A Mango-Shaped Space

     
Hook:
    
     "By eleven o'clock Saturday morning, Mom and I are sitting in Jerry's surrounded by strange machines that hum and beep.  I didn't return Jenna's three phone calls last night; I'm not just ready to share what I've learned about myself just yet.  I almost feel as if she doesn't deserve to know, after what she did.  Jerry introduces us to his assistant- a perky graduate student named Debbie, who is wearing rainbow-striped overalls the likes of which I haven't seen since old Brady Bunch reruns.  She pumps my hand hello and seems very happy to meet me. Jerry asks me about my colors, what shapes I see, what textures, etc. I explain that some letters are shiny, some are gauzy, some are grainy like wood, and some are even fuzzy.  Debbie writes everything down.

    ' How do I compare with other people who have this? '  I ask Jerry. 'Other synes... synesthetes? '  It's still a hard word to say.

    ' When we first started testing people, we assumed all synesthetes would see the same color and shapes for the same sounds,' Jerry says. ' The initial theory was that is some people, like you, can see a color when they hear a sound, that must mean that that the sound actually has color, but only a rare few people can see it.  But we quickly found out in reality it doesn't seem to happen that way.  People's colors seem to be unique to them. The geometric shapes are much more similar.  Not that they appear at the same sounds, but the general shapes that synesthetes see don't differ too much.  For people who have colored alphabets, there are wide color variations, although many people seem to associate light colors to vowels'

    'So to another synesthetes my name could be purple with orange stripes when to me it's candy-apple red with a hint of avocado green?'

'Exactly'"  (pages 87 and 88)

Recommendation:

    Do you know a person who has colored touch and hearing?  Well, in this book, Mia has synesthesia (colored sight, hearing,touch, or taste).  She thinks that she is the "normal one" in her family. Zach, her younger brother, keeps a chart of all the hamburgers he's eaten in his life, and Beth, Mia's older sister, dyes her hair a different color every day (Mia assumes that Beth is a witch).  But when she finds out about her synesthesia, she has to endure with taunts at school, math, people who don't believe her, and dirty looks. When she meets a little boy who also has synestheia at the grocery store, she tries to tell his mom, but she just won't listen.  And then her cat, Mango, dies. Why is this happening to her?  In this story, Mia finds out who she is in a very unusual way.  You will have to get this book out to find out if she can cope with her condition, or if she will always be "the girl who sees the colors."

Title: A Mango-Shaped Space

Author: Wendy Mass

Genre: Realistic-Fiction

Blog by: Michelle D.