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• Sharon Draper 
• Translator Olga Moskalenko
• Publication year 2021
• Series This is a book!
• Pages 288
• Hardcover
• Dimensions 170x227mm
  
• ISBN 978-5-4370-0348-0
  
• Recommended age
  from 10 to 12 years
• Publisher Pink Giraffe

Melody is not like most people. She does not speak or walk, and many consider her “retarded.” But she has an extraordinary memory: she remembers everything that has ever happened to her. Melody is smarter than the adults who try to diagnose her, and smarter than her classmates in the special education class; she sees, feels, and hears what others do not notice. She enjoys life, but just imagine how difficult things are for her, and how sad and unbearable it can be. Melody wants to be treated as a person, not as a diagnosis—as a child with cerebral palsy. And she is determined to prove to everyone that she is worth something too...
The book about Melody somehow evokes not pity for the main character, but respect. Written in the first person, it evokes not the usual embarrassment we are accustomed to feeling when we meet people with disabilities (embarrassment and awkwardness because we are fine, while we can apparently do nothing to help them), but admiration for her inner strength, the depth of her mind, and awkwardness about the trivial problems we spend most of our time preoccupied with, how little we notice and understand other people.
Sharon Draper is an American writer, multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner, schoolteacher, and mother of a “special needs” child.