Originally posted on Just Geeking by.



I've reviewed this book as a part of an event I am hosting in September 2021 called GeekDis. GeekDis is a collaborative event for members of the disability community to talk about disability representation in pop culture. You can learn more about GeekDis here!

Everything about this book is brilliant. As the synopsis states, the story is set in the near future where the food supply has been completely replaced with a scientifically produced food that contains everything people need including medication that has wiped out most common viruses and diseases, as well as obesity. As with all future utopias, the solution is not as ideal as it first appeared, and The Words in My Hands starts right as things begin to fall apart.

The protagonist, Piper, is right in the middle of things due to her mother’s job. As the world she’s known falls apart, Piper becomes aware of whole new worlds she never knew existed. One of these is the Deaf community which she is introduced to through Marley, a CODA, Child of a Deaf Adult. As Piper’s story unfolds, so does the many difficulties, judgements, biases and blatant discrimination that Deaf people have to deal with. While ignorance most often comes from strangers, The Words in My Hands shows the reader that it can just as easily come from those closest to us.

While this is a book about a Deaf teenager, it is so much more than that. Piper’s Deafness is a part of her whole story, just as much as her art, her learning to step out of her mother’s shadow and struggling to come to terms with what’s happening to her relationship with her best friend. I started to develop my health conditions in my teens, and I saw myself in Piper’s story in many ways. When she used art to express herself, I especially understood where she was coming from, what she was feeling, and the need to get those feelings down somewhere so that they made sense.

Art accompanies the entire book, every single page is decorated in some way as if you are actually reading Piper’s journal. It makes it feel so much more authentic, and it’s visually stunning. It’s not just the wonderful illustrations providing a visual guide to items or characters, it’s the colours and the textures. Even though it’s printed 2D pages it doesn’t look that way at all and as an artist I could tell what was supposed to be made with paint, paper etc. Piper also explains a lot of techniques as she tries them out, so it was a lot of fun as I read to match up her art tests with a page.

I wondered whether The Words in My Hands would relate to current times in any way, and the answer is, yes, definitely. It was quite eerie how easy I could imagine the world going down this route, considering some of the food shortages we had at the start of the Pandemic. Since the start of certain political changes here in the UK, there’s started to be noticeably fewer items available in supermarkets and sometimes there are times when the supermarket has a shortage of something for a bit. While reading The Words in My Hands I started to recall things I was taught about plants as a child, and some diagrams, such as the one for creating a compost heap, look like they could be quite handy.

I expected to learn a lot from this book in terms of the Deaf community, I didn’t quite expect to learn as much as I did about growing plants, nor did I expect there to be a guide to sign language – although I will note that it is Australian Sign Language (Auslan), not British/American Sign Language so if you do want to learn (as I do) please note there are differences.

I highly recommend The Words in My Hands for its representation, the storyline, character development and the beautiful art journal style and illustrations. Most books offer the reader one thing, whether it’s a good story or information, and this one is giving you multiple things in one.


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Piper is forced to compensate for her deafness to maintain her mother’s image. The hearing aids cause headaches. Lip reading is a continual confusion that Piper would rather give up on. Piper is 16 when she is introduced to the Deaf community and alternative forms of communication.

In the midst of all this, “wild food" has started to become obsolete with the transition to bioengineered food called recon, manufactured by Organicore. Due to budget cuts and inflation, Piper’s mom lost her job as lead scientist at Organicore. The loss of income created food scarcity, limited transportation, and a housing downsize. To survive, Piper must completely restructure her life.

The Words in My Hands is a young adult dystopia. Asphyxia wrote dialogue as how a Deaf person might hear something, and reading those exchanges is heart wrenching. There is exquisite character development. Asphyxia demonstrates that misfortunes are just opportunities to reengineer current circumstances. ( )

A YA novel set in a dystopian Australia in which Piper, a Deaf teen, struggles to find her place between the Deaf and hearing communities. This is made more complicated by the fact that her mother didn't allow her to learn sign language growing up, so she has a difficult time understanding both groups. That is, until she meets Marley, a handsome CODA (child of a Deaf adult) working in a bike shop, and he helps her learn to sign. He also introduces her to his mother, who grows all their own food, a rogue activity in a world dominated by food shortages and a corporation trying to regulate the food sources with their own manufactured nutrient-based 'food.' This, in turn, is a complication for Piper, whose mother was a key figure in the creation of the company's 'food' stuff. So, tensions all round as Piper learns to live in both worlds.

This one was excellent. Lots going on, but it's all fleshed out and tied together nicely. Piper is also a budding artist, and the book itself is shaped as her journal, so every page has some sort of collage-like artwork. Highly recommended. ( )

The cover of this book really intrigued me. I kept passing it as I shelved in the library until one day I pulled it from the shelf. The cover art of this library bound book is beautiful, but the whole book is illustrated with drawings, paintings, and collage. It is definitely a book to read "in print."

The heroine of the story is 16 year old Piper McBride, who is Deaf and lives with her single Mom, Irene, in Melbourne, Australia, sometime in the near future. Irene McBride is a food scientist who helped create recon (reconstituted food) for a company, Organicore, which has a monopoly on the product and the market. Recon is not only food, but contains medicines that prevent cancer and cure all manner of diseases while containing the proper balance of nutrition. It is made to look and taste like traditional foods, and the government, which Organicore seems to control, has put out a message that "wild" foods, harvested from the soil or from animals, are dangerous. When the story opens, it has been discovered that recon causes its own problems. Piper's Mom has been fired.

Though this is a dystopian tale about the dangers of processed food and industry monopoly, there is another story going on that is just as central to the book. Piper has been raised to hide her deafness by lip reading. The author shows how difficult this is by telling us what Piper actually hears, and how she makes sense of it. We struggle along with Piper to decipher what is being said. When Piper meets Marley, a 19 year old CODA (child of deaf adult) at his bike shop, her life as a Deaf person in hiding blossoms, quite literally. She meets his Mom, Ronnie, who grows the family's wild food behind a tall fence, and from Marley and Ronnie she begins to learn sign language.

Piper's relationship with her Mom doesn't quite seem realistic to me, because it's just the two of them, but Piper hides her growing use of sign language from her Mom for most of the book, as well as her friendship with Marley's Mom.

I learned so much about sign language and deaf culture from this book that along with the beautiful illustrations, I have to give it five stars. I think any teen who enjoys reading would like this. It was a huge hit in Australia, where it was published under the title of "Future Girl." ( )

I read an e-book version of this book, but I feel like I will need to see the physical book. Even digital it was beautiful and truly reminded me of a visual journal with words and amazing art work.

The Words in My Hands follows Piper, a young artist that expresses herself through her art,; one of her biggest ways to communicate in a world that couldn’t be bothered to accommodate her Deafness. Told in the form of an art journal we follow Piper and her mother in the near future where jobs are hard to find and the price of living is outrageous. Piper’s mum loses her job and the two of them fall into hard times very fast. No electricity. Living in their back shed. Food is scarce.

Readers will be mesmerized by the gorgeous art and the story which isn't perfect but is more than worth taking the time to immerse yourself fully in to the art, the story, and the great representation of Deaf Culture. While there were some things I wasn't too fond of I am so glad I was given the chance to read this.

Thank you to netgalley and publishers for providing me with an e-copy so that I can share my honest opinion with all of you. I strongly encourage you to make time for this book as soon as possible ( )