Song for a Whale

Song for a Whale (2019) is the second novel by Lynne Kelly, a Houston-based American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter and children’s book author. Like Kelly’s debut novel, Chained (2012), Song for a Whale describes a child’s relationship with an animal.

This study guide and its citations are based on the Piccadilly Press Kindle Edition published in February 2019.

The story follows a girl named Iris, who is Deaf, as she befriends a whale. This whale, Blue 55, is based on real-life whale 52 Blue, who sings at a 52-Hz frequency. Other whales, who typically sing at frequencies of 35 Hz and lower, reject 52 Blue, while humans dub him “the loneliest whale in the world” (289). Kelly notes in her novel that she chose the name Blue 55 because the repeated five ties in with ASL poetry.

Kelly states that “[t]he character of Iris came to me as the kind of person who’d be compelled to track down the lonely whale, since she’s one of the many kids who go through every day feeling like she isn’t heard” (293). After more than 20 years of experience as an ASL interpreter and getting to know children who are Deaf, Kelly learned that self-expression and belonging to a peer group remains a challenge for many. However, she also wanted to portray Iris as proudly Deaf and eager to engage with Deaf culture.

A Kirkus Reviews post published on December 1, 2018, writes how Song for a Whale “incorporates important elements of Deaf culture and the expansiveness and richness of [...] American Sign Language but makes concessions to hearing readers in its recording of conversations.” The review acknowledges that while Deaf and hearing readers may well respond to the story differently, it acts as a bridge between both communities and alienates neither.

Plot Summary

Twelve-year-old Iris was named after the beached sei whale her maternal grandparents found on the day of her birth. Like her grandparents, Iris is Deaf. She prefers to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL), a system that relies on hand and facial gestures in place of words. However, her mother, who fears losing Iris to a Deaf community, refuses to let her attend Bridgewood, a school with a thriving Deaf community in the student body.

As a result, Iris struggles at Timber Oaks, a school where she can’t communicate with the hearing students. An over-eager girl named Nina frustrates and confuses Iris with botched attempts at sign language. Iris snaps and pushes Nina, which results in Iris’s in-school suspension and grounding from her beloved radios. Iris’s passion is electronics and repairing old radios that others have given up for good. She treats her devices as though they’re human, feeling that she can relate to them better than she can to most of her peers. Although Iris can’t experience sound as hearing people can, she can feel its vibrations and movements, which help her test how well the electronics are working.

When she’s forbidden to touch her electronics, Iris investigates Blue 55, a whale she learned about in science class. A blue and fin whale hybrid, Blue 55 sings at a 55-Hz frequency, which makes his songs unintelligible to other whales. As a result, they reject Blue 55, and he remains isolated from them. The whale’s story touches Iris, and she vows to create a song that matches his frequency and lets him know that he’s not alone. She enlists the help of her school orchestra and some online programs to make a song that she thinks might resemble his.

Iris wants to go to Appleton, Alaska, where Blue 55 is due for tagging, and play him her song. However, she can’t convey the urgency of this mission to her family. After selling her beloved Philco radio to fund a solo trip, she’s stumped when the bank turns her away for being too young. When Iris approaches Grandma, who has become reclusive since Grandpa’s death, Grandma casts off the shackles of bereavement to accompany Iris on a cruise to Alaska.

During the cruise, Grandma reclaims her outgoing nature, and Iris sees humpback whales. She bonds with a girl named Bennie and her scientist mother, Sura. On one of the stops, they make a device to contain Blue 55’s song underwater and potentially transport it to him. However, when Iris learns that Blue 55 has changed his route toward Oregon, she despairs. She and Grandma do what they can to make it to the Oregon sanctuary on time for the whale’s arrival. While Iris thinks she has missed the whale, he surprises her and responds to her presence and her song. Iris jumps into the water and makes skin contact with the whale, feeling that she’s bonding with him deeply.

When Iris returns to Houston, her mother listens to her as she again expresses her need to be around Deaf students. This time, Iris’s mother allows her to attend Bridgewood school with her best friend, Wendell.