Friday Feature: New Middle Grade for Boys! FLYING MUTANT ZOMBIE RATS by Kat deFalla

Flying Mutant Zombie Rats
Written by Kat deFalla, Illustrated by Elayne Griffith
Published June 2015 by Sunquills/Ravenswood Publishing

About the Book:

Summer vacation is almost here! And Pea O'Neil is stoked to try out the new local BMX track which is finally open. He and his gang of friends can ride all summer long!

But when Pea tries a back flip, he unwittingly opens a portal to another dimension and hordes of flying mutant zombie rats are unleashed upon the city. With the help of an otherworldly talking cat sent to help prevent the demise of humankind, Pea and his friends must hunt down the hungry mutants and send them back before the portal closes.

But when the zombie rats attack a neighbor man, the boys have to enlist the help of a graveyard looney and the city's stray cats. With time running out, Pea and his gang track the monsters to the city's sewer system. But in the city sewer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it’s eat…or get eaten. 

MY TAKE:

Middle grade boys are a difficult audience to write for. Having active boys of my own, I know how hard it was at that age for a book to capture their attention for very long. Kat deFalla walks a fine line in her debut middle grade book between slapstick humor, supernatural adventure, and old fashioned boy bonding. Throw in some spot-on specific BMX dirt biking references and really creepy aliens and you've got something a boy can dig into.

Peabody "Pea" O'Neal is our hero, living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the early 1980s. He has a band of friends whose main interest is BMX dirt biking. The story begins near the start of summer vacation, and just as a new dirt bike track is set to open in town. Pea sneaks out of his house in the middle of the night to be the first to try riding on it, and gets spooked by a strange occurrence in the park. He doesn't tell his parents or friends, but then the next day a vortex opens and strange alien creatures fly into the park, creating havoc. It's up to Pea and his friends, and a strange alien cat, to save the world.

Parts of this story reminded me of the great Time Warp Trio series of books by Jon Scieszka, which were the stories that got my my oldest son to appreciate books on his own. The slapstick humor and frank, funny interchanges between deFalla's characters made me smile. Other parts reminded me of the boy bonding interactions in the 80s movie Stand By Me, which was based on a short story by Stephen King. While the adults played a slightly larger role in this story than in that movie, they are dismissed as periphery characters. The focus is the boys.

While I admit the loving detail given to the dirt bike race course and the riding tricks the boys perform kind of lost me, I am not the target audience. The only issue I had with the story line was the narrators assumption that everyone would be going to college when they reached 18, even his moronic stepbrothers. But this is a really trivial issue when the safety of the world is at stake, in danger from the flying mutant zombie rats of the book's title.

And I need to give a special shout out to the illustrator, Elayne Griffith, as the little cartoons at the beginning of each chapter are simply wonderful and very Simpson-esque. Love them!

Time for the kids to save the world! If my own boys were still this age, this would be in their summer reading pile for sure.

Book Review: When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

WHEN YOU REACH ME, by Rebecca Stead
Published 2009 by Wendy Lamb Books
Middle Grade Time Travel fantasy ~ Winner of 2010 John Newbery Medal

About the Book: (from Goodreads)

Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.
By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

My Take:
Wow! Five stars and two thumbs way up...

This book wasn't at all what I expected, and I'm so totally sorry that I didn't take my daughter's heartfelt recommendation more seriously soon after it first came out. A friend of hers did a 5th grade book report on it, and she came home raving about how cool it sounded and made me buy it the very next day at the bookstore. In hardcover. And still I resisted reading it for myself, mostly because I didn't like the cover.

I shouldn't have resisted.

This middle grade time travel fantasy makes near constant reference to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which is both the protagonist's favorite book and a touchstone reference for other main characters (as well as a timeless classic.) This book is set in a borough of New York City in the late 1970s, which is both close enough to present day for kids to relate to the details and far enough in the past to be "exotic"... and since the author gets the details down perfectly, it's like a blast from my own middle grade past.

At its heart, this is really a story of a middle school girl going through the angst of growing up, losing her best friend and being forced to make new ones, confronting racism, social prejudices, first crushes, and first impressions. Plus, there's the time travel thing. And it features the $20,000 Pyramid. 

What more could you want from a 70s story?

Rebecca Stead does a masterful job of making Miranda a likeable character that middle school kids can easily relate to. Stead shows her characters reacting to real-life situations, making mistakes and working through them, instead of preaching about the right way to handle problems or combat social injustice.

The book unfolds in fits and starts, reminding me of The Time Traveler's Wife, which I absolutely loved, but on a middle-grade/YA level, which I found intriguing.  At only 199 pages, it's a very fast read once you become absorbed in the story. Whether or not you figure out the mystery alluded to in the book's blurb before Miranda figures it out is not the point. This is a coming-of-age story wrapped in a mystery surrounded with a vortex of time travel... as I said before, what more could you want?

A Visit to the Bookstore

Cape Cod Weather Today: Overcast, with ominous dark clouds rolling in from the west... the weather channel is calling for rain today, even though yesterday they swore it would hold off until Monday...

I went shopping yesterday, with my arms firmly crossed against my stomach, determined just to window shop and not spend any money. I held out for the first two hours... and then ended up in the Barnes and Noble... and cha-ching! Of course I had to spend money.

To be fair, one of my missions was to buy the next boxed set of Junie B. Jones books, by Barbara Park, for my 8 year old. Always a reluctant reader, I finally hooked her this summer with Junie B.'s over the top antics and trouble-maker ways... and a Littlest Pet Shop figurine for each chapter book she finishes. I'm not above bribery when it comes to changing a habit or forming a new one.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of drivel being printed, even in hard cover. Tons of witches, wizards and dragons still trying to capitalize on the Harry Potter phenomenon, but books where the writing seems to be rushed and not as carefully crafted as it could have been... just because these are books aimed at kids doesn't mean you can skimp on the writing.

I consider myself an educated reader of middle grade/young adult fiction, and while I enjoy Carl Hiasson, Judy Blume, Louis Sachar, and Lois Lowrey, I really enjoy books with an element of fantasy mixed in. I love J.K. Rowling's style, and all of her books. I've really enjoyed Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series - and actually was sucked in by a huge display for his latest Artemis book in the series, just out in hard cover. I enjoyed Christopher Paolino's first book, Eragon, and dutifully read through the second book Eldest, although I didn't enjoy the second as much as my nine year old did. I was able to resist the huge display for Brisingr... we can wait until it comes out in soft cover, or until the spring book fair at school, where I'm sure it will be featured heavily.

I enjoyed the Magic Treehouse books with my first son when he was a reluctant reader in second grade - those and the Time Warp Trio series, by Jon Szeska, are the books that turned him around and made him into the fantastic reader he is today. The switch from able reader to eager reader comes with discovering the other worlds that books can offer.

I also bought a copy of the Dragon Heir, by Cinda Williams Chima, third in a series that began with the Wizard Heir, and continued with the Warrior Heir. My twelve year old devoured the first two, and made his younger brother read them. I read the first two when I had the flu last winter - engaging writing that makes you need to keep going.

And I shouldn't even have to mention how much I loved reading Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, although they are more YA or teen fiction than middle grade reading. I'm enjoying it for the third time since discovering the series over the summer. The first book was my favorite in terms of writing, even though I've read them all and enjoyed the storyline and plot twists. I didn't like much of the last book, and found myself grimacing my way through it, hoping for redemption or resolution. I also enjoyed The Host, Meyer's adult fiction, although my twelve year old couldn't get past the first "boring" chapter. He also devoured the Twilight series and has passed them along to the neighbor's reluctant reader boys, 13 and 16, who are now happily engaged with Meyer's world.

The book I am currently working on is middle grade fiction, set on Cape Cod. I like the ones with some basis in this world, something to grab onto and relate to, with the fantasy tightly woven into the reality. A book which makes the younger reader wonder if magic really does exist right alongside backpacks, homework, and soccer practice.

Because we could all use a little more magic in our lives.

My goal is to finish it in the next six weeks (in between editing my upcoming suspense novel) and start looking for an agent who specializes in middle grade fiction. Wish me luck... and a little magic!