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A review by jecoats
I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott
5.0
I stumbled across I Talk Like a River while searching for inclusion books written in the last 5 years on Google, and I watched a reading of it on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6AvVSy_ing). I Talk Like a River has been nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal (2022), the Odyssey Award (2022), the Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général Nominee for Young People's Literature- Illustrated Books (English-language) (2020), and has won the Schneider Family Book Award for Young Children (2021).
I Talk Like a River details two days in the life of a young, unnamed protagonist who struggles with stuttering. He begins his story by vividly describing what it’s like for him to speak the consonantal sounds ‘P,’ ‘C,’ and ‘M.’ He also details what it’s like to be called on in class, expressing the fear he experiences at having to form words in front of his peers, and how isolated he feels in class. After school, his father picks him up and the two go to the river together. There, his father tells him that he speaks like the river - his words crash and churn and break just like the rushing rapids. The boy then realizes that the river eventually becomes a pool of smooth, clear waters - just as his own stutter eventually becomes smooth, clear speech. The book ends the next day as our protagonist finds his voice, and is able to tell the class about his favorite place in the world - the river.
I decided to review this book for my inclusion title because I am torn about how I feel about the story. On the one hand, this is a beautifully written and illustrated book. I love how writer Jordan Scott (who himself struggled with a stutter) places the protagonist's disability at the center of the story. There is no narrative erasure of the boy's disability in this book - from the beginning of the story we know that he has difficulty forming spoken words. Instead, using vivid and, quite frankly, beautiful language, Scott gives us an authentic account of the boy’s lived experience with his stutter. This does lead to a book that has an overall more melancholic tone than the other picturebooks I have read - but I think this tone helps to underscore the protagonist’s experience and feelings living with a speech impediment. The book does end on a more positive note, but even this brief reprieve still carries an emotional weight consistent with the overall narrative.
The artwork in the picturebook is gorgeous, and I think it only adds to the emotional weight and insight of the narrative. There are many two page spreads throughout the book, some of which make use of negative space in a way that speak to the isolation and loneliness the boy experiences. There is even a striking image early in the book that depicts the boy, but with crows and roots superimposed over his face. Somehow, artist Sydney Smith uses this image to visually convey how the boy feels as words are trapped in his mouth.
Full disclosure - I had an entire “on the other hand” argument ready to go, but as I wrote about the various things I loved about the book, I found my own “on the other hand” arguments resolving themselves. I considered changing my review to omit the setup for a critique, but I decided to keep it intact as I think it demonstrates the transformative nature of writing about a text. In exploring a book on the discussion boards or on Goodreads, I think we discover new aspects of the narrative we may never have considered. I was going to discuss how I found a nameless protagonist to be a kind of narrative erasure. However, as I wrote the review, I began to realize that this might have been done so any child reading the story could imagine themselves as the protagonist. By not giving him a name, readers are free to almost become the protagonist, and to make the same realizations that their speech might also be like a river - churning along until it finally becomes “smooth and glistening.” I also realized that despite not having a name, the protagonist is the narrator, and is given full autonomy to tell his own story. This is very much the opposite of the picturebooks (My Pal, Victor and Susan Laughs) described in “Just Like Me, Just Like You: Narrative Erasure as Disability Normalization in Children’s Picture Books.” As Tanja Aho and Grit Alter state, the characters depicted in those books are “discursively located in inferior positions as both do not speak themselves, but are spoken for and about” (p. 7). In other words, the characters’ autonomy is stolen, essentially converting them into objects for the (presumably) able bodied narrator to discuss. This, in my opinion, completely strips the narrative of any sense of an authentic lived experience, and instead places the depiction of disability under an ableist lens.
So - in short - I rescind my “on the other hand” comments (I also changed my initial 4-star rating to a 5 star rating). While I wouldn’t suggest that this is the greatest depiction of the struggle of stuttering there is, it is a powerful, authentic reading experience. I also appreciate that it doesn’t handle the character or the subject matter with “kiddie gloves.” The book instead allows the protagonist/narrator to explain in vivid detail exactly what having a stutter feels like and how it impacts him socially and emotionally. This alone makes the book a wonderful sliding glass door. The way Scott explains how it feels to stutter left me with some understanding of what having a stutter might physically feel like - almost as if I was experiencing it myself. As I suggested above, this book does a great job of inviting the reader in and allowing them to experience the protagonist’s struggle in an authentic manner. I also think this book makes a great mirror as it is a genuine and authentic experience. The fact that it is written by an ‘insider’ heightens the overall emotional impact of the story, but it also gives our students not just a character that is like them, but a poet and author that also reflects their lived experiences.
I Talk Like a River details two days in the life of a young, unnamed protagonist who struggles with stuttering. He begins his story by vividly describing what it’s like for him to speak the consonantal sounds ‘P,’ ‘C,’ and ‘M.’ He also details what it’s like to be called on in class, expressing the fear he experiences at having to form words in front of his peers, and how isolated he feels in class. After school, his father picks him up and the two go to the river together. There, his father tells him that he speaks like the river - his words crash and churn and break just like the rushing rapids. The boy then realizes that the river eventually becomes a pool of smooth, clear waters - just as his own stutter eventually becomes smooth, clear speech. The book ends the next day as our protagonist finds his voice, and is able to tell the class about his favorite place in the world - the river.
I decided to review this book for my inclusion title because I am torn about how I feel about the story. On the one hand, this is a beautifully written and illustrated book. I love how writer Jordan Scott (who himself struggled with a stutter) places the protagonist's disability at the center of the story. There is no narrative erasure of the boy's disability in this book - from the beginning of the story we know that he has difficulty forming spoken words. Instead, using vivid and, quite frankly, beautiful language, Scott gives us an authentic account of the boy’s lived experience with his stutter. This does lead to a book that has an overall more melancholic tone than the other picturebooks I have read - but I think this tone helps to underscore the protagonist’s experience and feelings living with a speech impediment. The book does end on a more positive note, but even this brief reprieve still carries an emotional weight consistent with the overall narrative.
The artwork in the picturebook is gorgeous, and I think it only adds to the emotional weight and insight of the narrative. There are many two page spreads throughout the book, some of which make use of negative space in a way that speak to the isolation and loneliness the boy experiences. There is even a striking image early in the book that depicts the boy, but with crows and roots superimposed over his face. Somehow, artist Sydney Smith uses this image to visually convey how the boy feels as words are trapped in his mouth.
Full disclosure - I had an entire “on the other hand” argument ready to go, but as I wrote about the various things I loved about the book, I found my own “on the other hand” arguments resolving themselves. I considered changing my review to omit the setup for a critique, but I decided to keep it intact as I think it demonstrates the transformative nature of writing about a text. In exploring a book on the discussion boards or on Goodreads, I think we discover new aspects of the narrative we may never have considered. I was going to discuss how I found a nameless protagonist to be a kind of narrative erasure. However, as I wrote the review, I began to realize that this might have been done so any child reading the story could imagine themselves as the protagonist. By not giving him a name, readers are free to almost become the protagonist, and to make the same realizations that their speech might also be like a river - churning along until it finally becomes “smooth and glistening.” I also realized that despite not having a name, the protagonist is the narrator, and is given full autonomy to tell his own story. This is very much the opposite of the picturebooks (My Pal, Victor and Susan Laughs) described in “Just Like Me, Just Like You: Narrative Erasure as Disability Normalization in Children’s Picture Books.” As Tanja Aho and Grit Alter state, the characters depicted in those books are “discursively located in inferior positions as both do not speak themselves, but are spoken for and about” (p. 7). In other words, the characters’ autonomy is stolen, essentially converting them into objects for the (presumably) able bodied narrator to discuss. This, in my opinion, completely strips the narrative of any sense of an authentic lived experience, and instead places the depiction of disability under an ableist lens.
So - in short - I rescind my “on the other hand” comments (I also changed my initial 4-star rating to a 5 star rating). While I wouldn’t suggest that this is the greatest depiction of the struggle of stuttering there is, it is a powerful, authentic reading experience. I also appreciate that it doesn’t handle the character or the subject matter with “kiddie gloves.” The book instead allows the protagonist/narrator to explain in vivid detail exactly what having a stutter feels like and how it impacts him socially and emotionally. This alone makes the book a wonderful sliding glass door. The way Scott explains how it feels to stutter left me with some understanding of what having a stutter might physically feel like - almost as if I was experiencing it myself. As I suggested above, this book does a great job of inviting the reader in and allowing them to experience the protagonist’s struggle in an authentic manner. I also think this book makes a great mirror as it is a genuine and authentic experience. The fact that it is written by an ‘insider’ heightens the overall emotional impact of the story, but it also gives our students not just a character that is like them, but a poet and author that also reflects their lived experiences.