RATING: 🟢 Recommended
REVIEWER: Jackson Peters
REVIEW METHODOLOGY: Louise Derman-Spark's Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books
”Losing my hearing made me a better listener.”
Listen by Shannon Stocker is the story of Deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Detailsing her struggles and triumphs in life as a young musician with a degenerative hearing condition, the picture book shows how being Deaf not only didn’t stop her from playing music but actually gave her a new way to understand it. The narrative follows Evelyn through grade school and into the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied percussion performance. After graduation she continued to perform, record, and share her music and became the world’s very first professional solo percussionist
This book serves as an excellent example of a person with a disability following their dreams and pursuing their interests. Evelyn Glennie is a huge name in the classical music world and has consistently proven to be one of the most skilled percussionists performing not in spite of her deafness, but because of it. In addition to accurately telling her story, this book has illustrations that do an excellent job of engaging the reader through showing how Evelyn “hears” differently than other people. The art style is both excellent and consistent and definitely elevates this book
This is an excellent book that I would encourage anyone to read. Disabilities are not often talked about in children's books and Listen serves as an incredibly important piece of representation in the genre. I am incredibly happy that this book is able to get this story into the hands of more students, especially students with disabilities who might be able to directly relate.I will absolutely be bringing this book into my classroom in the future and I would encourage any other educators to do the same.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
REVIEWER BIO: Jackson was a student Portland State University and took Zapoura Newton-Calvert's Social Justice in K12 Education course. Their volunteer work was a partnership with Reading Is Resistance and the Social Justice Books Project from Teaching for Change.
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