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A review by courtneyfalling
Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
2.0
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.
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Colonisation, Ableism, Grief, Kidnapping, and Racism
Minor: Slavery