El Deafo

Cece loves to wear her bathing suit but is forced to put on real clothes. Her parents take her to the audiologist, where she undergoes several strange tests, like listening to a large bell ring while she is blindfolded and performing a hearing test in a sound booth. The doctor makes a mold of her ears with goop. When she returns the next week, she is fitted with hearing aids. The doctor adjusts a dial, and Cece is overwhelmed with noise and gibberish; the panel behind her is full of the odd sounds she hears: “doo muhh ee ee eenn olle” (20). Finally, the words become clear. The doctor gives Cece a “beautiful pouch” (21) for the little box that makes her hearing aids work. When she returns home, she puts her bathing suit back on. She isn’t pleased with the cords that dangle down from her ears. 

Cece finds herself attending a different school than her best friend Emma. She is nervous at first but soon discovers that all her classmates also have cords dangling from their ears. Her teacher, whom they all call by her first name Dorn, looks like Snow White, and is thoughtful and kind. She teaches Cece reading and math. She also teaches her students how to lip-read, a skill that involves a significant amount of detective work, including reading context and gestural clues to find the most logical meaning of words that sound or look the same when spoken. Bell illuminates this confusion in funny graphics, as Cece hears “goat” instead of “coke,” and “shoes” instead of “juice” (25). Images portray a pair of sneakers and a baby goat in a drinking glass. Cece explains some basic challenges and rules of lip-reading, like, “When it gets dark, give up” and “Group discussions are impossible to understand” (32). Finally, summer comes, and Cece reunites with Emma. She misses the familiarity of her classmates, where everyone shared the same struggles.