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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Mar 2010, 304 pages
Paperback:
May 2012, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Tamara Ellis Smith
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Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory. She's the smartest kid in her whole school - but no one knows it, because Melody can't talk. She can't walk. She can't write. Melody's story is one full of heartache and hope. Get ready to meet a girl whose voice you'll never, ever forget.
Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the smartest kid in her whole school - but no one knows it. Most people - her teachers and doctors included - don't think she's capable of learning, and up until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same preschool-level alphabet lessons again and again and again. If only she could speak up, if only she could tell people what she thinks and knows... but she can't, because Melody can't talk. She can't walk. She can't write. Being stuck inside her head is making Melody go out of her mind - that is, until she discovers something that will allow her to speak for the first time ever. At last Melody has a voice... but not everyone around her is ready to hear it. From multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner Sharon M. Draper comes a story full of heartache and hope. Get ready to meet a girl whose voice you'll never, ever forget.
Excerpt
Out of My Mind
I'm surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions.
Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.
Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.
Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.
Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.
Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes - each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.
Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.
From the time I was really little - maybe just a few months old - words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance.
My parents always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered strength into my ear.
Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.
I have no...
Accompanying Melody on this journey is a deeply rewarding experience. More than anything else, Out of My Mind is an examination of the spirit of one incredible girl - a fierce and determined and trapped spirit - and her search to find a way to share that spirit with the world. It is a spirit that is easy to love. And Melody is a girl who is easy to love, too...continued
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(Reviewed by Tamara Ellis Smith).
Melody has cerebral palsy. So does Mark, my camp counselor friend. Both of them are in wheelchairs, and are unable to walk, and need aid to talk and eat. But one of the children at the camp where I worked has cerebral palsy and he can walk and talk and eat just fine.
So then, what is cerebral palsy exactly?
Cerebral palsy is a general term for a group of motor conditions that develop in-utero or shortly after birth. Cerebral means brain and palsy means a disorder of movement or posture. Cerebral palsy refers to damage to the part of the brain that controls muscle tone, and it can cause increased muscle tone, reduced muscle tone or some combination of both. Where the muscle tone problems are localized - legs, arms, face, etc ...
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