Reviews with content warning for Child death - Show Me a Sign

I was so excited for this book, but it really disappointed me. On its own, the Deaf representation is great: Mary is a strong-willed, insightful main character learning how to be a good person who lives up to her own morals, including what she's gained from the prevalence and acceptance of deafness in her community.

However, this book did not handle its themes of race well at all. One of the characters, Thomas, is a Black freedman who faces continued discrimination from the surrounding community.

By the end of the story, he is leaving for weeks at sea as a whaler, a deadly job he accepted only because he couldn't see other income options for him and his family.

Meanwhile, his wife, Helen, is an Indigenous woman born into the local Wampanoag nation. The book details a white man in town, Mary's best friend's father, accusing Helen of stealing sheets (something Mary and her best friend actually did), then spouting basic anti-Indigenous rhetoric to defend the land his ancestors unethically took from the Wampanoag and he still lives on.

I was hoping the book would successfully challenge both anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in the end, but instead, it wrapped everything into a neat lesson delivered to Mary by her father: "If you're just nice to people, unlike your ancestors, everything can be forgiven!" What about the stolen land you're still living on? What about reparations? Heck, on a basic level, what about pointing out your neighbors' continued discrimination and holding everyone in your community to a higher standard of care and equity? This felt like a terrible historical and political lesson for kids to internalize.

Some of the basic factual details also seemed inaccurate, especially around the book's timeline: what customs would have been typical at a given time, when settlers would have arrived or when events would have occurred, what relations between nearby Indigenous nations and white settlers would have been like in the different time periods mentioned, and so on. There was a fuzzy feeling of offness throughout retellings of local settlers' histories. Which is especially dangerous when potentially incorrect information is fueling how the book represents racism.

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lalalily17's review

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adventurous emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was an informative story for me. It was interesting to learn about how the Natives of Martha's Vineyard were treated, along with different people's views on deafness at that time. I loved learning about the rich deaf culture in Martha's Vineyard. I also liked how at the beginning Mary was unsure how she felt about the way Natives and Africans were treated but the things that happened to her changed her way of thinking. She understood that she couldn't change the way her ancestors had treated people of color, but she could control the way she treated them. That's an important lesson for us white people today. Overall, this book is a great middle grade novel that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

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elna17a9a's review

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informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I had no idea about the rich history of Deaf culture surrounding Martha's Vineyard, and would've read this book based on that alone, but the added hook of a racist and ableist scientist kidnapping Mary as a live specimen only added to my excitement.

And the first half of the book, while slow, is excellent. Mary's experience and the lifestyle of her neighbors feels natural and normal, and while the dialogue flows smoothly there's a few differences thrown into subtly remind you that it's a different language, and it's well done. The racial diversity is wonderfully realistic and normal as well, with a freed slave married to a Native American woman and a mixed daughter. Just experiencing Mary's life and learning about her grief and her family is enthralling.

The second half, once she is kidnapped, was honestly a little bit of a let down. While I sympathized with Mary, and shared her horror in realizing how those with disabilities were treated on the mainland, I never felt any real stakes or terror.

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