 Mia Winchell is a middle school student with a neurologically based condition entitled Synesthesia. Everything she sees and hears is associated with a color and a shape.  Mia first realized her condition in third grade, while, answering a question at the board, she insisted on using the correct colors of chalk.

 Mia, now in eighth grade, has hidden her condition from her family, friends, and classmates, so as to avoid attention and ridicule.  When Mia decides to tell her parents about her condition, they are very reluctant and unbelieving. Because Synesthesia is such an uncommon condition, it is not widely accepted.

 After multiple visits to pediatricians and psychologists, Mia is finally referred to a Neurologist, Dr. Jerry Weiss, who diagnoses her with the condition.  Mia is relieved to finally put a name to her condition, and feels more open to talking with her family and expressing herself.

 “The colors. The colors of the numbers, you know, like the two is pink, well of course it’s not really this shade of pink, more like cotton-candy pink, and the four is this baby-blanket blue color…” (2- 3) › This is the defining moment in third grade when Mia realizes that she is the only Synesthete in her class.

 “I don’t get to finish my sentence because at that moment the clock strikes five. The cuckoo pops out… The train blows its whistle… All the alarms go off… My father is still hammering… My mother honks in the driveway… I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes to stop all the colors that are bombarding me” (19) › Mia experiences sensory overload when multiple sounds are causing numerous colors and shapes.

 “I can hear Mango wheeze from across the room… Everyone thinks that I named him Mango because of his orange eyes, but that’s not the case. I named him Mango because of the sounds of his purrs and wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange, like a mango in different seasons” (24) › Mia describing the naming of her cat.

 “Billy steps back behind her skirt and peeks his head around. ‘Mia is purple and orange,’ he whispers. ‘Not red and green.’” (37) › Mia meets a boy named Billy at the grocery store who, much to her surprise, is also a Synesthete.

 “I just can’t grasp how to solve it. Normally an x is a shiny maroon color, like a ripe cherry. But here an x has to stand for an unknown number. But I can’t make myself assign the x any other color than maroon, and there are no maroon-colored numbers. Without the color, I don’t know how to proceed. I’m lost in shades of gray and want to scream in frustration” (51) › Mia faces the difficulties of Synesthesia, in this case, in pre-algebra.

red purple orange yellow blue pink green purple orange green purple blue pink red yellow blue purple green orange red pink