Children's Fiction
September 2011
Scholastic Press
ISBN: 978-0-545-02789-2
Ben is a boy now living with his aunt, uncle and two cousins since his single mother died in an accident. His aunt and uncle talk about selling his mother's house next door on a Minnesota lakeshore. Lonely, he sneaks over to his old home one night when he sees a light. It's his cousin Janet, dressing in his mother's clothes and playing her old music. He talks his cousin into letting him stay in the house alone for a bit. Ben discovers a note in one of his mother's books that leads him to believe he might be able to talk to the father he's never met. Deaf in one ear, he dials the phone just as lightning strikes the house. He's now totally deaf. Ben is hospitalized, but sneaks out to take a bus to New York to see if he can find his father.
While this story in prose takes place in the 1970s, Selznick intersperses it with detailed drawings, in the same style as his Invention of Hugo Cabret, of a young girl in the 1920s. She, too, is deaf and sneaks away from her house to watch a silent movie. The girl, Rose, runs away to take the ferry from Hoboken to New York City, where she tracks down the star of the silent movie to a stage, rehearsing a play. It's her mother, and she is ashamed of her deaf daughter.
