A Mango-Shaped Space Analysis

Mia and her family live just a couple hours away from Chicago. She lets us in on that fact when she's dressed in a one-size-fits-all shepherd costume for the Christmas play at school: My feet were...

Before we learn anything about Mia's boundary-blurring colors and sounds, we hear what it's like for her to deal with it when doing multiplication. "My mission was to multiply twenty-four times nin...

As is often the case in young adult lit, A Mango-Shaped Space talks about what it's like to be a teenager from the perspective of a teen. To this end, Mia is misunderstood by everyone around her, s...

One of the reasons we find ourselves attached to Mia so quickly is because she talks to us as if we were her friends. Take her opener, for example: I'll never forget the first time I heard the word...

Let's face it: We'd have a hard time understanding what Mia goes through without a bunch of description. That's why the writing style is so helpful in this book—we can almost see and feel what Mi...

We have to get almost to the end of the book in order to figure out what the title, A Mango-Shaped Space, means. After Mia gets back from the synesthesia event, she tells us: As if on cue, a flash...

Check out how the book ends:When I wake up I swear I can still taste the mustard on my tongue. It doesn't take me too long to figure out what the dream means. (15.274) Hmm… something tells us Mia...

Ever heard of synesthesia? It's cool if you haven't, and the book does a great job of explaining exactly what it's like. Still, though, since Mia's a synesthete, sometimes it's hard to understand w...

A World of Color Mia is your average school kid, expect for the fact that she sees colors whenever she hears sounds or reads. She doesn't think too much of this, though, until her classmates laugh...

Just because two synesthetes see numbered colors, doesn't mean they see the same color. One might see a three as purple, while another thinks it's orange. (Source.)Wassily Kandinsky—the artist Mi...

Mia is thirteen, so we wouldn't be surprised if she's thinking about the hot guys in her class. In general, though, she has more important things on her mind. So the only heart thumping exchange we...

The Chronicles of Narnia (1.6)Winnie-the-Pooh (1.53; 13.54; 15.109) The Lord of the Flies (4.135)Little House on the Prairie (11.58) Black Hawk War (1.5)Abraham Lincoln (1.5)Wolfgang...