After contracting meningitis, a fifteen-year-old girl becomes deaf and must struggle with accepting her hearing loss and being accepted by her friends and family.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up Gustie Blaine is 15 when she contracts meningitis. After a long recovery period during which she loses the small amount of residual hearing she had seemed to retain, Gustie tries to pick up the pieces of her life. Her parents are unrealistic and overprotective; her best friend rejects her; her teachers run the gamut from being convinced that Gustie cannot function in the mainstream to being supportive. While the characters are a bit stereotypical, each serves a purpose in furthering the plot, during which Gustie passes through her own stages of denial and anger and comes at last to acceptance of her new self. Through a new boyfriend who has a deaf brother and sister-in-law, and through Gustie's visit with an understanding special education teacher to a class of predominantly congenitally deaf students, readers are made aware of the tremendous range of difference among deaf and hard of hearing people, the ways in which they communicate and the technical aids available to them. Realistic and involving, this story compares favorable to Corcoran's A Dance to Still Music (Atheneum, 1974). YAs will identify with Gustie and her wish to belong; the book should touch them and be popular. Ruth A. Velleman, Human Resources School, Albertson, N.Y.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Deep down, I'm still Me",
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Belonging (Hardcover)
This is a fictional but realistic story of a teenage girl who goes deaf after a sudden, very serious illness.Although it never says for sure, I assume from little clues here and there that its supposed to be set in the Mid 1980's.The story is not dated though and is timeless.
The protagonist of the story-Gustie Blaine- may not be as perfect as her cheerleader friends, but she certainly had a lot going for her. Her deafness is as shocking and jarring to her as it would be to anyone and to the characters credit, she handles it with a lot of bravery and grace. The most central part of the story is that although she is the same person as she was before her deafness, eveyone around her treats her different. And most of the time, not very well. Her friends all abandon her and her former best friends of many years is especially cruel. An unsympathethic French teacher writers her an insulting, condecending note asking her to drop his class, even though she loves the language. People either tend to treat her as an annoyance or totally ignore her. Her Parents have no idea what she needs or when she needs it. Gustie is very likable which only makes her struggle more poignant. Luckily , though , she learns to find ways to communicate and start living with her deafness. And she finds a supportive friend, Boyfriend, and Teachers who help her find her way. This is a novel with important lessons to teach about bravery in the face of unfair,seemingly overwhelming odds, tolerance and kindness.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Work,
By Book Girl (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Belonging (Flying Fingers Club) (Paperback)
I found this book wonderful. It was a good look at the changes that occur in a girl's life when she becomes deaf after contracting meningitis. What I thought was especially well done was the internal conflict she experienced over "straddling" the deaf and hearing worlds, as well as the denial experienced by her parents about her hearing loss. If you can get a copy of this book, try to do it.
3.0 out of 5 stars
an ok book on a girl's encounter with deafness,
By
This review is from: Belonging (Flying Fingers Club) (Paperback)
I thought that *Belonging* was an ok book. This book dwelt too much on Gustie's dealings with her newfound deafness.
At 15, Gustie encounters spinal meningitis, which resulted with her being deaf. Of course, intially, she deals with this consequence with anger. Next, she deals with her fluctuating hearing loss by trying to lip-read and experimenting with a hearing aid. At the same time, her friendship with Sara, Dana and others have have changed. They are simply not comfortable with Gustie's deafness and do not want to bother with repeating themselves. However, she is not completely lost. She finds solace with her Latin teacher, her notetaker and her new boyfriend, who has a Deaf brother and sister-in-law. There is no mention of sign language or the Deaf culture until the last quarter of the book. Even then, Gustie doesn't really take advantage of it except learning fingerspelling. She is hesitant about Deaf people because she has some stereotyped perception of the Deaf. *Belonging* is about a teenaged girl's struggle with a hearing loss, which turns her world upside down. She loses some friends but gains new friends. Meanwhile, she has to adjust in order to stay on top of school. She's rewarded with a new boyfriend who understands her plight and gives her valuable insights. In the end, she finally musters up the courage to tell people, especially her parents, how she wants to be treated.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
