Tough Like a Girl #8 – El Deafo

Lis and Nathaniel take a look at a graphic novel detailing author Cece Bell's experience going nearly deaf at a young age. Except in this retelling she's a rabbit.

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2 responses to “Tough Like a Girl #8 – El Deafo

  1. I was all set to listen to ep 4, “Sunny Side Up”, but my daughters own that one and I haven’t read it yet. When the episode reaches the “spoiler-ish” section, I had this involuntary, “NO! NO! ABORT!” Sooooo, I jumped to “El Deafo” which my whole family has read and loved.

    Yes, my daughters read GNs like me, but they aren’t my wife’s “thing”. She read this one because: she has family where the book is set, we live an hour away from there, it was in the local news for the John Newberry Award, and it’s mostly autobiographical. My wife likes stories that are “real”, and this story suits that all the way.

    This is such a charming story. The artwork might not be everyone’s taste, but Cece does lots of things right and pulls it off. I especially agree with your comments on word balloons. They’re usually intended to be ignored, but Cece leveraged them in such creative ways.

    Like Nathaniel, I was pleasantly surprised the ending didn’t turn into a big “moral”. It let Cece and the other kids in the class be kids, and give Cece her moment to be the hero. And she is a hero. Not in the big conflict sense, but in how to be herself when her abilities are so different from her friends.

    My whole family got a lot of joy from this book, and it sounds like you both did as well. Cheers!

  2. Hey Liz and Nathaniel,
    Me again. Listening to your to your discussion of El Deafo got me thinking about how sound is portrayed in comic books, it being an all visual medium and I’ve always been interested in how they get around it (posibly why I’m so into audio dramas). Avoiding the unamatpia Elephant in room and sticking with speach bubbles, I’ve seen examples of the blank text bubble tequnike used elsewhere most notably in storyline where hawkeye went deaf and again in a doctor who comic were a technobabble field prevented a population from being able to speak.
    Anyway I could go on but I think I’ve tangented enough good episode regardless.

    Ps. By the way speaking of said hawkeye run can I recommend the LA woman trade of it which focuses almost exclusively on the exploits of the female half of the books dueo (and before you say anything it still counts! Her codename is hawkeye too).

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