Analysis Of Out Of My Mind

Out of my Mind Book Review Analysis Out of my Mind, a novel written by Sharon Draper, is written from the viewpoint of Melody Brooks, a young girl of eleven years who has cerebral palsy. Melody struggles physically in her day to day life. She is confined to a wheelchair, has to use an electronic voice to talk, known as a plexiglass communication board. and is unable to feed herself. This is especially frustrating for Melody, because she is unusually smart, but is usually not seen as this by others, because of their ableist prejudice. Melody has a photographic memory. Melodys thoughts throughout the novel reveal that she has never been able to speak a single word, which led most people to assume she is cognitively impaired as well as physically. However, her parents were revealed to have been able to “see the

Another extremely important person in Melodys life is Mrs. V, her caregiver. Mrs. V. has had an enormous impact on Melodys life, as she too believes in Melody and knows she is extremely smart. Mrs. V is able to encourage and motivate Melody to go beyond what society expects of her. She helps Melody to believe in herself and accomplish things, she is also the one to help Melody to learn to use her Plexiglass Communication Board. Unfortunately for Melody, even at the age of five years old, even a medical doctor advised Melodies parents not to enroll her in school, as he biasedly concluded that she was “severely mentally impaired”. He even went as far as to tell her parents to enroll her in a care facility. Luckily, Melody's parents would not hear of this, and enrolled her in kindergarten. Although this was good, Melody was placed in a special needs classroom for the