Opening Page
The opening page of this book, written in first person narration by Melody. It is a portrait of a young girl enjoying the company of a firefly in the way that only a kid probably can. It is symbolism and foreshadowing:
“Its black wings, so shiny, opened and closed like scissors. I barely breathed. Dark lines that looked like they’d been painted on its back with a fine-tipped pen separated the crimson from the ebony…I wondered about the magic of having iridescent floaties attached to my body—what it would feel like to lift into the air and glide on a whisper of wind…As we sat there in the purpling twilight, just me and that lightning bug, I sighed with happiness. I might have breathed out too hard, because at that moment, the tiny insect lifted its wings and took off on an unseen breeze.”
A Little Bit About Herself
Shortly after the metaphorical portrait of herself, Melody gets down to the business of literal description. Of course, there is the necessity of the wheelchair. But that is not character description, that is just stuff. This is imagery that reveals character:
“I can’t walk, can’t talk, and can’t use my hands and fingers like most folks do, but Mrs. V helps me shut down the pity party. She knows my mind is a vault full of words and ideas just bursting to be let out. So between our weekly library visits, Mrs. V encourages me to swim through the deep and gurgly waters of the internet to explore just about any subject that I’m curious about.”
Blue
Melody seems to be especially attuned to the color spectrum. Imagery related to different colors and hue permeate throughout the text. At times, in fact, she can pile a couple of pages worth of references to color into just one tight paragraph:
“The lake was pretty big; I could barely see to the other side. And it was the most gorgeous shade of blue. I’d sort of assumed the website had photoshopped the color—it seemed impossible. But nope. It was the exact same, the prettiest blue I’d ever seen. Actually, it wasn’t just one blue; it shifted from teal, to navy, to turquoise, even to green. The sky above was another expanse of blue—cornflower broken up by feathered white clouds. I wished again I could paint—I’d have a ball with the blues in my palette.”
The Girl Is Special, Not Her Needs
Some reviewers (mostly amateurs rather than professionals) of the novel have called into question the appropriateness of a person who doesn’t have cerebral palsy making a character who does have cerebral palsy a protagonist of a first-person narrative. Frankly, the whole ideas seems absurd; Herman Melville was neither the captain of a ship nor a whale and he managed to do what most people consider a fairy decent job. And, besides, the narrative itself makes the whole issue about as moot as moot can be:
“I’ve been seen by zillions of doctors and therapists and specialists—so many I can’t even count. My parents do a great job of making sure I get the best medical and therapeutic care possible. But those doctors sometimes mess up too. Like, they’ll say I “suffer from” or I’m “afflicted with” cerebral palsy. Spoiler alert: I’m not suffering from anything. And just so you know, CP is not a disease. It is not contagious. Even if I sneeze on you. For real! My body simply doesn’t work like most of the people I know, and cerebral palsy is the name that doctors call my condition. It is what it is. And P.S., the mental part of my brain kicks butt.”
