Languages of Love: 3 Children’s Books About Sight, Sound and the Written Word

In the award-winning Indian picture book “A Walk With Thambi” (2017), written by Lavanya Karthik and illustrated by Proiti Roy, a boy named Thambi enjoys a late-afternoon stroll with his dog. The art shows the dog in the lead and Thambi holding a white stick with a red tip, but the narrative never mentions that Thambi is blind. Instead, we follow along as the pair listen to street sounds, smell the bazaar, feel the breeze and play with friends. When they realize it’s sunset and past their curfew, they race home, eyes wide and legs (and stick) akimbo. Thambi’s mother takes in the muddy duo and finally, humorously, it is revealed that her son is blind.

Anna Anisimova’s new chapter book takes a similar approach. When her young heroine, who narrates her own story, visits the natural history museum with her father and hears a guard complain about a boy who crashed around the exhibits “like an elephant in a china shop,” she’s intrigued. (While she has shown us how she navigates the world around her, she hasn’t told us she cannot see.) “Papa promises the gloomy person that we’ll be very careful. But I really want to see this elephant. Where is it? I’ve never felt one before.” Henceforth, an “invisible elephant” accompanies her everywhere. When her mother asks her to vacuum the carpet, “all the dust and bits go up the hose, like the vacuum cleaner is sucking up its lunch. … Oh yes, the hose is an elephant’s trunk!”

What these children can decipher may be limited, but what they appreciate and celebrate knows no bounds. Capturing this duality is what makes works like these last. It is their protagonists’ (and their readers’) choice to delight in the elephant in the room or stop to reckon with it. The sprightly girls in these three new books — about eyesight, hearing and literacy challenges — choose the former. They learn new languages, make friends and persevere, page after page. (I dare you not to cry.)

In LISTENING TO THE QUIET (Lantana, 32 pp., $18.99, ages 4 to 9), by Cassie Silva, young Jacki wants to experience everything her mother experiences — even as her mother loses her hearing. She also wants to help her mother continue to experience the things she herself experiences. Inspired by her own childhood, Silva’s narrative is honest and compassionate, and Frances Ives’s illustrations enhance that authenticity. The climax occurs two-thirds of the way through the book on a double-page spread, with mother and daughter seated at opposite ends of a classroom full of singing children, each with a finger pointed at the other. Forget the Sistine Chapel ceiling; these are the two fingers that define how far the human mind can reach.

Silva’s touch is light, from sharing her story to educating readers about sign language. The hand lettering on several illustrations helps readers follow along with the dialogue. “Listening to the Quiet” celebrates the community around Jacki and her mother, and signals to us — fingers pointed — that loving others is the loudest language of all.