YA? book. Blind deaf girl learns to communicate. Read in 1970s.

[Anna]

Explosion in shed kills children and Leaves one girl the only survivor. She is rendered deaf and blind. She eventually learns to communicate. She eventually asks what happened to her friends.

[Rainbowheart]

When did you read it?

Is this book for kids, teens, or adults?

[Anna]

I read it many years ago in 1970s but it could be older. It was young adult I guess.

[bookel]

This does not seem to be YA but I didn't know of it. Unsure if the one however. Did you read it in the UK?
The Story of Esther Costello
by Nicholas Monsarrat
THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO by NICHOLAS MONSARRAT POCKET BOOK No 1043 1953 1955 Hardcover Nicholas Mansarrat

[Anna]

No this is definitely not it. The story is about how the girl over comes her disabilities and eventually learns to sign an alphabet. Not Hellen Geller nor the miracle worker.

[Rainbowheart]

Are you sure it's not The Story of Esther Costello?

Esther Costello, a young girl who was profoundly disabled in an explosion of old ordnance discovered by her and her playmates in an abandoned house.

[Anna]

No, a group of young children were playing with explosives (fireworks?) in a shed. There was an explosion all of her friends died. She learns to slowly be able to communicate with the help of a teacher. She eventually asks what happened to her friends years later.

[bookel]

What country do you think it was set in or published in????

[bookel]

What year did you read it?
Why do you think it was published 1970s or earlier?
I ask because sometimes year can be later if read later ...

[bookel]

Would appreciate answers to the above ...

There is the below book, but may not be a match either.

Child of the Silent Night
by Edith Fisher Hunter
https://www.librarything.com/work/493...

[Anna]

Hi, yes I read child of the silent night. Lovely but complete different.
I believe it was uk or America I read it as a child so possibly late 70s or early 80s but it was a bitter sweet story of triumph over adversity. X

[bookel]

I will keep an eye out for it.

[bookel]

That also rules out anything about Laura Bridgman.

[Daisy]

Anna, what you wrote in message 7 sounds exactly like what Rainbowheart wrote in message 6.

[bookel]

The book I mentioned in message 4 is here if you wish to check. I have not read it.
https://openlibrary.org/search?q=Stor...

Search inside for friends:

Page 11
By some freak of the explosion — because she was a few feet farther off, or because her body was turned at some merciful angle — she was apparently unharmed : the pretty, young face was without blemish, the immature body un¬ marked and untwisted. The blood with which her clothes were drenched was, amazingly, none of hers. But the shock had been tremendous, driving deep into some hard secret core every trace of feeling, every normal faculty. She lay unconscious for many days and nights, while the doctor from near-by Wexford did what he could, which was little enough; she showed no sign of life, nor of death either. Thus she lay, while her small friends were buried, ...

[Rainbowheart]

Here's more from just before the explosion....

The four children played in the ruined cottage just outside the village of Cloncraig — the cottage, long deserted, where the man and his wife and the children had all been killed, away back during the troubles. Its door hung askew, its windows gaped: grass grew between the turf walls and sprouted from the floor-boards. The Black-and-Tan place, their parents called it, and cursed the memory when the children were not by; but for the children — Esther Costello and her brother, Michael Fairlie with the limp, and young Denis Finane — for them it was just a fine place to play, and safely out of call of the grown-ups. Perhaps the cottage was haunted, perhaps the queer stains on the old walls were really blood; but it was full of good corners, and hiding places, and secrets — a fine place to play indeed, and none better in Cloncraig.

The cellar itself was wonderful enough: a single dark space, hollowed out beneath the living-room, and unsuspected by the two generations of children who had always used the deserted cottage as a playground. Its entrance was by a trap-door beside the fireplace, masked by a stack of crumbling peats and discovered by Esther when she was scavenging for kindling. A ladder led down to it, and there, by candle-light, she had come upon an empty room, stoneflagged, swept clean, which must have lain hidden in musty darkness for at least twenty years.

The cellar had become their headquarters for the most secret meetings of all. But a few weeks later they had found something else, something better still. Hidden treasure, no less — or so it seemed likely to turn out.

Out of the corner of her eyes she saw her brother Johnny pick up another metal 'egg', and jerk out the pin, and then hold it momentarily to his ear, listening. She pushed the keg of powder she had opened back into the box again, and Johnny, following her, tossed the metal object on top of it.

Behind her back there was a flash, and a monstrous explosion which delivered an intolerable blow at the nape of her neck. Above her head the whole cottage floor lifted, and daylight poured in upon them; but for Esther there was suddenly nothing but pain, and stifling darkness, and then oblivion.

[Rainbowheart]

Here are some passages about her learning to sign....

"No. I'll have her taught the deaf-and-dumb language, and whatever they do for the blind — Braille, and things like that."

The fantastic story started at the local Deaf-and-Dumb Institute; and there, the first thing they found out about Esther Costello was that she could spell. At Mrs. Bannister's suggestion, they began with the blessed word 'fire', which she had been able to 'get through' to Esther while they had been waiting at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, and winch she had answered so movingly. Then they combined it with something else: whenever they said 'fire', they tapped four times in the palm of her hand, for the word's four letters. This puzzled and defeated Esther for many weeks, until they began to fear that the whole conception of spelling, which had been hers five years before, had vanished in the blank intervening time. But there came a day when she suddenly smiled, and tapped four times back, and nodded, and tried to make four separate noises in her throat.

To 'fire' they presently added 'water' — dipping her hand in a bowl of water, giving five taps, and then going on to the individual letters themselves. The fact that 'fire' and 'water' had two letters in common, V and V, seemed to give Esther tremendous pleasure. . . . Next came the word 'mouth', and thus they had, with these three simple words, taught her eleven different letters, including all the five vowels.

Mrs. Bannister learned at the same time, and soon it was she, and she only, who spelled out letters and words on Esther's hand, so that the girl could get used to her touch and they could establish the essential sympathy. They spent hours together, whispering, tapping, pressing the shape of letters on to each other's hands. They learned 'leg' and 'neck', 'face' and 'back': they learned 'chair' and 'table' and 'bed': they moved on to sentences — 'I am hungry', 'I want to drink', 'It is time to go to bed'.