Boy

Set in a medieval-ish time, Boy is the story of the titular protagonist who is hearing-impaired and communicates with “dancing hands”. The mountains and forest surrounding Boy’s village have been decimated by a dragon with whom the king and his knights are continually battling. Because Boy cannot hear the battle, he is somehow unaware of it and accidentally stumbles into the middle of it while chasing a lizard. Boy, writing in the sand, asks the simple question no one else has seemed to ask - “why are you fighting?” It turns out the battle has been a giant misunderstanding and Boy has brought peace to the village.

When portraying differently-abled individuals, childrens’ literature has generally moved away from stories specifically about that individual’s difference to stories where this difference just is. This book is no exception. Further, while Boy is deaf and readers see the challenges that poses, his deafness is ultimately the reason he is able to solve the central conflict.

However, this book’s attempt to show a fully-realized deaf person is not particularly successful. Not giving the protagonist a name feels impersonal and puts him at a distance. He is referred to as a “strange child” by the villagers. The battle scenes are punctuated with sound effects - words like “roar” and “charge” and “clink clong clang” that can only be experienced by a reader who can hear, overlooking the very hearing-impaired individuals this book aims to celebrate.

The text is fairly straightforward and unadorned with a fable-like tone. Devries digital illustrations are delightful, particularly the dragon who is purple and blue-spotted and has a loveable overbite. However, the lack of diversity in the images, coupled with no speaking female characters, is an unfortunate oversight.

It is nice to have a hearing-impaired character as the hero of this story. Despite this book’s missteps, Boy is an adequate addition to the increasingly diverse canon of children’s literature.