This book could easily be Newbery-bait, the kind of book that wraps itself in an unimpeachable subject to make you respect it when you don't love it. It's a book about blindness for children. The pages are all black with white text, as well as Braille embossed above. On the pages where there is no text are embossed scenes, the things described with words that try to capture color: a grasshopper, a rainstorm, grass. This is all good, and beautifully designed, but that's not what gets me by the throat. It's the narrative voice."Thomas thinks that without the sun, water doesn't amount to much. It has no color, no taste no smell.
Or
Thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but is as soft as a baby chick's feather.
This makes me freak out, this familiar Thomas, this referred narrator, telling the true narrator about color and how it feels. It's...arggh...it's so intimate, so shorthanded. Thomas says...he says...and we feel and see what the person who loves him writes. Ahhhhh.....