The Sign for Home

This was so good and so much more emotionally charged than I expected from the ridiculous cartoon cover art and flippant blurb. I'm glad the author sprinkled in some humor here and there, because otherwise I would have been crying from start to finish. Thankfully, probably because of the author's own experience serving as an ASL translator for DeafBlind individuals, the story steers clear of disability porn (stories that reduce the person with a disability to an inspirational saintly object for the able-bodied ). Arlo gets help from his new-found friends, primarily his new interpreter Cyril, but he is very much the imperfect hero of his own story.

Read in less than 24 hours, and immediately wanted a sequel to find out what happened next to characters I had come to care deeply about. N.B.: the book alternates between Arlo's second person present and Cyril's first person past POV. It made total sense to me, but I know quirky POVs can be a turnoff to some readers.