I Talk Like A River

I Talk Like a River is a Picture Book written for ages 4 to 8. It explores the experience of having the disability of a stutter. I listened to I Talk Like a River as an audiobook, narrated by the author Jordan Scott. I will be reviewing this book in the category of Disability.

I Talk Like a River tells the author's own story about growing up with a stutter, in which Scott explains how this difference in speech made it difficult for him to connect with his peers and succeed in school. The story is about an adventure with his father that helped Scott to understand and make peace with his stutter.

I chose this book to review because I was interested in the idea of a stutter as a disability. In a society so focused on body neutrality and disability inclusion, stutters have been overlooked in the conversation. They are often still associated with learning disabilities rather than being regarded as purely a different pattern of speech. This book received an Honor at the 2022 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production, and so I chose to experience this story as an audiobook.

For this review, I will be evaluating the point of view, audiobook format, and style of I Talk Like a River.

Jordan Scott wrote I Talk Like a River about his own experience growing up with a stutter. As such, the book is written from a first-person point of view. This creates a powerful experience for the reader because Scott invites them to experience his stutter for themselves. This became even more true when listening to the audiobook because, rather than reading a book with my non-stuttering internal voice, I experienced the book with Scott's specific stutter. In the book's afterward, Scott (2020) states that "everyone who stutters does so differently. A stutter is never just a stutter but a set of intricately intimate labors with words, sound, and body. My stutter is my own" (15:24). It was humbling as a listener to hear Scott struggle to speak his poetic masterpiece and to feel his struggle with the words he had written. As he spoke about being laughed at in school, I felt the shame of not wanting to speak up when I knew my words would be inadequate. When he talked about his dad picking him up from school early on "bad speech days", I felt his relief (Scott, 2020, 5:20). As he remembered "My dad says I talk like a river", I felt the power this realization gave Scott (Scott, 2020, 7:39). Writing this book in first person put Scott into a vulnerable position, one in which he opened himself and his speech up to the judgment of the masses. To avoid this, Scott could have written about his experiences in the third person, which would have distanced himself from the young Scott within the book. Alternatively, he could have attempted the story from the perspective of a peer who witnessed his stutter. However, there is power in Scott's honest use of the word "I". It draws the reader in and compels them to experience his struggle and transforms their response from the sympathy of someone passing by to the empathy of someone who has lived his history, even if only for a small moment.

The audiobook format replaces the interior design aspect of a picture book with production. As such, behind Scott's narrative listeners hear music and nature sounds. When I Talk Like a River opens, quiet music plays alongside the sounds of nature. However, once he is at school, the music builds and grows louder, mingled with the sound of children playing. The background noises at this point in the narrative feel as though they are trying to drown out Scott's voice, rather than accompany it. Once he escapes into nature with his father, the music stops. All we hear behind Scott are bird sounds. When the music does return, it is empowering, building with Scott's voice and with his realization that he can be proud like the river because "even the river stutters" (Scott, 2020, 9:32). The background sounds work in harmony with Scott's narration, rather than against it. As Scott's story closes, the production plays gentle, hopeful music, aligned with Scott's newly realized pride in and awareness of himself. Additionally, an audiobook gives the narrator complete control over the book's pacing. Thus, Scott was able to slow down and emphasize specific words in his story to make sure listeners felt their full impact and to quicken his speech during more stressful parts of the story so that listeners would feel his anxiety. His lyrical writing style flows as spoken word so that his story comes across as poetry. Scott's natural stutter, rather than detracting from the poem, fits naturally into its rhythm, so that, as an audiobook, Scott's experience is felt in full.

I Talk Like a River is written in lyrical prose. Scott (2020) opens and closes his book by saying "I wake up each morning with the sounds of words all around me" (0:39, 9:49). At the start of the book, this is followed with a description of how pronouncing those words evades him, but at the end, they become tools he can use to speak confidently with others. Thus, he uses repetition here to show his growth and change. Later in the story, Scott uses repetition again. However, this time his repetition of the phrase "I talk like a river" shows how he is becoming empowered by his connection to the "proud river: bubbling, churning, whirling, and crashing", rather than being used to highlight a contrast in the narrative (Scott, 2020, 8:04, 8:34). He also uses many metaphors like "C is a crow that sticks in the back of my throat", "I feel a storm in my belly", and "My eyes fill with rain" (Scott, 2020, 1:52, 6:28, 6:34). Using this style to describe his physical and emotional experience pulls the reader into Scott's world more vividly than could be done with a literal description, perfecting the common admonition "show, don't tell". Finally, there is a rhythm to Scott's writing that keeps the listener engaged in the story, simply because of how pleasing it is to hear how Scott has built this part of his world with words.

Scott, J. (2020). I talk like a river [Audiobook]. Neal Porter Books.