Nobody's Perfect - Hardcover

Marlee Matlin, deaf since she was eighteen months old, won the
Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in
Children of a Lesser God. She was nominated for Emmy Awards for
her performances in Seinfeld, Picket Fences, The
Practice, and Law & Order: SVU. Her film credits include
It's My Party and What the Bleep Do We Know!? She is the
author of Deaf Child Crossing. She has made numerous television
appearances and currently appears on The L Word. Marlee Matlin
lives in Los Angeles with her husband and four children. Visit her at
www.marleeonline.com.

Doug Cooney is the author of the middle-grade novels The
Beloved Dearly and I Know Who Likes You. His musical
adaptation of George Saunders's The Very Persistent Gappers of
Frip recently premiered at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles,
produced by the Mark Taper Forum P.L.A.Y. Cooney also teaches songwriting
and collaboration for Voices Within, an educational outreach program of
the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He divides his time between Los Angeles
and South Florida. You can visit him at www.dougcooney.com.

Grade 4-6–This sometimes-tedious sequel to Matlin's Deaf Child Crossing (S & S, 2002) focuses on Megan, a deaf girl whose speechreading and signing skills allow her to thrive in the hearing world. Megan can't wait for her positively purple birthday party, but her perfect plans get derailed when a new girl, Alexis, joins her class and rebuffs Megan's invitation. Alexis seems to be smart, athletic, and pretty, but she brushes off all of Megan's attempts to be friendly. Not until the two girls are paired up for a science project does Megan find out the reason behind Alexis's behavior. She's ashamed of her autistic brother and is afraid that her new classmates will find out about him. When Megan teaches him some basic sign language, it opens up communication with both him and Alexis. As in the first book, every character except Megan is sketchy at best, and the plot hangs on the flawed, funny forcefulness of the protagonist's giant personality. Information about Megan's school days, though often clunkily inserted into the story, provides interest. Readers unfamiliar with deafness will be fascinated by the descriptions of how she studies for a spelling bee and her interactions with her American Sign Language interpreter in the classroom (though actual interpreters will be appalled at the woman's use of bright red nail polish, an extreme no-no). Illustrations showing the manual alphabet are appended.–Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Carroll County Public Library, MD
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