Out of My Heart

Melody receives news from the summer camp that she is going to be on a waiting list, and in her anger and disappointment, she heads to the library, and selects a science fiction young adult novel published in 1954, called Atta: A Novel of a Most Extraordinary Adventure. In the book, a man, hit by lightning, awakens to find himself the size of an ant. Over the course of the novel, the man-turned-ant faces one challenge after another in the orchard in his own backyard. He discovers through the help of a warrior ant that he is much stronger than he knew, and much more able than he ever thought. In the end, when he returns to regular size, his adventures have revealed a self he never suspected existed.

Melody’s library selection serves as a metaphor for her own journey as she sets about on her adventure of self-discovery. At age 12, Melody Brooks wants to know who she is. It is question typical of young adolescents as they begin to sort through their likes and dislikes, their relationships with their family, the nature of friendship, and the importance of schoolwork. In her week at summer camp, Melody learns that she has the courage and the will to confront her deepest fears, that she has the personality to make real friends, and that she is creative and can express that creativity in objects that are stunning and original.

Before attending camp, Melody feels vulnerable and dependent, and frustrated in her lacking sense of identity. In school, she has come to accept that most of her classmates elect to not really see her at all because she has cerebral palsy. They just see a clunky, wide wheelchair to avoid. In rising to the challenges at summer camp, Melody learns about herself. Whether staring down a skunk or petting a snake, whether plotting to break the camp rules with her new friends or sharing her first dance with a boy, Melody discovers new dimensions to herself. As she heads home, she knows herself, like the hero of Atta, in a way she didn’t before.

When on the last day of camp in art class, Melody begins to mix colors for her last project, she begins to think of her classmates in school and how mean they were when Melody was on the Whiz Kids quiz team (a traumatic experience recounted in the first installment of Melody Brooks’s story, entitled Out of My Mind). She thought they were her friends. She was deeply hurt by their betrayal and by their cruelty toward her because she has cerebral palsy. The more she broods on her so-called friends, the darker the colors she mixes for her project.

As a kid who has grown up misunderstood, what Melody has learned about friends is how to live without them. Save for her loving family and her mother’s friend, Mrs. V, Melody accepts that kids find it easier if they just ignore her. After all, she cannot walk, and she cannot talk without her Medi-Talker. This reality has thwarted Melody’s social development to the point that before she arrives at camp, Melody bottles up her anger and her frustration over how she is mistreated and ignored by her peers.

The experience at summer camp gives Melody a chance to do things she never had a chance to try—zip-lining, dancing, hiking, swimming, swinging, horseback riding—and each experience helps Melody as she learns about herself and courage that she did not know she had. But her greatest achievement, she says as the week at camp ends, is that she did all of this with friends, real friends, friends who understand exactly what it means to use a wheelchair, friends she can talk to and share her experiences with. What matters most to her is that during the camp’s last convocation, everyone cheers wildly when her name is called to accept the award for courage. She is thrilled interacting with kids her own age who like her exactly how she is, who share with her, and who actually see her for herself, and not for her wheelchair. Melody’s friendships are the driving force behind the novel’s other themes of The Adventure of Self-Discovery and Courage in the Face of Adversity, as her friends help her feel confident enough to face her fears and discover the world for herself.