Out of My Mind

by Sharon Draper.

Melody is a middle school girl with a lot on her mind, but she has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. She has little control over her movements and has no speech. Melody lives at home with a loving family that has no idea of what she is truly capable of. She is limited by the word board that is in front of her. She spends countless hours in a special education room listening to mundane lessons.

But things change, little by little (but they seem fast in the book). First, Melody is mainstreamed into several new classes. She has an awesome new aide. Most importantly, she gains the ability to truly communicate with the use of some high-tech assistive technology. Using a computer board, Melody is now able to speak - very much a la Stephen Hawking.

For the first time, Melody is able to show her exceptional intelligence and her normal middle-school personality. She makes friends - kind of. She's able to say something back to the rude and heartless. She is able to tell her family how much she loves them. And she wows her classmates by getting on the quiz bowl team, helping them win their way all the way to the nationals.

But it's not all perfect. Really. Melody is brought to such heights, you begin to become frustrated. I mean, she is dealing with severe CP, and the book feels damned optimistic. That's why you become frustrated. You know it can't go on, but you want it to. You know it can't go on, and something worse will happen. How happy can this happy ending be? (And for those of you who know me, I'm not a big one for vibrant happy endings anyway.)

I'm going to leave it there and not say anything else. I'll just comment on the style. This book was well-written, straight forward with clean and crisp language. At times, Melody can have some beautiful poetic prose, but that's mostly just at the start and finish. It's an interesting view into the world of someone who is trapped in their body, and I think it would definitely open up any person's view into this type of disability. However, I do think that this book plays it a little too light, but as there are so few fiction books out there on the severely disabled, it's hard to judge. On a side note, this is a great companion to Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman, which was about another character with severe CP, but that book was much heavier and darker. I liked Out of My Mind much better, because Melody and her family were much more likable. I guess, although I don't profess to love happy endings, in the end I would prefer to dream that children dealt the most unfair physical hand are at least brought into truly loving and responsive families.

Grade: B