[blindkid] NBP-Announce: Kids: Hailstones and Halibut Bones

[Heather]

This book annoys the heck out of me.  I have many friends that are 
senesthetes, and they outright hate this book, because, although the poems 
are creative and nice, from a literary stand-point, they are very 
stereotypical.  The author mostly fills the poems with things that are the 
colors she is describing, with the occational sensory addition of sound, or 
texture or taste or scent, rarely more than two of these in each poem.  I 
vaguely disliked the book, but, not having especially strong synesthetic 
tendencies, perhaps four or five on a scale of one to ten, with ten being 
those who see numbers as spacific colors, or who taste letters or feel 
textures with sounds, and one being the average joe shmoe.  But, when I 
heard some of my friends who are more like eights or nines complaining, I 
challenged them to do better.  They generated ideas and I generated the 
literary text and we both got nice fat As for our respective parts in a 
joint English and Psychology assignment, but we have never had any success 
in publishing.  I am glad that it is being produced, as it is a nice little 
book, but it is very limited and everyone who knows anything about 
blindness, clings to it as a gold standard, and I don't think it deserves 
the gold, perhaps the bronze.  For example, even when sound is employed for 
blue, it is the wind over water, and water is sterotypically blue, and the 
wind associated with the sky which is sterotipically blue follows the 
pattern.  I asked three synesthetic friends what color the sound of the wind 
is, and they all said the same thing, with out hearing one another's 
answers, lavinder said two and lilac said the third.  One thing that 
research has uncovered is that although there is variation amung 
synesthetes, there are commanalities, that would seem to support the idea 
that synesthetism is not a mental or psychological disorder, but a tru, 
hightened perception.  I repeted my method for the purposes of the book we 
wrote, for five different questions, and got similar answers.  All three 
said that 9 is green and 7 is red or redish-orange.  All three agreed that 
spearamint smells parawinckle or light blue, that milk chocolate tastes 
yellow, that the texture of glossy magazine pages is either forest or kelly 
green, etc.  Most of the other things we put in the book were true of all 
thre or at least two of the three synesthetes that I worked with.  No group 
wants to see it's members discouraged, mislead or ignored, and that is what 
these three felt was being done, by not using less normative and blatent 
examples for the colors.  If an average child, especially one who is 
stifled, black and white thinking, and not at all synesthetic was asked to 
name something that smelled green, they would probably say grass or mint, 
because those things are green, not because they really understand the 
concept, and to fit in, and with the reenforcement of the sterotypical book, 
a truly gifted synesthetic child might repress their answer of, bananas 
smell green or leather smells green, because they don't want to be "Wrong" 
for naming something that is not actually green in color, and that no one 
else named.  I think the author played it waaaaaaaaay too safe and this from 
a free thinker and writer is very upseting.  I just wanted to put this out 
there, because one of the best things you can do for a totally blind child 
who has never seen colors, to help them experience what colors are like, is 
to ask an actual synesthete to explain to your child, using all five senses 
and multiple examples from each.  I've got to go and find my favorite 
description of yellow that a synesthetic friend wrote up for me to give a 
totally blind friend, since it is my favorite color.  I used to be able to 
see colors, BTW.  Ok, just sharing.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Grima (by way of David Andrews<dandrews at visi.com>)" 
<agrima at nbp.org>
To: <david.andrews at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 5:29 AM
Subject: [blindkid] NBP-Announce: Kids: Hailstones and Halibut Bones


> March 2010 Book Club Selection
> Hailstones and Halibut Bones
> by Mary O'Neill
> Print/braille edition, $9.95
> In contracted braille.
> Ages 8-13
>
> "I was surprised and flattered then, and continue to be, by the large
> audience - including the blind - who still write to me."
> - Author Mary O'Neill
>
> "Hailstones and Halibut Bones" is a unique book about colors that can be
> heard, touched, and smelled. Originally published in 1961, it has become
> a classic, at twice the length of most children's books.
>
> O'Neill explores 12 different colors in 12 poems. Each series of poems
> relates to a color, "What Is Green," "What Is Gold... Red... Blue," and
> so forth.
>
> Blue is a heron, a sapphire ring,
> You can smell blue in many a thing:
> Gentian and larkspur, Forget-me-nots, too.
> And if you listen, you can hear blue
> In wind over water....
>
> "After more than twenty-five years, the poems, like colors, still sing.
> Kudos to Doubleday for letting Hailstones continue to live."
> - School Library Journal
>
> To order or read more about this book online, visit
> http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/BC1003-HAILSTONE.html
>
>
>
> ******
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> NBP, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, MA 02115-4302
>
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