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When the Stammer Came to Stay

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 8 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 8 weeks

The author of Hamnet explores sisterly affection and what it means to rediscover your voice—and yourself—in this storybook.

This is the tale of two sisters . . .

who had no idea that everything was about to change.

Quiet Bea keeps her shoes polished, folds her clothes every night, and alphabetizes her books. Her rambunctious sister Min wears torn trousers and wades into ponds to collect frogspawn. Above all, Min is a storyteller who loves to chat with everyone. But one day she chokes, and the words forming in her mouth never make it out. Words suddenly feel dangerous, unwieldy. Min is no longer herself—not with some strange creature stealing her words, a creature not even her sister can see. But that doesn't matter, because Bea sees Min. Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell pulls from her own experiences with stammering to create a realistic portrait of shaken self-confidence and how sharing painful situations with a loved one can make all the difference. This book will speak to readers who have ever lost a part of themselves—and found something new in return.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 23, 2024
      At the start of this personal-feeling work from previous collaborators O’Farrell and Terrazzini (Where Snow Angels Go), disorderly, chatty Min lives with measured, tidy sister Bea in the attic of a home also occupied by their parents and three lodgers. Storybook-style ink and watercolor artwork shows Bea in neat ruffles and Min with trousers and a scraped shin. But everything changes one night during a household game, when Min finds that “her tongue seemed to be suddenly locked. Instead, the only sound she could make was S-S-S-s-s-s—.” Similar experiences continue the next day at breakfast, en route to school, and at lunch. Later, in the mirror, she sees a smoke-like shape hovering above her, “seizing the words as they rose to her lips.” Bea, suggesting that the occurrence is a stammer, identifies the shape as a “dybbuk, an undesirable spirit which takes up residence with a person, causing them great difficulties.” A discussion of symbiosis helps Min embrace the dybbuk (“Try to think of your stammer as a friend.... Remember what it gives you”) in this relational portrait. Protagonists are portrayed with pale skin. Ages 5–8.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Min is messy and chatty and spontaneous but, out of nowhere, she develops a stammer that changes her life. Not only does the audio format sound entirely appropriate to illustrate her struggle to produce language, Aiofe McMahon doubles down on that advantage, with her lovely Irish accent and expressiveness ensuring that all the characters teem with life. Min's sister, Bea, is her opposite--tidy and attentive--and McMahon encapsulates Bea's need for organization. As the sisters search for the shadow hanging over Min's shoulder grabbing the words before she can get them out, they are assisted by a slow-talking mycologist who observes that everyone struggles with something and that Min's stammer has brought her empathy. A librarian notes Min's newfound ability to come up with multiple alternative words. A.B. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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