Five Flavors of Dumb

This marvelous, rollicking epic introduces the reader to one of the toughest and most likeable characters in YA fiction—Piper Vaughan, a deaf and socially marginalized high school student who through a bet finds herself in the awkward position of managing a volatile teen rock band and trying to get them their first gig. Dealing with an egomaniacal and frankly sociopathic lead singer, an angry and misunderstood bass player, an alleged piece of eye candy, the lead singer’s apparently fried younger brother, and the nerdy drummer on whom she has a crush, Piper also learns the ins and outs of rock venues, radio and television appearances, and public relations. She also must handle family drama when her parents use her college fund to pay show more for her little sister Grace’s cochlear implants, which crisis gives Piper the financial motivation to try her hand at band management. Fantastically funny and deeply moving, this book also offers young readers a deeply felt look into the legacies of rock musicians of yesterday, such as Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. The Seattle settings also give the proceedings a lovely, rain-washed grace. show less

Piper didn't exactly set out to be Dumb's band manager - an unlikely occupation for her since she's deaf - but somehow that's exactly where she ended up. And she's got one month to whip this motley crew into shape and start earning some money or she'll be back where she was before - invisible, even to her own family.

The tone's a nice blend of humorous and serious and Piper's a relatable character. It's really interesting to read a rock and roll novel told through the perspective of a deaf protagonist and Anthony John's obviously done his research and gotten the details right (as far as I could tell). The slight romance is well-done and develops nicely, adding to the story without making it a "romance novel".

I really enjoyed this book show more and I'd recommend it to fans of AUDREY WAIT! by Robin Benson and maybe books by Sarah Dessen.

More on the blog: http://www.abbythelibrarian.com/2010/10/five-flavors-of-dumb.html show less

The main character in this book for young adults is deaf, which I love for a number of reasons. One of them is entirely personal: my husband has a hereditary hearing disability, and it has taught me amazing things about: the importance of the senses (and how much abled people take for granted); my totally evil tendency to get frustrated and yell at people who are disabled; how much easier it is to be married if one partner can’t hear the other most of the time; and Jim’s (nevertheless) totally accepting and easy-going nature.

In case you’re wondering, Jim does wear hearing aids, but they don’t totally compensate. He can’t hear if it is raining, or when the birds chirp in the morning. He can’t hear if a teakettle boils over, show more or when an alarm clock goes off, or nuances in conversation if there is a lot of background noise. He fakes it a lot, and his insensitive wife literally roars with laughter over some of the responses he gives that he thinks are appropriate given what he thinks he has heard.

In this book, the narrator and primary protagonist is more severely deaf than Jim; Piper, age 18 and a senior in high school, also has a hereditary disorder and has been functionally deaf since she was six years old. She ends up managing a rock band that calls itself Dumb: "For the record, I wasn’t around the day they decided to become Dumb. If I’d been their manager back then I’d have pointed out that the name, while accurate, was not exactly smart. It just encouraged people to question the band’s intelligence, maybe even their sanity. And the way I saw it, Dumb didn’t have much of either.”

As you can see from the above excerpt, the author has a lot of fun with the name Dumb, imbuing Piper with a sardonic sense of humor, a lot of moxie and courage, and the ability to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous teenagers.

Piper has her hands full getting the five band members to work and play together, and how she does so in spite of not being able to hear what they produce is really a wonderful story. But Piper has problems on the home front too: of her two hearing parents, her father refuses to learn sign language. Her younger brother Finn resents being her interpreter. And her baby sister Grace was born deaf but just received a cochlear implant with money her parents took from Piper’s college fund. How they resolve these simmering hurts and resentments forms the background of the book, which also has the usual coming-of-age elements, and a budding romance.

Evaluation: This very charming story has an ending that is probably happier than that which would occur in real life. But it isn’t entirely improbable, except maybe to Eeyore-channeling pessimists like me. I enjoyed it a lot nevertheless, and highly recommend it. (And those of you who love the Seattle music and coffee scene won’t be disappointed.) show less

Okay wow so in all honesty this is my first book by a male author (classics aside of course) I always thought a man would have a hard time writing from a woman's viewpoint and having it sound authentic. I have never been so happy to be wrong!

This book was so great because John did a great job showing the duality of everything. Do some of the things that 'happen' to Piper suck? Yeah but that doesn't mean her parents or siblings are terrible, there's two sides to everything and I feel like so much in YA today everyone is just broadly painted as 'bad', it was so refreshing to see Piper grow up and realize ... it's not all about her. Sometimes bad decisions/ or decisions we don't agree with are made, but it doesn't mean they're made to show more spite us. Sometimes it's just the best choice at the moment.

I really loved watching all the characters grow throughout the book and I feel like John did a great job letting you experience how difficult family can be. show less

Five Flavors of Dumb is hard to describe and simultaneously do it justice-- most superficially, it's about a band named Dumb and a deaf girl aptly named Piper who serves as their manager.

Things I loved, and there are many. As a reader, my heart and soul is in characters, their development and their relationships with each other. And boy, was this book a rich breeding ground for that love. In most typical books, there are one or two characters who stand out in my mind as favorites, but in this book I loved them all. Each of Piper's family members is deftly drawn, loved and cherished. Both parents, Finn, and even little Grace is given their due. I was very moved by the conflict between Piper and her father. The pinnacle of that conflict show more was done pitch perfectly, and I remember gripping the pages, willing myself to get through it. I felt everything that she was feeling, and at the same time, I felt everything that her father was feeling. I loved how Piper and Finn started to see their father as a real person and not just as their father.

Don't even get me started on the band members. I will always have a special place in my heart (and a bit of a crush) on Ed Chen. Tash was vibrantly painted, a splash of color on every page. And Kallie. Somehow I knew she had a big story to tell, and I wasn't disappointed.

I am also a musician and loved all descriptions of the music, but the way the story is told, even non-music fanatics will be drawn into the rich description of the music and the band, the stories of the bands from the past and the great artists that came before.

Other surprises: I cried. Twice. Which I do not do often. And two twists that I completely got wrong. And loved that I was wrong, because the answers were so right.

The last thing I want to add is that I never questioned that Piper was a girl. I was so amazed that Antony John got the tone of a teenage girl so right. I was completely impressed because that is hard to do for even a female writer.

If it's not already patently obvious, I was floored by this novel even though I started it with high expectations-- it completely delivered in ways that I never expected. Antony John will be a force to be reckoned with in the YA genre. I will definitely be following his novels eagerly for years to come. show less

John could have made the band of high schoolers trying to make it big the set-up a whole book in and of itself, albeit a much less satisfying one. Instead of being a book all about the band, this is a book all about how Piper, their manager, deals with them. But it's also a book about Piper and her life at school and at home. Woven through her parents reactions to Dumb are Piper's reactions to her family. Her maternal grandparents (now deceased) were both deaf and very into deaf culture. They instilled a sense of pride in Piper, along with the sense that she has the ability to do anything she wants to do regardless of her lack of hearing. Piper's mother and brother are both fluent in ASL (American Sign Language), but her father does not show more sign at all. Her infant sister was born deaf. In her, Piper saw a kind of ally. Or, she did until her parents raided Piper's college fund to get her sister a cochlear implant (a surgically implanted device that can restore hearing to severely deaf persons). Betrayal and closing doors all in one. She hopes Dumb will be her ticket out of town and to the college of her dreams.

The juxtaposition of why Dumb's different members, Piper included, are in the band, money, fame, the music (said very seriously), and various crushes on other band members, cause problems. All the band drama keeps this from turning into a problem novel about a moderately severe deaf girl in a hearing family and high school. Though the fact that Piper is deaf comes up over and over and over again in her dealings with various people in the music business as well as with the band itself (and, sadly, her family), it is never Piper's defining characteristic, just as Kallie's skin color is never hers (though she is proud of her mother's self-proclaimed status as "the first African American to go grunge" (p160)*).

The best part about Five Flavors of Dumb really is Piper herself. She has such a strong voice, sense of herself, and talent for sarcasm. I also loved her developing relationship with the girls of Dumb, Tasha and Kallie. I LOVE great girl friendship books, and by the end this one totally fit the bill. And watching Piper's rock music education was fabulous (the Seattle setting helped a bit). I grew up listening to Hendrix and other musicians of that era (thanks Dad), and I was in middle school and just getting into Nirvana when Kurt Cobain killed himself (thanks Johanna). I can't imagine coming to these musicians as a senior in high school. Seeing them through Piper and the rest of Dumb was like "meeting" them all over again.

Book source: ARC picked up at ALA

*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy. show less

I'm going to try to write this review without gushing too much about how it's one of my favorite reads of the century. I'm also going to try to prevent myself from ranting about how a GUY excelled at writing a book from a GIRL's POV. It makes me wonder if we females are getting a little too predictable/readable... Hmm.

I digress.

Okay, so, Five Flavors of Dumb IS on my list of best YA books of all time. I have backing, too. It's won the Schneider Family Teen Book Award and for good reason. Piper, your main girl in the story, is deaf. That doesn't make Piper an outcast in any way. She adapts well with reading lips and signing. As a matter of fact, Piper is pretty average yet strongly unique at the same time. What do I mean by that? She's show more smart, independent and funny, but she's not popular and never catches the eye of the popular boy at school. She sounds ordinary, yet she somehow manages to shine through on every page with her fierce determination and witty comments. She's also very human in that she has to deal with making mistakes, learning, moving on and struggles to understand her two parents who seem to put more time and effort into her infant sister than her.

The story grips you not in the way that most books do by its action, but rather its intense emotional roller coaster that you go on with Piper as she grows and finally breaks out of her shell. Just when you think she's going to give up, she pulls out more strength that you never realize she has and saves the day.

The supporting characters were all just as amazingly written, each with their own issues and quirks. I think the only ones I was annoyed with in the story was her parents, who drained Piper's funds given to her by her grandparents for college all so they could give her little sister a "chance to be normal" with a cochlear implant. The way they went about it was completely inappropriate and devoid of any concern for how it may affect Piper. If you ask me, it was almost selfish ... like they just couldn't bear the idea of having two deaf daughters. Thankfully, they do somewhat redeem themselves in the story. The love interest in the story completely blindsided me, although looking back I can say that it was there - I was just too wrapped up in other things to notice all of the hints at it within the story. I think of all the characters, Piper's brother Finn ended up with my heart. The love interest was all well and good, but Finn showed that he was much more than what met the eye - and my heart was pretty much jello there at the end.

I don't think that I can do this book justice by just writing a review. Instead, you should go out and buy this book. Read it for yourself, and I dare you to not fall madly in love with it. show less