Cece Bell: I wanted to show what it felt like to be the only deaf kid at my school

An interview with the author of a remarkable, Newbery honour-winning, graphic novel El Deafo, based on Cece Bell’s own childhood growing up with hearing problems. The Whiteheath Book Ninjas got to find out why she wrote it

Why did you choose to tell the story of El Deafo as a comic/graphic novel, did you write it other ways first?

I always planned to write El Deafo as a graphic novel. I wanted to use speech balloons — which are used to great effect in almost all graphic novels — to show exactly what my character is hearing (or not hearing) throughout the story. I also don’t consider myself a very good descriptive writer, and much prefer using pictures to describe a scene or an emotion. The book did start out as a detailed outline first, though — so in a way, I did write it a different way first.

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