Hello, Universe

“I know there’s something going on with you, anak. You have the face of Frederico the Sorrowful.”

“Who is Frederico the Sorrowful?”

“He was a boy king who was sad all the time. But he didn’t want anyone to know he was sad, because he wanted people to think he was a strong king. But one day he couldn’t hold in his sorrow anymore. It all came out, just like a fountain…He wept and wept until the whole land flooded and all the islands drifted away from each other…If you decided to talk, you come find your Lola. Don’t burst like a fountain and float away” (6-7)

When five kids, three animals (namely, a snake, a dog, and a guinea pig), one jumprope, and an empty, abandoned well all come together in the woods one day, everything changes. Virgil Salinas, the youngest son in a loud, happy Filipino-American family, ceases to be the shy Turtle he once was and becomes someone who speaks up for himself. Kaori Tanaka, accompanied always by her little sister Gen, comes to realize that fate is as much a matter of collaboration as it is of divination. The bully Chet Bullens is put in his place by both his classmates and a snake. And aspiring naturalist Valencia Somerset, whose old friends once deemed her deafness “too hard” for them to handle, has new friends. And these new friends care less about her deafness and more about her knowledge, determination, and courage. Hello, Universe is a beautifully woven story whose kid-driven narrative threads are further enriched by an embroidery of folk tales, astrological intel, and carefully researched details about what life might be like for a kid growing up deaf. Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others may be thrilled to find sensitively discussed in their literature): bullying.

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