In The Color of Sound violin prodigy Rosie desperately wants the chance to experience a “normal” life and refuses to play her instrument for a summer. Upset, her mother sends her to her grandparents’ house where she meets another girl her age hanging out on the property. The girl is familiar, and Rosie quickly pieces it together: somehow, this girl is her mother, when her mother was twelve. Rosie begins to understand her mother, herself, and her love of music in new ways.

Today author Emily Barth Isler joins us to talk about her inspiration for this middle grade novel, her experience with synesthesia, and more! Read on to download the free discussion guide and watch the official book trailer.

Where did you get the idea of a twelve-year-old talking to her mother as a twelve-year-old?

This idea came from being a parent myself. I often wished that I could show my daughter, in particular, how much I’d been like her as a kid. I kept telling her that I had a lot of similar worries and thoughts when I was her age, and I think at one point I said, “I wish I could go back in time and talk to you as myself when I was your age!” So that was the seed of the story.

How would you describe the process of writing this book?

I pictured it like braiding a challah (the bread many Jews make and eat for Shabbat and other holidays). Unlike, say, a hair braid that generally has three strands, a challah can have six or more strands, and you just keep weaving them in. I remember watching my mom braid a challah when I was a kid and thinking, Gosh, the strands just keep coming out of nowhere—there are so many, and you have to just keep weaving them all in!

Writing The Color of Sound was a lot like that. There were so many elements I wanted to weave into the story: music, synesthesia, time-bending glitches, family history, parent/child relationships, swimming, dogs… Every time I added an element, I worried, “Is this one too much?” But I kept weaving them in, like strands of challah, hoping everything would eventually coalesce into something like a tasty, meaningful loaf of bread.

Why did you decide to write about a character with synesthesia? How did you decide how much of your own neurodivergent identity to disclose?

I knew that if I chose to write this book, my own neurodivergence would inevitably come up. I weighed the pros and cons of talking openly about my own brain, my own way of thinking, and how it shapes my life. I think it’s important for authors to create boundaries. We’re telling stories, often about things we’ve experienced or things that have happened to us, but we don’t owe the world our innermost thoughts or intimate truths unless we want to share those.

I made a conscious decision that Rosie’s synesthesia would be different enough from mine that I could keep some of my own experiences for myself. (There are around eighty different types of synesthesia—that researchers have identified so far—and even within one of those categories, individual experiences often differ.)

When I was growing up, I didn’t feel I had the option to admit I had a pretty severe anxiety disorder and OCD. I was taught by society at large that these were things I should hide. I’m not sure what messaging I would’ve gotten related to my synesthesia when I was a kid, because I didn’t realize I had it until I was an adult. (This is common for people with synesthesia; many aren’t aware that their sensory experiences aren’t “typical.”) I think I would’ve realized I had synesthesia a lot sooner if it were more widely written about! I’d just assumed that the way my brain worked was the way everyone’s brain worked. In real life, we don’t have the opportunity to get inside other peoples’ heads, to see how they experience the world. So I love that books can provide a simulated peek into someone else’s thoughts—which can inspire curiosity, learning, and a greater understanding of ourselves and others. I want to provide that for kids who read this book.

I feel so lucky that we’re living in a time when it’s becoming safer and more normalized to be open about neurodivergence, mental health, and conditions like OCD, anxiety, and depression. If my books help readers to gain language related to neurodiversity, start asking questions, and develop empathy, then I’ve done my job.

What was your childhood like compared to Rosie’s?

I wasn’t a child prodigy like Rosie, but I did experience early artistic success, which helps me understand some of the pressures Rosie faces. I started acting and singing professionally at the age of five. I worked steadily in local and regional theater, commercials, and industrial films for my entire school-aged years. My mom likes to say I went to kindergarten while “working nights,” and that’s not untrue. When I was in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita four days a week, I would arrive at the theater by seven thirty, finish up a show around eleven, come home to sleep, and wake up in time for my afternoon kindergarten class. It was an unusual routine!

As I got older, I got cast in other stage projects and in local TV spots, and I sang in the children’s choir at Baltimore’s prestigious Peabody Conservatory. I had the privilege to perform in settings like the White House, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and on tour with the stage adaptation of one of my favorite books, Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars.

But all the while, my parents wanted me to have a normal childhood, so I also played soccer (not well!), danced (slightly better), went to Hebrew School, played three instruments (piano, viola, and harp), and—unlike Rosie—had fun with friends.

The summer before I went to second grade, I had a chance to audition for a touring Broadway show. My parents gave me a choice: did I want to audition and then possibly travel around the country for a whole year, or did I want to go to second grade with my friends? I considered it and came quite easily to the answer: “I want to go to second grade.” And my parents listened to me and respected my gut instinct. Knowing I had the option to turn down opportunities gave me a sense of empowerment—and helped me feel that performing was fun, rather than a burden. I’m really grateful that my parents didn’t put the kind of pressure on me that Rosie’s parents put on her. I saw this happen with a lot of other kid performers. I’m not saying that any approach is all good or all bad—just that these experiences, both firsthand and observed, shaped my ideas for what Rosie’s life might be like.

What other experiences shaped the story?

Swimming! While writing this novel, I started swimming laps regularly—something I’d never thought I could do—and it has brought me so much joy. I’m by no means a fast or graceful swimmer. My mantra is “my job is to move my body from one side of the pool to the other,” and it’s so incredibly peaceful. I swim because it feels good, not to punish or shape or change my body. I swim because to me it’s meditation—I tune out all the noise, since I can’t listen to podcasts or audiobooks like I do when I walk or drive or do laundry.

I essentially wrote most of The Color of Sound while swimming. I do my best thinking while in the pool, and I keep my phone with my notes app handy so I can jot down whole plot lines and swathes of dialogue. Swimming actually became a fairly big plot point in the novel as a result!

This has been a lesson for me: It’s never too late to try something new, something you assumed wasn’t for you. And it might have unexpected benefits, the way swimming has helped my writing.

What was the biggest change you made in the story over the course of writing and revising?

The specific role of Rosie’s family history—particularly the impact of the Holocaust and its aftermath on the family’s relationship to music—evolved as I wrote the story. In my original outline, I knew there needed to be some way to track the influences of previous generations on Rosie’s life, but I didn’t exactly know how I was going to convey that when I started writing.

While I was writing, my sister was contacted by a distant cousin whom we’d never met. They tentatively exchanged details and eventually found that they had photographs of each other’s ancestors from before World War II. It also turned out that the Holocaust echoes inside us in similarly distinctive ways—the stories we grew up hearing, the things our grandparents and their families endured, the ways that later generations (us!) were driven to strive, to fear, to protect, to believe.

It was so exhilarating to discover this long-lost cousin—to feel a sense of connection with a stranger from across the globe who happened to share genetics with us. It made me think about all the different ways we can be connected to other people. I wanted to capture some of that in this book. I’m always conscious of what is whose story to tell and who gets to control what narrative, but I hope I was able to infuse those feelings of connection into Rosie’s story, sharing some of these present-day Jewish experience with readers.

How was the process of writing The Color of Sound different from the process of writing AfterMath?

These two processes were polar opposites—night and day! AfterMath was the third book I wrote but the first that was published. The Color of Sound was the tenth book I wrote and the second published. But I don’t think that the primary difference in writing experiences has much to do with whether a book was written third or tenth—or probably even twentieth—as much as timing and circumstances.

I sold The Color of Sound to my editor, Amy Fitzgerald, as an outline and three chapters. We talked through a lot of the ideas and themes early in my writing process, which was incredibly helpful! And since the project had already sold, writing it was not an optional project. I had the advantage (and sometimes disadvantage, honestly!) of knowing that this book was going to be published—that people were definitely going to read it! This meant it was more of a job than writing AfterMath, which had no guarantee of being published when I was drafting it.

There’s also something about writing a book after having (finally!) published another one. You can’t help but think of all the things you learned from the publication process of that first book: the comments you got along the way, the reviews, the chatter from readers and social media, the marketing efforts that worked and those that didn’t pan out, etc. It would be really easy to let all that noise get in the way of, well, ever writing anything else again!

But I chose to channel that toward inspiration rather than fear. And this time, I had the support of my editor, Amy, and the whole Lerner team, from the very beginning of the process.

Official Book Trailer

Share this short trailer with your middle grade readers!

Free Educator Resource

Download the free discussion guide to engage students after reading. This can be found below or on the Lerner website.

Praise for The Color of Sound

★ “Intricately entwining interpersonal growth with each character’s relationship to their Jewish faith and culture, Isler highlights the role of family history in identity formation through metaphorical time travel. Color-centric imagery rendered in immersive prose translates Rosie’s synesthesia in this salient celebration of family, music, and neurodiversity.” — starred, Publishers Weekly

★ “Isler crafts an exceptionally honest portrayal of complicated mother-daughter dynamics, and a protagonist whose independence and kindness is a stunning solo. . . a perfect book club pick and a reminder to all that patience and understanding can change lives.” — starred, School Library Journal

“A moving and pensive read. . .” — Booklist

“This beautifully written book presents a protagonist who learns to love music, color, religion, friendship, acting, and all the possibilities inherent in a brighter future. Readers will identify with Rosie and her extended family as they march into the years ahead — years that are suddenly filled with the promise of joy and accomplishment.” — The Jewish Book Council

Connect with the Author

Read more author and illustrator interviews on the Lerner blog!