Five Flavors of Dumb, by Antony John

Piper is a senior in high school - quiet, keeps to herself, captain of the chess team, gets good grades, the usual stuff expected from a "good girl" character in teen novels, but Piper's behavior is due in large part to her feeling isolated from her fellow students because she is deaf.  With hearing aids she can hear some things, but her hearing is not perfect, especially in crowds or when she can't also lip-read.  Her best friend, also deaf, has moved away, Piper's younger brother, a freshman, seems embarrassed by her desire for him to sign with her, and her parents have raided the college fund her deaf grandparents set up especially for Piper to attend a college for hearing impaired students - to pay for cochlear implants so her baby sister can hear and not be disabled like Piper.  She's frustrated with being different and that her parents, her dad in particular, seem to see her as broken.  In a moment of very frustrated, very un-Piper-like behavior, she challenges the lead singer of her school's Teen Battle of the Bands winner - she'll become their manager and get the band, named Dumb, a paying gig within 30 days. 


Many people, including her own family don't think she can really do it, since she can't hear the punkish music the band plays because it is too loud and too distorted.  But the doubts just make Piper dig in harder, and she slowly pulls the band together, gets them a couple of gigs, deals with set backs, finds romance and figures out more about herself and how to get others to see her the way she does.

A pretty decent read, which I finished in one night - I liked Piper as a character, and I thought the "disability" was a nice twist - she's not pitiable, but she's also not portrayed as a martyred superhero, either, which sometimes happens when dealing with minority characters.  She feels sorry for herself sometimes, but she's also figuring out how to tell other people NOT to feel sorry for her.  Some of the other characters, especially her band mates, fall into stock character roles - the angry punk girl; the vain, self-centered lead singer; the grunge bassist into his own world, but a couple of the supporting characters do get some growth - Kallie, initially seen as a pretty, popular girl isn't the vapid, mean girl that general shows up in teen books.  Ed, the musically-inclined "nerd" who joins that band and is Piper's love interest, is also able to grow a little outside the music geek stereotype, although most of the growth is told through dialog, not shown organically. That didn't actually bother me, since the book is told in first-person from Piper's POV, and somethings she has to be hit over the head with to understand.  Also, Kallie is described as having dark skin, and Ed's last name of Chen and description of having dark hair and brown eyes indicate they are minorities, but not much is made of their being non-white characters.  Is this a bad thing, that they were thrown in a token minorities, or is it a good thing, that it can just be a natural fact that different races will interact, romantically and not, with no big thing being made of it?  I'm sure arguments will be made for both sides.

The opportunity to open for a touring band at the Showbox on the Market, a popular venue, is a little too convenient, as is Piper's last-minute air-guitar playing while Kallie breaks out of her self-conscious, "I'm not good enough" funk to rock the stage as the new lead singer.  But it's a fun fantasy without being too over-the-top, and the opportunity to read about a deaf character for whom the deafness is an important factor but not the ONLY driving force in the book is worth any minor flaws.