Boy
Written by Phil Cummings
Illustrated by Shane Devries
Book Cover Picture:
Category: disability or differences
Target Age Group: Pre-K- 2nd grade, ages 4-8
Format: Hardback
Summary: Boy is about a young Viking boy who lives in a land where the king and his knights have an ongoing war with a dragon who has burned off all the leaves on the trees. He is deaf and thus cannot hear the fighting and ends up right in the middle of the action. He then helps the king and the dragon reach a peaceful end of the conflict.
Justification: This book is the winner of the 2017 Children's Peace Literature Award. This award is awarded by the Australian Psychological Society. They recognize children's literature that centers around peaceful conflict resolution.
Review: This review will evaluate the illustrations, the disability representation and the overall message.
Shane Devries uses watercolor to paint the illustrations in this book.This does give it a more weathered look like is indicative of the time period of the book. The colors are also more muted vs bright primary colors. This allows the viewer to feel like they are more realistic than cartoon-y. Most of the illustrations span across the page, helping to immerse the viewer into the story.
While I am not part of the hard of hearing community, I do feel as though this book is not geared towards people in that community. While the main character is deaf, the story shows deafness almost from a hearing person's point of view. Phil Cummings describes sign-language as "dancing hands" rather than sign language. The towns people all find the boy weird and different but the story does not delve into how this would make the boy feel. I feel it would be hard for someone who is deaf to find themselves in this boy other than to feel like the "other", which does not seem to be the intention of this story.
The overall message, however, is to communicate. This message does come across through the story and will help all children understand the importance of communication. It is important to talk about why we're angry and come to a peaceful resolution rather than going straight to war.
I give this story a three out of five stars. While children will be immersed into the story and it has the excitement of dragons and does get its message across, the disability representation feels unbelievable and un-relatable.
Resources
Cummings, P. (2017). Boy (S. Devries, Illus.). Kane Miller.
No comments:
Post a Comment