When the Stammer Came to Stay

At the start of this personal-feeling work from previous collaborators O’Farrell and Terrazzini (Where Snow Angels Go), disorderly, chatty Min lives with measured, tidy sister Bea in the attic of a home also occupied by their parents and three lodgers. Storybook-style ink and watercolor artwork shows Bea in neat ruffles and Min with trousers and a scraped shin. But everything changes one night during a household game, when Min finds that “her tongue seemed to be suddenly locked. Instead, the only sound she could make was S-S-S-s-s-s—.” Similar experiences continue the next day at breakfast, en route to school, and at lunch. Later, in the mirror, she sees a smoke-like shape hovering above her, “seizing the words as they rose to her lips.” Bea, suggesting that the occurrence is a stammer, identifies the shape as a “dybbuk, an undesirable spirit which takes up residence with a person, causing them great difficulties.” A discussion of symbiosis helps Min embrace the dybbuk (“Try to think of your stammer as a friend.... Remember what it gives you”) in this relational portrait. Protagonists are portrayed with pale skin. Ages 5–8. (Dec.)