Sound Check
'Every morning, from the moment the first gong was struck, I was listening out for sounds that might possibly be turned into words. My entire life at school consisted of one long sound check.’
Cindy’s favourite activity is drawing. Sometimes she draws in the middle of a lesson, especially when, yet again, she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Because the teacher seems to be mumbling into his beard, her classmates are making far too much of a din, or because her best friend Tabea isn’t there. For although Cindy goes to a normal school, her hearing is impaired and she has to rely on lip-reading – which doesn’t stop her from getting good grades.
But recently she’s been missing out on jokes and class gossip, of all things, because for some reason Tabea doesn’t seem to be passing anything on to her anymore. Luckily there’s a nice new girl in her class, Aline, who is far more helpful. But then Cindy discovers a cartoon with a picture of Aline and Tabea, with speech bubbles above their heads, making nasty comments about Cindy, and which Aline must have drawn. In her fury and despair, she decides she has had enough of Aline, for good.
Meanwhile, Aline has no idea what’s going on – and indeed how could she, as the cartoon is in fact the work of the resentful Tabea. There are more than a few painful scenes, until the misunderstanding is cleared up and Cindy and Aline are reconciled...
As the mother of a daughter with impaired hearing, the author knows what she is talking about. For many years she has dedicated herself to furthering the integration of children with impaired hearing into mainstream education.