Featured Book from Your tenBroek Library

Featured Book from Your tenBroek Library

Braille Monitor
October 2012

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Featured Book from Your tenBroek Library

Reviewed by Ed Morman
Deborah Kent. Belonging: A Novel. New York: Dial Press, 1978
From the Editor: With some regularity we spotlight books in the tenBroek Library. Here is Librarian Ed Morman's review of a book in our collection:
Deborah Kent is, of course, our own Debbie Kent Stein, editor of Future Reflections and chair of the NFB's quiet car committee (or, more formally, the Committee on Automobile and Pedestrian Safety). Many Federationists also know Debbie as a prolific author of books--both novels and non-fiction--for children and adolescents.
Belonging was Debbie's first published novel. Written while she was in her late twenties, Belonging takes as its subject a teenage girl whose experiences somewhat mirror Debbie's own of a decade and a half earlier. The protagonist, Meg, has had the advantage of growing up in a comfortable middle-class suburban family with parents who accepted her congenital blindness as just one of their daughter's characteristics. Meg has a younger, sighted brother, Sam, who clearly loves and admires her. For Sam having a blind sibling is normal, so he thinks nothing of Meg's inability to see. It is a given, a simple fact no more important than the color of her hair or her love of reading.

We meet Meg when, as a fifteen-year-old, she is preparing for her first day at a regular school. Her parents, though they nurtured her independent spirit, were uncertain about the wisdom of her choice; but Sam backs her up with his confident assertion that, if Meg said she could go to high school with the sighted kids, nothing more need be said. Sam was certain that she could manage it quite well.
Though written for young adults, in no way does Belonging talk down to its intended audience. For the sighted person of any age who knows nothing about blindness, this book subtly teaches that a blind person's daily life is as normal as the life of the sighted.

Incidental to the plot, but important in painting a full portrait of Meg, are her observations about the bulkiness of Braille books or the need, at certain times, to choose between independent cane travel and walking with a sighted guide. While Meg is concerned that her blindness may get in the way of her ability to make new friends, we soon find out that her problems adjusting to the new school have little to do with her disability.
In fact, the book can be read simply as a coming-of-age story in twentieth-century America. In it a teenager finds that her efforts at inclusion meet with some success but that this does not necessarily lead to a satisfactory social life. Meg gains the attention of one of the popular boys and is invited to party, but she suffers the humiliation of being excluded from full participation in the kissing game, spin the bottle. It's not that the kids in the in-crowd are mean or especially prejudiced against blindness; the well-meaning principal--similarly missing the point that blind people are normal--also embarrasses Meg by asking her to demonstrate her Brailling skills during parent-teacher night.
No, Meg's dissatisfaction with the popular kids has more to do with the fact that she finds them dull. And she feels authentically included by the two oddballs with whom she works on the school magazine. Meg and the other editors conspire to stand up for their faculty advisor, Miss Kellogg, who has antagonized the school administration by failing to follow the prescribed curriculum in her English classes.
After Miss Kellogg is forced to resign, Meg and her friends publish an editorial defending her. But ultimately their defense of Miss Kellogg is for naught. She is gone for good, and the three who collaborated on the editorial are suspended from school for a few days. Meg's parents have mixed feelings about this episode, and Debbie leaves the reader uncertain about whether Miss Kellogg may have indeed been unfit to teach. This twist only strengthens the story, because real life is like that. Meg has discovered where she fits in; she has the satisfaction of accomplishing what looks like a good deed with her real friends; but, if she is wise, she will reflect on the lessons she might learn.
Belonging established Deborah Kent as a leading writer for young people, and by now a generation and a half of fortunate children and adolescents have been able to enjoy her first-rate prose while learning about everything from disability rights to migrant farm workers, or from the Salem witch trials to the War of 1812, or from teenage love to African American patriots, or from. . . . Well, by now you should get the point. At this point we have close to a hundred titles by Debbie Kent Stein listed in our online catalog, THE BLIND CAT.
Belonging is available from the NLS in Braille (BR 03940) and audio (RC 13304). The NLS catalog also lists more than twenty other books by Deborah Kent Stein in accessible format, including more fiction for young adults; books on the states of the U.S.; and books on American Sign Language, animal helpers, disabled athletes, and the disability rights movement.

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