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Summary
Summary
Mia Winchell has synesthesia, the mingling of perceptions whereby a person can see sounds, smell colors, and taste shapes. Forced to reveal her condition, she must look to herself to develop an understanding and appreciation of her gift in this coming-of-age novel.
Author Notes
Wendy Mass was born in Livingston, New Jersey on January 17, 1967. She received a B. A. in English from Tufts University. She worked as a book editor at numerous publishing houses in New York City and Connecticut and co-created a teenage literary magazine called Writes of Passage. She has written several nonfiction books for teenagers including Stonehenge, Readings on Night, John Cabot: Early Explorer, and Ray Bradbury: Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her fiction books include Leap Day, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, Every Soul a Star, 11 Birthdays, Finally, and The Candymakers. A Mango-Shaped Space won the American Library Association Schneider Family Book Award in 2004. She wrote the storyline for an episode of the television show Monk, entitled "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theatre," which aired during the show's second season.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Mia Winchell is a synesthetes-her brain's electrical wiring causes words and sounds to be accompanied by a visual display of colors. She describes laughter as "a pale blue cloud that drizzles down." The word friend is "turquoise with the glow of glossy red." Mia, now 13 years old, has been keeping her condition a secret since she first discovered it in the third grade. When Mia finally confides in her parents, they take her to a series of doctors, and she is properly diagnosed. Once the teen learns that she's not crazy and her problem is synesthesia, she embraces her uniqueness. But she also abandons her normal relationships to spend time with fellow synesthetes. Finally, the death of her beloved cat, Mango, reconciles Mia to her family and friends. Wendy Mass's novel (Little, Brown, 2003) captures the emotional roller-coaster ride of a teenager born with synesthesia in much the same way as Mark Haddon captured the complicated world of autism in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Doubleday 2003). Mass weaves an intriguing and compelling story filled with believable dialogue and characters. Mia's parents are almost too perfect, but her siblings' and friends' personalities and voices ring true. Narrator Danielle Ferland moves from character to character effortlessly, but without much deviation in voice inflections for the secondary players. In voicing Mia, she does a remarkable job of expressing the whirlwind of complicated teenage emotions. A must for all collections.-Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg City Schools, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In an intriguing first novel, Mass introduces a 13-year-old heroine with an unusual perspective. Mia Winchell is a synesthete; her visual and hearing senses are connected so that numbers, letters, words, sounds and even some people's auras appear to her as colors. The letter "a," for instance, is the shade of a "faded sunflower," screeching chalk "makes red jagged lines in the air," and Mia's beloved cat, Mango, is surrounded by an orange cloud. Mia's unique view proves to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, she enjoys having heightened senses ("If I couldn't use my colors, the world would seem so bland-like vanilla ice cream without the gummy bears on top," she says). On the other hand, sometimes it's hard for her being reminded that she is different, like when her brother, Zack, calls her "the Missing Link." Although the story line, at times, seems cluttered with underdeveloped subplots about Mia's friendships, potential romances and conflicts at school, the novel's premise is interesting enough to keep pages turning. The author successfully brings abstract ideas down to earth. Her well-defined characterizations, natural-sounding dialogue, and concrete imagery allow readers to feel Mia's emotions and see through her eyes a kaleidoscopic world, which is at once confusing and beautiful. Ages 10-13. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Thirteen-year-old Mia has a secret: for as long as she can remember, letters and numbers have had colors for her, and sounds have had both colors and shapes. Mia's kept quiet about it ever since she figured out, in third grade, that this makes her pretty freakish. But now she's failing algebra (""normally an x is a shiny maroon color...but here an x has to stand for an unknown number...and there are no maroon-colored numbers"") and Spanish (she can't ""match the colors of the English words to the new Spanish words""), so she comes clean to her parents. Worried, they take her to the pediatrician, who sends her to a psychotherapist, who sends her to a neurologist, who tells her she has a harmless condition called synesthesia. Mass skillfully conveys Mia's relief that there's nothing wrong with her and that the ""cure"" her parents want doesn't exist. Dr. Weiss assures Mia that her way of seeing the world--which she can't imagine being without, even if it sometimes makes life hard--is permanent, and that the only way it might disappear, temporarily, is from emotional trauma (prepping readers for some trauma-to-come). There's a little too much going on here: Mia misses her grandfather, who died a year ago; she and her best friend (still mourning her mother's death three years ago) have a falling out over Mia's secret; Mia suddenly has boys in her life (one classmate and one fellow synesthete she meets online); and Mia starts cheating at school and lying to her parents. Nevertheless, readers will be intrigued with Mass's fictional depiction of an actual, and fascinating, condition. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A young teen whose world is filled with colors and shapes that no one else sees copes with the universal and competing drives to be unique and to be utterly and totally normal. Thirteen-year-old Mia is a synesthete: her brain connects her visual and auditory systems so that when she hears, or thinks about, sounds and words, they carry with them associated colors and shapes that fill the air about her. This is a boon in many ways--she excels in history because she can remember dates by their colors--and a curse. Ever since she realized her difference, she has concealed her ability, until algebra defeats her: "Normally an x is a shiny maroon color, like a ripe cherry. But here an x has to stand for an unknown number. But I can't make myself assign the x any other color than maroon, and there are no maroon-colored numbers. . . . I'm lost in shades of gray and want to scream in frustration." When Mia learns that she is not alone, she begins to explore the lore and community of synesthesia, a process that disrupts her relationships with her family, friends, and even herself. In her fiction debut for children, Mass has created a memorable protagonist whose colors enhance but do not define her dreamily artistic character. The present-tense narration lends immediacy and impact to Mia's color perceptions: "Each high-pitched meow sends Sunkist-orange coils dancing in front of me. . . . " The narrative, however, is rather overfull of details--a crazily built house, highly idiosyncratic family members, two boy interests, a beloved sick cat--which tend to compete for the reader's attention in much the same way as Mia's colors. This flaw (not unusual with first novels) aside, here is a quietly unusual and promising offering. (Fiction. 9-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6^-10. This contemporary novel does for synesthesia what Terry Hesser's Kissing Doorknobs (1998) does for obsessive-compulsive disorder: the lively personal story demystifies a fascinating condition. For 13-year-old Mia Winchell, the world has always been filled with a wonderful, if sometimes dizzying, sensory onslaught--numbers, letters, words, and sounds all cause her to see a distinct array of colors. She keeps her unusual condition a secret until eighth grade, but then her color visions make math and Spanish impossibly confusing, and she must go to her parents and a doctor for help. However, this is more than a docu-novel. Mass beautifully integrates information about synesthesia with Mia's coming-of-age story, which includes her break with her best friend, her grief over her grandfather's death, and the loss of her beloved pet. The episode where Mia fabricates an illness to try out acupuncture for the color visions it produces is marvelously done, showing Mia's eagerness for new experiences even as it describes a synesthete's vision. References to a comprehensive Web site and bibliography about synesthesia are included. --Debbie Carton