You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P! (Scholastic Gold)

This book was perfect for my DHH reading class. It’s not often my students get to read books about Deafness. I loved how it touched on two major topics: Deaf culture and Black Lives matter, yet it was presented at a level any preteen/ teen could understand. It is a great fit for the kids in my class.

One of my favorites!

Alex Gino is a genius and a compassionate genius at that. This book is a masterpiece. It's just that simple.Jillian (Jilly P), 12 is an avid fantasy reader and belongs to a pre-teen chat group of others who share her interest in the series she follows. While online, she gets to know a boy from Oakland California who not only shares her interest but turns out to be a real friend. When Jillian's sister Emma is born Deaf, she feels a deeper bond toward Derek, the Oakland boy she met online. Derek, as it turns out is Deaf too and it is from Derek that Jillian learns about bigotry; Deaf culture and the kind of well meant faux pas people make when speaking to someone who is Deaf or a member of a different race.Jillian prides herself on not being a bigot. She has an aunt who is black and her aunt has a partner, whom Jillian loves as well. Her Aunt Alicia, who is black has two children, Justin and Jamila, 3 and 5 respectively and Jillian just loves them. However, she has other family members such as her grandmother and her Uncle Mike, a singular buffoon who display their bigotry. The grandmother asks her daughter-in-law Alicia to bring ethnic foods such as a sweet potato pie. She also makes comments about Jamila's hair. Many people might not catch the subtle bigotry in that, but to me and many others the subtext is quite plain. The message is that enjoying and preparing such a dish is reflective of all ethnic people and the issue of hair is a very trenchant one. (Many people display bigotry without even realizing it. In fairly recent years many reports will describe a black client or student as "light skinned" which is a form of bigotry. Placing any emphasis or attention to one's skin tone and/or features is just a tacit way of saying "although this person is black, s/he is more acceptable because s/he is less ethnic in appearance." Calling someone light or dark skinned in reports is a form of bigotry.) The uncle is Archie Bunker revisited, an unabashed bigot who defends his ignorant comments, even when he sees that he is driving others away. You just want to shove a drumstick down his throat.Derek and Alicia as well as a kind teacher named Karina are Jillian's best teachers. Jillian's parents bring their baby Emma to a workshop for families who have a Deaf member where Karina, the teacher/lecturer provides helpful information about early intervention and possible treatments ranging from ASL (American Sign Language) to cochlear implants. "But," Karina warns, "cochlear implants are not for everybody. Some people respond better to ASL." She actively encouraged ASL so that all members of a family could communicate together. You can't help but love Karina. By the same token, you just want to slap Ms. Slapp, the first specialist Emma saw as she frowned on ASL and even waving. To add insult to injury, Ms. Slapp was a pompous Know-Nothing while purporting to be a Know-It-All.Jillian learns that, like her grandmother's gaffe about the sweet potato pie and her younger cousin's hair, she makes similar verbal gaffes to Derek about his Deafness. She learns some hard lessons away from their fantasy life of following a fantasy series on the internet. Readers also learn that people are assigned a name by the Deaf community and that is not a decision family members make. The author(s) wisely include in their addendum that a consultant was brought in from the Deaf community to give Derek his ASL name. Jillian is a fan of code language as she and her best friend Macy speak in initials all the time, as in T.O.T.K.O. ("takes one to know one.") She immediately starts learning signing from an ASL website and starts teaching signs to her family. Derek rightfully points out that Jillian will have to spend time conversing with others fluent in ASL in order to understand the difference in grammar and expression. On a related note, the name of the fantasy book series setting has a very clever and very a propos sign in ASL!This is an excellent brilliant, ideal for classroom book about Deaf culture; black families and even the tragedy of lives lost due to gun violence and bigotry. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Be sure to read "George" by this same author, another first rate book. Whereas George is transgender, this book also explores different cultures and bridging the gap with acceptance.

This book takes on both white privilege and issues having to do with Deaf culture, and I really appreciated the intersection. Some reviews have stated that it felt like the author was trying to do too much, but I didn’t feel it was unreasonable... real life is messy, and issues intersect all the time. I appreciated that about this book.The book itself was a bit slow at times... it was hard to stay focused through some of the fantasy world chats... but otherwise, the book was well written. I’d definitely mark this as *upper* middle grade, for some more mature themes.In addition to being a parent and a reader myself, one of the things that drew me to this book was the fact that I’m also an audiologist. I love seeing kids who sign or wear hearing aids/cochlear implants represented in children’s literature! And putting on my audiologist hat, I have a couple of things to add to my review that I didn’t feel were quite correct:(1) Jilly’s baby sister Emma fails her newborn hearing screening at the hospital, and Jilly’s first instinct is to start learning sign. Indeed, all of the main characters seem to assume that failing this screening means that Emma is deaf. There’s no mention of or allusion to a sedated ABR, which is the gold standard today in estimating the degree of hearing in an infant in which hearing loss is suspected, and comes after the screening (and after a couple more re-screens, often). This simply isn’t realistic. Of the babies who end up being diagnosed with permanent hearing loss, plenty have only a mild/moderate hearing loss, classifying them as “hard-of-hearing” and not “deaf”. These children almost never learn ASL, and usually do very well with hearing aids and spoken language. I realize this seems like a trivial point, but hard-of-hearing kids get overlooked in literature too often, IMO.(2) At some point, a rep from the Deaf community tells the group of new hearing parents with deaf babies that it doesn’t matter *why* their baby is deaf. I get that this character is trying to help the parents embrace their new reality (and the Deaf community), but there are actually medical reasons it can be advantageous to try to determine the cause. There are a few rare conditions that hearing loss can be associated with, like heart defects and progressive blindness. They are RARE, but it’s helpful to rule them out. Also, if the baby was deafened because the mother contracted CMV, which is quite common, the child will continue to be contagious for the next five or so years, and could potentially have no outward symptoms.(3) Finally, the expectations in the book regarding outcomes with cochlear implants are outdated. Twenty years ago, it was realistic to expect little more than sound awareness from them, as the characters expect with Emma; but today, they’re absolutely a viable option to be relied upon. The main characters treat sign as the ONLY realistic option, when in reality, it is ONE option. (It’s a good option—just not the only good option.)I’d like to close by saying that, when I was in school for audiology, we were taught to provide *options* to the parents of deaf infants. No one I know would EVER recommend not waving to your baby or putting mittens on their hands so they can’t sign. That kind of thinking is backward. I’m sure audiologists like the horrible Ms. Slapp do exist today, but there are plenty of us out there who genuinely want to help, and to provide parents with options!All in all, a good book that raised some great issues.

‪This book is incredible. Dealing with deafness, racism and learning. I loved the friendship between Jilly P and Derek, and how she stood up against the injustices she saw, while learning through her mistakes. This is as relevant today as it was when it was published. ‬

ExcitingEpicEvery one deserves a chance.Lovely story Alex Gino, give yourself apart on the back!Well done I loved it

Good read for children