without: misunderstanding, learning a new language, coming out of a comfort zone, learning to open up to entirely different worlds, compromise, and ultimately that “anyone can hear the language of love," as the text on the cover explains.  

Alas, Amanda is not my favorite character ever written, by any stretch of the imagination. She is bratty and trite and self-consumed. And while Jake can be, as well, we understand his reason for being so, far more than we can understand hers. He's deaf. She's just spoiled. So honestly, I don't like that he falls for her, because I really think he's too good for her and that she doesn't deserve him. That makes me selfish, I know, but I never fully believe that she cares for him the way he cares for her or that she realizes the hurt that she's going to leave inside him at the end of the summer. That just makes my heart ache so stubbornly and fiercely for Jake. And not simply because I'm partially deaf and KNOW what it's like to be in that world, but because his side of the emotion is so plainly stated and obviously painful, while hers just seems so girlish and pathetic and not up to par with his.  

Too much of the book written from Jake's point of view only makes me care more about Jake. Not that I care about the fact that most of the book was written from his point of view: I like his view much better. And I'm sure the author knew that he was the more interesting of the two, which is why she focused on him more, even though it seems that Amanda was supposed to be the main focus of the book. When we get back to Amanda, I fade a little, waiting for Jake to reappear. Luckily, it's a young adult book, and it doesn't take long for Jake to reappear (unlike The Witch of Blackbird Pond, where we have to wait and salivate FOREVER for Nat Eaton to reappear; damn you, Elizabeth George Speare!). Jake is an awesome character, and our trips inside his silence are great.  

There are some typos that are hard to overlook: the misuse of “peak/pique" and the misspelling of “racked" are two obvious ones that glare at me repeatedly through the pages. But for all that I'm not the biggest fan of Amanda, my love for Jake will make me recommend this book to anyone wanting to teach a young reader how to treat a deaf person no differently from anyone else. It's a hard lesson to learn because, as humans, we want to have communication with each other, and there are two forces at play here for the lack of communication: One is that it's a different language to learn in order to communicate, and it's frustrating and takes time, on both sides, as all language barriers do. And two is that there is this awful stigma we place on the deaf (or those missing another sense) that losing this sense somehow makes that person stupid. If he can't understand me, then he must be stupid. It's a hard thing to overcome because we all do it, whether or not we know it, and I wish it weren't so. This book makes it plain how painful that is to someone who has to deal with it every day of his life, and that is what I cherish about this story. Along with this comes a third thing, and that is the fact that a deaf person is smart enough to know the second thing. There is a fear that comes with that for him: that if he tries too hard or looks too interested, he risks looking like a fool, risks looking exactly the way he knows or thinks other people look at him already. So it's easier to clam up, just to be alone in a very silent world. That must be a pain so vicious that I do not even dare comprehend it.

And that is what this story is to me. I love Jake's strength, frustration, silence, pain, impatience, and his struggle to be understood and treated like an intelligent human being, just as much now as I did when I was nine years old. Is the book classic? Oh, heavens no, not even close. But Jake is.

•I purchased this at a book sale as a teenager. I do not know the publisher or author.•
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LETTER OF MARQUE: ARTICLE THE TWENTY-SEVENTH

My Brother Sam is Dead | James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier

I love young adult novels. I crave them like air and chocolate. Yes, I realize I am far past young adult reading, but there is something in their simplicity that catches me suddenly in another dream world. They are not often mentally-challenging; there is no heightened language, but there is something stark in their nakedness: illustration. Not illustrations, although, yes, some of them have those, too. But illustration in their imagination. In order to capture the insane A.D.D. attention of a kid, a young adult novel has to be daring, dangerous, breath-taking, imaginative, inventive, engrossing ... No wait! I can still come up with more adjectives!

You get the picture. And in order to write and read a young adult novel, you have to be able to get the picture. So here is my latest that I just finished reading, James Collier's and Christopher Collier's My Brother Sam is Dead. Obviously the ending isn't a mystery or a shocker, as I'm sure you can tell what happens by the title. But what's engrossing is how you get to that point.

This particular book is a young young adult novel, although I will say it's got some fairly graphic moments for kids too young. The story takes place in the years leading up to and subsequently following the American Revolution in Colonial New England. Okay, I know, that's been beaten to death, but this one is different: it doesn't choose a side. The story revolves around the unrest within our own country, not so much with the British, but with the Continentals, Patriots, and Tories, and with their treatment of one another. Its historical accuracy is mind-blowing, but more so, the question it raises is important: Who's right in war? Both sides are right and both sides are wrong here, each equally doing awful things and each equally raising good, valid points. No one wins, nothing gets resolved, and everyone loses. It's sad; I cried. Yet, there's a revolutionary feeling of empowerment and excitement running throughout the story that makes you a little excited yourself.

•I picked this up at a yard sale. I do not know the publisher or the authors.•
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