Eleven-year-old Melody is really smart. She has a photographic memory, yet she's made to learn the alphabet over and over, every time she starts a new year in the special ed class at school. Melody has cerebral palsy. She can't speak, or go to the bathroom by herself, or eat on her own. Sometimes she drools. So people assume she's dumb, and it drives her crazy! But she never gives up, and she never stops trying, no matter how much she is misinterpreted by those around her.
I think it's important that the author begins with a motivating factor for Melody--her love of words--rather than a description of her disability. Melody is a great kid, and a thoroughly engaging narrator with an important story to tell. Her interactions with the other characters show what Melody is up against, including both sympathetic and obnoxious adults, as well as "good" and "bad" kids at school. Young readers should easily identify with the typical school setting, and all of the cliques and social pressures that go with it. Yet if they stick with this story, they may never look at people with disabilities in the same way again. I know I won't. Yet I also believe that Melody's story unfolds so well and so smoothly, that it transcends its message.
If you have read Out of my Mind, what do you think of Melody's Voice?
Lynn
Comments