Agent: Jill Grinberg, Grinberg Literary Management. Blind by Rachel DeWoskin ISBN 13: 9780670785223 ISBN 10: 0670785229 Hardback Viking Juvenile ISBN-13: 978-0670785223 When Emma Sasha Silver loses her eyesight in a nightmare accident, she must relearn everything from walking across the street to recognizing her own sisters to imagining colors. By using Claire’s death as a counterpoint to Emma’s misfortune-one chosen, the other inflicted-DeWoskin enables her characters and readers to put tragedy into perspective. While writing the book, DeWoskin learned Braille at the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, and her sensitivity to details (comparing characters’ voices to smells, textures, and colors describing conflicted reactions to Emma’s blindness) shows. At least, I’ve never met a blind person who touches faces.
But when Claire, a friend from her “old life,” kills herself by swallowing a cocktail of painkillers and drowning, Emma rethinks her “PBK” (poor blind kid) attitude and her approach to recovery. A year after the accident, she’s still using her white cane in her house, she’s comparing her loss of sight to the tragedy of her classmate losing her life, and she’s touching people’s faces. Despite help and support from her parents, six siblings, best friend Logan, and classmates at Briarly-a school for the blind Emma attends before she “mainstreams” back to her local high school-Emma wants to curl up and die. Her most recent novel, Big Girl Small, (FSG 2011) received the 2012 American Library Association's Alex Award and was named one of the top 3 books of 2011 by Newsday. As Emma, the protagonist in adult writer DeWoskin’s profound YA debut, knows, “we’re all only a half-second disaster, mistake, or choice away from being changed forever.” At the start of Emma’s freshman year, she loses her sight in a freak accident. Rachel DeWoskin's fourth book, the critically acclaimed novel, Blind, was published in August, 2014.
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