My City Speaks
Darren Lebeuf (Illus. Ashley Barron)
Publication Year: 2021
Genre / Category: Picture Book (Selected for the Disability/Differences
category)
Target Age Group: PreK–3rd Grade
Format Read: Physical Book
Summary
My City Speaks follows a young girl who experiences her city not through sight, but through sound — the honks, sirens, chimes, rumbles, and meows that together form the voice of the world around her. The book invites readers to reconsider what it means to truly listen to a place.
Justification for Selection
My City Speaks won the 2022 Schneider Family Book Award, which recognizes
books that authentically portray the disability experience for young readers.
What drew me to this book specifically was how it approaches difference — not
as a problem to be overcome, but as a different and equally valid way of moving
through the world. Books that normalize difference without sentimentalizing it
are rare in the picture book space, and this one manages that balance well. The
front matter also notes that Kerry Kijewski of the Canadian Federation of the
Blind reviewed the text, which signals that the book was developed with real
community input. For a youth services professional building a collection for
young children, that kind of authenticity matters.
Evaluation
The most striking creative decision in My City Speaks is also its most
fundamental one: the story is told entirely through sound. The protagonist
never describes what she sees — the book simply does not frame sight as the
primary sense through which a city is known. Instead, she hears whispers and
giggles, meows and honks, sirens and chimes, and through this accumulation of
sound, a full urban world emerges. This works on two levels. For sighted
readers, it offers a genuine entry point into a sensory experience that is not
their own, building empathy through imagination rather than explanation. For
readers who experience the world similarly to the protagonist, it offers
something rarer: a picture book in which their way of knowing the world is
centered, not explained or apologized for. Lebeuf never announces what the book
is doing — it simply does it, and that restraint is one of its greatest
strengths.
Ashley Barron's illustrations are one of the book's most memorable
qualities. Working in cut-paper collage combined with watercolor, acrylic, and
pencil crayon, Barron creates images that are textured, layered, and richly
colorful. The technique itself feels appropriate for a book about sensory
experience — cut paper has a physical presence that extends the book's themes
into its visual form. The colors are bold and joyful without becoming chaotic,
and the compositions capture the busyness of a city while remaining clear and
readable for young audiences. What is most impressive is how Barron represents
sound visually — translating something auditory into image is a genuine
artistic challenge, and the illustrations meet it with real inventiveness. They
do not simply illustrate the text; they extend it, offering a visual
interpretation of sound that feels fresh rather than decorative.
The most telling quality of My City Speaks is not what it includes, but
what it deliberately leaves out. It does not portray its protagonist as brave
or inspirational for navigating the world differently. It does not frame her
experience as a limitation she works around. The city speaks to her — through
the channels that her particular way of being in the world makes available —
and she receives it fully. That is an affirming message for young readers,
delivered without a word of moral instruction. For classroom and library use,
this makes the book genuinely versatile: it can open conversations about difference
without requiring those conversations to center on pity or inspiration. It
simply shows a child living fully in her city, hearing everything, missing
nothing that matters.
Reference
Lebeuf, D. (2021). My city speaks (A. Barron, Illus.). Kids Can
Press.