Mary Lambert is one of many deaf residents of her village on Martha's Vinyard. Her grandfather was the first English settler on the island, and many of his deaf friends in England soon joined him. Now, most of the families are a mix of deaf and hearing and everyone on the island is fluent in their particular sign language.
Mary's family is still grieving her brother's sudden death when a stranger comes to the island. Andrew Noble is a scientist who has come to study the deaf population and discover the cause. Mary is immediately skeptical of Andrew who only addresses the hearing people in the room and treats the deaf members of the community as less intelligent.
Her suspicions are confirmed when Andrew attacks and kidnaps Mary as a "live specimen" for his experiments. In Boston, no one knows sign language, and Mary feels isolated. How will she ever find her way home if she can't communicate the truth with anyone?
Ann Clare LeZotte's tale of a deaf girl from a real community that existed on Martha's Vinyard is interesting. The author herself is deaf so this is a good addition to the small list of middle grade books with deaf protagonists. The plotting is a little strange with the first half of the book plodding along until Mary is violently kidnapped. Then once she is rescued, things drag out again. There are a few too many chapters at the end, in my opinion. I do feel like the author did a good job of handling the relationships in a real deaf community that existed on land that once belonged to the Wampanoag people. While Mary and her father are sympathetic and friendly to freed black and Wampanoag characters, many of the other characters are not. Mary's mother and best friend display casually racist attitudes. LeZotte's focus is on deaf history, but she did a good job of showing the uncomfortable attitudes of the time period. Some readers may struggle to stick with the story, but it's definitely worth adding to the collection for the representation of deaf characters.
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