Book of the Week: ASHEN WINTER by Mike Mullin

WARNING: This week’s book is actually edgy YA and is filled with adult content. It's absolutely not appropriate for younger readers and adults should view it as the equivalent of an ‘R’ rated movie.


We're going to do things a little different today, Esteemed Reader. Ashen Winter is a marvelous book and if you've already read its prequel, Ashfall, I'm sure you're planning to read Ashen Winter already. Therefore, as you're reading this you're either a Mike Mullin fan or considering becoming one, in which case I recommend you start with Ashfall.

So instead of spending a lot of time reviewing the book, I'm going to talk more about Mike Mullin, how he's become a great friend and one of my favorite writers, and what he's taught me about writing. As this blog has always been more about what books teach us writers about writing than straightforward reviews, I'm hoping you're cool with that.

Truthfully, I'm way too close to this book to review it objectively anyway, not that that's ever stopped me before:) The Ninja is thanked in the acknowledgements of Ashen Winter (as Robert Kent, not Middle Grade Ninja) along with the rest of the YA Cannibals "for making Ashen Winter take months longer to write than I anticipated. The extra time was worth it."

I know what you're thinking: does a writer have to thank me in their book before I'll post a review here (I was also thanked in the back of my last review, Courtney Summer's incredible zombie novel This is Not a Test)? Fair question, Esteemed Reader, and the answer is no, but it certainly helps:)

I've got a lot to say about writing and writers today and some helpful hints on how you too can get yourself thanked in the books of your favorite writers. So why don't we do this: let's spend the next few paragraphs plugging Mike's book. I'll tell you what it's about and why you should read it and I'll even share some favorite passages so when I next see Mike I don't have to explain why I talked so little about his book in my review of it. Afterward, I'll catch up to you and give you the inside scoop on what it's like to be in a critique group with Mike Mullin and the rest of the YA Cannibals and some lessons I think writers can take from Mike's success.

The first passage from Ashen Winter I want to share with you is actually the first paragraph of the book:

Ten months had passed since I'd last seen the sun. The rich blue of that final August sky was fading from my memory. Colors are slippery: If you cover your eyes and try to remember blue, you see black. Now we had a yellowish gray sky, dark as a heavily overcast day. Darla said Yellowstone's eruption had hurled billions of tons of fine ash and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and it might be years before the sky returned to normal. I said the dim light was depressing.

Not only is that first line a heck of a hook, this paragraph delivers most of the exposition you're going to need to enjoy the book. Presumably, most readers have already had the pleasure of reading Ashfall, but a writer can't count on that. So here in a single paragraph Mike has filled us in on all the essential details. Sure, we're still going to need to become reacquainted with Alex and Darla and everybody else and the events of the story serve to expand Mike's vision of the apocalypse. But if for some reason the reader skipped Ashfall, the stage is set for them to still enjoy the new story.

Ashen Winter is all of my favorite things about Ashfall expanded. There are more desperate people struggling to survive, more rape, and most important, more cannibals:) There is, in fact, a gang of roaming rapist cannibals for Alex and Darla to tangle with. If you thought Alex got beat up and punished the last go round, you haven't seen anything yet. Mike never seems to be happier than when he's hurting poor Alex.

Yet, for all of that, Ashen Winter, like Ashfall before it, is a love story. Alex and Darla aren't just horny teenagers staying warm in the ashen apocalypse, they're soul mates destined to find each other--too bad so many people had to die to make that happen:) Mike knows the heart and soul of the Ashfall series is their relationship and so he wisely uses this second volume of the trilogy (I know how it all ends) to test that relationship and flush it out--which is as much as I can say without spoiling.

Ashen Winter is the rare sequel that's better than the original and you're going to love the third book in the series (I know its title, but I'm not sure that's public information yet).  Rest assured I'll be reviewing that one here (and I hope to be thanked in the back) as Mike Mullin is one of my favorite authors and the Ashfall series is one of the best series of books I've ever read. I'm very blessed to know Mike and to get to read his stories ahead of his legions of hungry fans longing for more Alex and Darla. I've even read a sole Darla adventure that's one of my favorite short stories that you can't read because it's not out yet (neener, neener).

That concludes my review of Ashen Winter. Buy it, read it, buy another copy so Tanglewood Press can grow and grow and publish books from the rest of Mike's group:)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: don't be a lone ranger writer. Writing is a somewhat lonely activity, but it doesn't always have to be. In my youth, before I went back to college, I used to come home from waiting tables, make a pot of coffee, and write all night, sleep a few hours, and wait some more tables. I don't regret that time as I learned a lot about the kind of writer I am and the kind of stories I wanted to write. I had friends, of course, but I didn't have any writer friends and no one to talk to about my writing except bored girlfriends.

I wrote some okay books that way and some not so okay and it's true that every writer has to churn out a certain amount of garbage to get where they're going. I sent form letters to editors and agents and collected rejections and they crushed me because I didn't know that rejections are the norm for new writers. Nor did I know enough to recognize how bad I sucked:)

After two years of this, I got tired of waiting tables and went back to school. This time I majored in English taking courses in literature and writing and editing and all sorts of things it's useful to know when trying to write professionally. A person doesn't have to study writing in an academic setting to be a writer, but if you have the means, I recommend it. Just bear in mind that if that's all it took, every MFA in the country would be a best-selling author.

I was taught by the great Will Allison and a few not so great writers who taught me what not to do. After graduation, I still had to get a day job. So now I was working for better pay, but once again coming home and writing alone and discussing my fiction with my wife.

I missed the community of writers I'd had at school, so I started a website that eventually became this blog. I went to conferences and met other writers and the agent who eventually signed me. Because I was writing in public, they're are many famous writers I now consider friends and eventually I met my writer's group, who are my closest writer friends, which brings us back to Mike Mullin.

As I write this post, it's Writing Day. On the couch beside me, a friend is editing a manuscript as is another friend in the chair opposite her. Mike couldn't be here today, but on past days I've sat writing my own apocalyptic YA novel across the table from him as he wrote Ashfall 3. There are six of us total and in a few week's time we'll be meeting to critique my finished manuscript before I send it off to my agent. They've already gone through it once and it is far greater for it. The book has been improved faster than I ever could've done on my own.

Ashen Winter is a wonderful book and the credit goes entirely to Mike Mullin and his editor. But I read it when it was too long and had a few characterization issues and a muddled plot. We call ourselves the YA Cannibals for a reason (aside from our connection to Mike's work) and we cut Mike's manuscript to shreds like a school of piranhas (including at least one merciless shouting match in the process). It was an absolute thrill to read the published version of Ashen Winter and to remember things that aren't there anymore because our group inspired Mike to take them out. I felt a real sense of pride for our group's contribution to making the book better and I know they've made my writing better.

Mike Mullin is our shining star and we couldn't be more proud of him. We were all at his launch party, which means I got to chat with his editor. I also got to chat with Mike about his plans to tour the country promoting his book. Mike's the hardest working writer I've ever known and he's forever on the road meeting with his fans. I've also got to attend some of Mike's presentations, which are always a treat because he breaks bricks with his bare hands. I've got to meet his younger fans and see the excitement in their eyes when they talk about Alex and Darla.

More, I've gotten to know Mike and we've become good friends. I've seen how he always makes certain to make his book events about the readers and the people who helped him get published, rather than about himself. The day of his launch he talked at length about everyone who helped him write his book and kept none of the credit for himself, despite that being where it belonged.

I've seen firsthand the attitude and the effort that make Mike a success. I've been to his home many times and seen his writing area and his book shelves. I've learned more about what it means to be a writer through my friendship with Mike than I could've ever learned reading books about writing or working in a vacuum.

Mike has made me a better writer with his critique notes and our discussions of what makes a good book (he would know). We argue constantly about valid uses for the word "that." I hate it, he defends it, and whichever of us is right (I am), it's worth having the conversation as it strengthens our convictions.

If I'd just read the published version of Ashen Winter without first reading it's original ending, I wouldn't appreciate why Ashen Winter now has the ending it does. Without spoiling anything, I liked the original ending better because I believe if characters go off with rapist cannibals they should be either raped or eaten. Now that the book is published and I've been able to hear excited reader reactions, I know that I was wrong and Mike's new ending is the better ending for the book.

What I'm saying, Esteemed Reader, is that writers shouldn't work in a vacuum. Get out there and get to know your fellow writers. If you're lucky, you'll find a group as great as the YA Cannibals and a friend as wonderful as Mike Mullin. And you might even get to add your own input to a book as fantastic as Ashen Winter.

The Cannibals keep me writing when the going gets tough. They encourage me when a story is working, and show me tough love when it isn't. They're there when the so-close-it-can-be-tasted publishing deal falls apart and they're there to share my oh-my-God-you-won't-believe-it news. We've been writing all day and in a bit we're going to enjoy some adult beverages and play cards. Every writer should be so lucky to have some Cannibals in his life.

Thank you Mike Mullin and my other beloved Cannibals for enriching my writing life.

As always, Esteemed Reader, I'm wishing you well. I leave you with some of my favorite passages from Ashen Winter:

A night spent spooning with your girlfriend isn't nearly so exciting when your uncle is curled up against your other side

Twenty small envelopes made from pages of an old Dan Brown novel were tucked into a cloth pouch. (best use for a Dan Brown novel -- MGN)

Darla screamed, "Down!" and her shotgun went crunch-crunch as she chambered a shell. Benson threw himself sideways, chair and all, hitting the floor with a crash. I dove the other way.
I head a pop-pop-pop and then a deafening boom followed by the crash of breaking glass. Darla screamed, "Go!"

But nobody was there--the door was falling open because of some quirk in the building. When it swung fully open, I saw  something else hangin from a meat hook, pink and streaked with frozen, red-black rivulets: half of a human ribcage.

My kick connected perfectly, catching him right between his legs. The hours of farm work, pedaling Bikezilla, and skiing had paid off--my kick was so powerful it lifted him onto his toes. Then he crumpled, collapsing and clutching his crotch.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.

Book of the Week: THIS IS NOT A TEST by Courtney Summers

This week’s book is actually edgy YA and is filled with adult language and adult content. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers and adults should view it as the equivalent of an ‘R’ rated movie.

Hope you're having a great summer, Esteemed Reader. I myself am counting down the minutes until The Dark Knight Rises (not sure I'm going to make it).  The Ninja and his buddy have tickets to watch the full trilogy (nearly 9 hours of Batman!).

Update: 1/26/2013--I was crushed to find TDKR was the worst Batman movie since Batman and Robin.

I don't want to talk about movies, however. I want to talk about zombies and we're in luck because today's book is the one I've been waiting for all year (actually, for three years). In July of 2009 I read Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers and it was immediately clear to me this author was destined to be a big deal. I loved the book and I wrote Courtney to tell her and I talked her into being one of the first authors I interviewed, which later helped me land my first ever agent interview with Amy Tipton, who represents Courtney.

At that time, I read on Courtney Summers's website that she, like the Ninja, has a love of zombies. Immediately it dawned on me that YA is the perfect realm for a zombie story as who is more aware of and frightened by mass conformity than teens?  I knew Courtney would be the perfect author for such a book and so for three years I've been hectoring her to please, please, please write a zombie book. Every time I've emailed her, I've bothered her and now it's paid off. You're welcome, world:)

In all fairness, Courtney Summers probably would've written This is Not a Test without me pestering her and she certainly doesn't need me to tell her to write a brilliant novel. She's got this. But Esteemed Reader, I've had few thrills as exciting as reading to the end of the best book by my one of my most favorite authors and turning to the acknowledgements section. I'm thanked by name (Robert Kent, not MG Ninja) for my "support and zombie-related enthusiasm." So maybe the emails helped a little. I'll fantasize they did:)

I think we can dispense with the review section of this review. I campaigned for this book, I've been writing how I've been looking forward to it, and my name's in the back. It's safe to say this will be a positive review:) But I assure you the review would be positive even if I'd never heard of Courtney Summers. But that's impossible. All her books are amazing. But this one is my new favorite.

It's a funny thing, though. When I myself was a teen, I pestered my friend to ask out a cute girl. After all, she was perfect: smart, funny, drop dead pretty... and as I was selling him on all her virtues it finally dawned on me I wanted to ask her out.  Well, for three years, I've been bugging Courtney to write a teenage zombie novel, selling her on its virtues, and in the last year it occurred to me that I wanted to write a YA zombie novel and I started mine in May and am now well into the 2nd act.

But oh crap! I told Courtney to write it and she did and it's going to be published before mine's even fully written! This is the thought that's been plaguing me for the past few months. I needn't have worried. Courtney Summers is a better writer than yours truly and her zombie book is vastly superior to mine and very different. And I think there's room in this world for more than one grim YA novel about teenagers living (and not living) in the zombie apocalypse. Plus, my book will now be better for having read Courtney's first.

Since January or so, I've been up to my eyeballs in zombie research. There are as many ways to tell a zombie story as there are a western or any other genre. Among my recent favorites are The Enemy, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and The Walking Dead: Rise of The Governor (not YA, but still awesome). The ninja dutifully reads each new issue of The Walking Dead twice and it's rivaling The Dark Knight Returns in my mind for best graphic novel series (the TV version is sweet also). My favorite zombie movies are Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later,  Shaun of the Dead, and Evil Dead 2. For video games, my personal favorites are Dead Island and The Orange Box, but there are many other good ones and rest assured, I've made time for all of them.

If I'm going to plunge into zombie territory, I've got to know what the competition is up to and I've got to know how my zombie story will stand out in an already crowded marketplace. That's just attending to the business of being an author. But I tell you all this so you will know I come to This is Not a Test as a discerning connoisseur of fine zombie literature.

I once wrote of Courtney Summers: "she's going to be a literary superstar (even more so than she already is). She is the Stephen King of gritty YA and I’m convinced her work will come to define the genre."

My favorite short story of all time, beating out such competitors as The Country Husband by John Cheever and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemmingway, is Home Delivery by Stephen King, which just happens to be about zombies. I read it in college and have used it as the benchmark to which I compare all the short stories I've written. We're going to talk more about that story in a moment, but first I wanted to plant the seed.

The protagonist of This Is Not a Test is Sloan Price (named after Vicent?), a suicidal teenager. Not just in an emo, "I hate my dad" kind of way, but in an actually going to commit suicide because she hates her dad among other reasons kind of way. Sloan's father has abused her and her sister Lilly since their mother died.

The types of abuse Sloan's been subjected to are never really clarified, but its mental and physical and awful. Like the zombie apocalypse, Sloan's abuse is something that happens mostly off screen. Her sister Lilly has recently run away from home without taking Sloane with her, despite promises to do so. And like Tommy Wiseau in The Room, Sloan is fed up with this world.

There's a lot more external conflict to this novel, but its heart is Sloan's desire to die because of her family's treatment of her and how that's shaped her view of herself. Ordinarily, I advise against suicidal main characters, unless it's a Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon sort of deal where the protagonist is only suicidal until the inciting incident when they find a Danny Glover and a reason to keep going. Sloan is suicidal through most of the novel and that would perhaps make it difficult to relate to her (why should the reader care if she lives when she doesn't) if it weren't for the zombies.

And that's Courtney's wedge, her way of putting a unique spin on zombies. It's quite brilliant and made me chuckle when I realized what she was up to. What if, as you were about to kill yourself, the rest of the world died? Would you still go through with it, or would the problems that led you to suicide have sorted themselves out with the death of everyone else? That's the question Courtney's posing and it's an intriguing and original premise.

Something that strikes me interesting is that Courtney's previous book, Fall For Anything, was about a teen girl sorting out why her father killed himself and what her life means as a result. This Is Not a Test is about a teen girl wanting to kill herself because of what her father did. Courtney Summers' own father passed between the two books and This Is Not a Test is dedicated to him. I'm not smart enough to sort out the meaning of all that and I'm not going to try. But knowing that brought me to tears as I finished This Is Not a Test because underneath all the plot trappings and drama of the genre,  both novels together tell the story of how a girl grows to be her own person without her father, and that is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

The ending of This Is Not a Test is the most poignant moment of all Summers' books and if I ruined it for you here, I'd have to kick my own butt. Read this book and see for yourself. But be assured there is greater truth and meaning in This Is Not a Test than your average low budget zombie flick. And that's the key. That's the thing to take away from this book if you should happen to be writing your own zombie novel.

Good zombie stories are not about zombies. They're about the humans trying to survive the zombie attack. The title of my favorite comic, The Walking Dead, does not refer to the zombies, but the survivors of the zombie apocalypse who are being picked off one at a time and living in a world without hope. They are the walking dead. Readers can't really relate to reanimated corpses in more than a metaphorical way unless the writer cheats and gives the zombie human qualities and emotions, at which point I would argue we're not really talking about a zombie (see Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall).

I won't spoil This Is Not a Test, but I will spoil Stephen King's Home Delivery. The first eight pages of Home Delivery aren't about zombies and if you didn't know the story was about zombies going in, you wouldn't expect them to arrive when they do. Instead, the story's focus is a pregnant woman named Maddie Pace and her life on a small New England Island. Like Sloan Price, Maddie Pace was abused by her father and later by her husband. All her life, someone has been telling her what to do and when her father and husband are dead, she's at a loss for direction. 

When her husband comes back as a zombie, Maddie Pace is forced to re-kill him and in doing so finds the strength to stand on her own and raise her baby in a world without men to tell her what's what. The "home delivery" is not the birth of her child, but the delivery of Maddie into her own woman (she kills her zombie husband in their living room). I'm now kissing my finger tips and raising my hand in the universal signal of brilliance and deliciousness.

This Is Not a Test is in the same vein as Home Delivery and that's as much as I can tell you without ruining it. But suffice it to say, if you're reading This Is Not a Test just for the zombies, you're kind of missing the point. That being said, if Courtney hadn't given us at least some sweet zombie carnage, she would've been missing the point. Concern yourself with whatever metaphors and thematic concerns you fancy, writer of a zombie story, but never forget zombies are a promise to the reader and you better deliver the goods.

There aren't a great deal of zombies in Courtney's zombie novel, but they're enough to satisfy. Her zombies are the fast moving sort and are mostly referred to as "infected," though they are reanimated corpses. This Is Not a Test opens with a brutal zombie kill, features a great zombie sequence in the middle, and ends with a wonderful zombie chase. It's established that if a zombie bites you, you die, then come back as a zombie, and Courtney complies with most of the classic zombie tropes.

Summers wisely avoids dealing with the origin of the zombies as many of the best stories do. After all, is there really a convincing explanation for zombies? Sure, she could've wasted pages talking about a new virus created in a lab, or a radioactive incident at the old nuclear plant, or a beam sent down by malevolent aliens. But really, who cares? There is no amount of back story likely to convince me the dead are up and walking around, so I prefer writers just get to it. I know they're no zombies, you know they're no zombies, so why not just start the story and I'll suspend my disbelief for the duration.

More concerning than the dead monsters are the living ones: teenagers. The bulk of This Is Not a Test takes place in a high school where Sloan and five other teenagers wait out the apocalypse. All the usual characters are there: the one who wants to be leader, the one who disagrees (Rick and Shane), the one who wishes everyone would just stop fighting and pull together (this character might as well wear a red t-shirt reading zombie bait). There's a mystery guest staying with the teens as well, but I'll let you discover him on your own.

What's fascinating is the way Courtney is able to flush out each of these stereotypical archetypes into plausible three dimensional characters and to twist the conventions just enough to turn them on their head. And yeah, the teens sit around and discuss their difficulties in life Breakfast Club style, but they also fight and contemplate murdering each other in a way that will keep the pages turning. And does Courtney still find time for a little romance and sexual scandal? Of course she does! This is Courtney Summers we're talking about, and she wouldn't disappoint her loyal fans:)

And that's where we'll leave it. This Is Not a Test is my favorite of Courtney Summers' wonderful collection of books so far and should be read by everyone. Now that I've had my great desire for a Courtney Summers zombie novel satisfied and surpass my greatest expectations, I think I shall begin bugging Courtney for a sequel. I'd also challenge her to write a novel with a male main character. After four books staring teenage girls dealing with the trauma of past events, I'd say it's about time we got a look at a teenage boy and his trauma:)

As mentioned before, I don't have any passages to share, so instead I'll share with you the most poignant zombie scene I've ever enjoyed. This also moved me to tears the first time I saw it and even though it's a trailer for a video game rather than a movie or an AMC TV show, I think it's one of the best clips of zombies ever. Enjoy:

Click here for an interview with author Courtney Summers!

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.

Book of the Week: ASHFALL by Mike Mullin

WARNING: This week’s book is actually edgy YA and it is filled with adult content. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers and adults should view it as the equivalent of an ‘R’ rated movie.

Ashfall is a great story filled with great characters, and it’s that special brand of taught suspense tale to keep you up late until you've finished it. I love this book and I've greatly enjoyed selections from its sequels.

But Ninja, I hear you saying, how can you have read the sequels if Ashfall was only published in the later half of 2011? Mike Mullin lives here in Indianapolis and he and I are members of the same critique group. Rest assured, I am never as nice to Mike’s writing in the group as I’m about to be in this blog post:)

So, am I going to take this opportunity to label myself impartial and decline to review this book? Nope! Instead, I’m going to lecture you on the importance of joining a critique group and making sure some of its members are bloggers who will promote you and your book online for free. Also, don’t slouch so much, comb your hair, and for Pete’s sake, stop fidgeting:)

I’m sure there are plenty of you Esteemed Readers who are not also writers, but comments and traffic patterns tell me the majority of you are. There are a number of things you can do to improve your writing, such as seeking out blogs like this one. But sooner or later, you’re going to need someone to critique your work (that person shouldn't be the first agent or editor you submit to), and that someone should preferably have at least some knowledge about the market you’re writing for.

I believe there are moments in our own fiction that make writers proud to have written a thing, passages where we said what we most had to say and said it well and the effect on the reader is precisely the one we intended. I also believe that for every one of these passages, there are one hundred or so other passages to break a writer’s heart when he realizes he did not achieve his aim. A good critique group can help you cut the latter and at least help you make the sections around the good passages shorter:)

More than that, a critique group will hold you accountable. It seems there’s sometimes nothing so difficult as convincing a writer she ought to be writing. Work, kids, spouses, parents, marathon viewings of entire seasons of The Walking Dead, these things get in the way and sometimes its easy to drift from serious writing for a day, a week, a month. You may be able to convince yourself you were working 60-hr weeks last month and therefore didn't have time to write, but if you've got to meet with your group at the end of that month and give them an explanation, it’s a lot harder to miss writing the next month though you may be working 65-hr shifts.

And let’s face it: a grown person with a grown up’s responsibilities carving out time in their busy schedule to make up stuff no one may ever want to read anyway can sometimes seem a bit ridiculous, unreasonable, and even, dare I say, crazy. Therefore, it helps to have a network of fellow crazies to remind us we’re not alone. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous need each other for solidarity in not drinking, writers need each other for solidarity in writing, and so frequently the two can find each other in the same meetings:)

My group gives me strength and guidance. We meet once a month to critique, and once a month at someone’s house for an all day writing session. They break my heart when it needs breaking and accept my doing the same for them. Two weeks ago, my home was broken into and the (expletive deleted)'s stole my 3D television and all my movies and video games, which has the upshot of removing the very things that most distract me from writing. They also stole my computer, which contained the first 4 chapters of my new manuscript (the only one not yet backed up elsewhere) and the first version of this review. Well, Saturday we held a writing day and I was surprised to see the marvelous members of my group had got me a card and taken up a collection to help me buy the computer I'm typing this on. As you know, the Ninja is the toughest guy around, but that made me cry just a little.

Eventually, I know I’ll review every member of the group's published books here, but today we’re starting with my good friend, Mike Mullin. Mike's the fact checker in our group. He's very good at researching those little details to make sure what we've written lines up with what would actually happen. And somewhere along the way, he stumbled upon this little factoid: the boiling springs and geysers of Yellowstone National Park are caused by a super volcano that has erupted 3 times in the last 2.1 million years. Sooner or later, the volcano will erupt again. If you're in Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho, you and Yogi Bear can kiss your butts goodbye. If you live in the surrounding areas, like say, Iowa, where Ashfall's protagonist Alex Halporin lives, you can look forward to earthquakes and a steady fall of ash to cut you off from the rest of the world. If you live on the other side of the planet, you can still look forward to ash darkened skies for months and a global volcanic winter lasting three years or more. Good times.

Here are the opening lines from Ashfall:

I was home alone on that Friday evening. Those who survived know exactly which Friday I mean. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing, in the same way my parents remembered 9/11, but more so. Together we lost the old world, slipping from that cocoon of mechanized comfort into the hellish land we inhabit now. The pre-Friday world of school, cell phones, and refrigerators dissolved into this post-Friday world of ash, darkness, and hunger.

I just love that paragraph. I don't know of a reader who can read that and not be hooked. My female friends have assured me a woman knows within 30 seconds or so if she's going to sleep with someone and it's up to him to screw it up sometime before the clothes come off (hey, I'm reviewing edgy YA this week, so I can use sex metaphors). In the same way, I think readers know by the end of the first five pages or so if they're going to read the book in front of them and it's up to the author to screw it up.

Therefore, it's important to put your best foot forward and sell the reader on your book in the first line if possible. What I love about the above paragraph is not just that it hooks the reader in a way that makes it physically impossible to put the book down--in fact, if you haven't read Ashfall, you're probably ordering a copy now and no longer reading this review--but that it makes a pledge to the reader right at the start: this is a book about catastrophe and mayhem  Continue reading if you're interested in suspense, excitement, and a fight for survival.

A few paragraphs later, Mike Mullin makes a second pledge to us:

I’d seen those stupid movies where the hero gets tossed around like a rag doll and then springs up, unhurt and ready to fight off the bad guys. If I were the star in one of those, I suppose I would have jumped up, thrown the desk aside, and leapt to battle whatever malevolent god had struck my house. I hate to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in pure terror. It was too dark under the desk to see anything beyond my quivering knees.

Aside from the fact that there is almost no way I can think of to start a novel that is more exciting than blowing up a protagonist's house, this paragraph serves two purposes. First, it tells the story of the present scene. But only the last two sentences of this paragraph serve that purpose. The first two sentences are making a promise to the reader: this is going to be a serious story. It's not going be like those stupid movies and the events that follow will be portrayed realistically.

Like any author worth his salt, Mike Mullin is setting the tone of the story and promising the reader what they're going to get. From this paragraph onward, Alex cannot single-handedly defeat an army of ninjas, survive a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator, or jump from a plane and fall hundreds of feet with only a raft and land in a river unharmed. If you prefer those sorts of antics, rent Indiana Jones. If, on the other hand, you want a more considered action tale that doesn't ignore the laws of physics, Mike Mullin has just assured you that Ashfall is your book.

What I love most about Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead is that its stories are never about the zombies, but the humans and their emotional transformation in surviving the apocalypse. And so it is with Ashfall. There are no zombies, alas, but there's plenty of apocalypse. As you might expect, it doesn't take long for a population cut off from the rest of the world with no social infrastructure, low on resources, and all suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, not to mention, covered in ash and surrounded by the corpses of their friends and family, to go bats**t crazy:

The next few hours were, well, how to describe it? Ask someone to lock you in a box with no light, nobody to talk to, and then have them beat on it with a tree limb to make a hideous booming sound. Do that for hours, and if you’re still not bat-s**t crazy, you’ll know how we felt.

It seems my writers group never spends so much time discussing looting, rape, cannibalism, and all of the worst acts humanity has to offer as when we're critiquing one of Mike's manuscripts. All of those things are present and accounted for in Ashfall and its sequels (if you're like me, that will just make you want to read it more). That's the reason I put the big red warning at the start of this review and this book is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers. The viewpoint is adolescent, but the subject matter is bleak and extremely adult. But I'm sure I could have handled this book at thirteen or older. The adult language is minimal, the violence is rarely gratuitous and always effective, and the sex and rape are mostly implied rather than depicted.

And the overall story of the book is hopeful and exciting. This isn't Cormac McCarthy's The Road, after all (thank God). It's an adventure story and a great one that's a lot of fun. But in order for the tale and the threat of the apocalypse to be credible, Mullin has to tell us the bad parts of the story with the good. Yet, his true interest is never in exploring these dark events, but in exploring the human element. What are the effects of this world on its human inhabitants? What are the social implications? How does their world change and more importantly, how does it change them:

Her face. It was a girl, maybe eight or nine years old. I let go of her hair—my right shoulder ached, anyway. I kept my left forearm locked around her neck. She had pulled two packages of peanut-butter crackers out of my pack. They slipped our of her hands and fell to the floor.

What was wrong with me? I’d been shocked to see Cedar Falls degenerate into looting and violence, but here I was with my forearm crushing a little girl’s throat, a little girl who only wanted something to eat. Was I any better than the looters?

I reached down and felt around the floor. I round both packages of crackers by touch. I scooped them up, put them back in her hand, and curled her fingers around them.

Now what would a good apocalypse tale be without a reason for the protagonist to tour it? If the foggy mist filled with monsters surrounds the grocery, you can just best sooner or later the inhabitants are going to have to go out in it for something or other. Alex could just head to a shelter and wait for rescue. Who could blame him? But what kind of story would that be? Not a good one. Sure, Alex needs to find food and some shelter now that his house has been blown up, but that's not enough of a plot for a story. But what if say his parents and sister were far away and he needed to get reunited with them. Well, that sounds like a story-worthy problem to me and along the way he meets Darla, and is it possible they might become friends, maybe even more than friends? Perhaps, Esteeemed Reader, but you know I'll never tell.

Rest assured, you need to get your hands on a copy of Ashfall today. I envy you the experience of reading it for the first time as it's going to knock your socks off. It's got everything you come to a book hoping to find: adventure, great characters, romance, and epic battles for survival. The pages will turn themselves and you'll be online searching for Ashen Winter before you finish (but you won't find it, because it's not out yet--but it's even better than Ashfall).
Mullin is a skilled writer. His prose is sparse and straightforward. He's ocassionaly very funny, but mostly he keeps the suspense tight and the story moving. He's also ends every chapter with some sort of cliffhanger to keep the reader going. This one's my favorite:

Then the explosions started.

And if I still haven't given you enough reason to read this book, how about the fact that Ashfall contains one of the few instances I know of a writer personifying testicals. It's passages like these that make me proud to call Mike Mullin my friend:

The door pulled inward in a rush, and I saw the long, black, double barrel of a shotgun pointing right at my nuts. My nuts knew where that shotgun was pointing, too; I could feel them trying to climb up into my body for protection.

And that's going to do it. As always, I'm going to leave you with some of my favorite passages from Ashfall. I have quite a few this week and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

Even from the neighbor’s yard, I felt the heat of the fire washing over my body in waves. I smelled smoke, too, but that might have been from my clothing.

Blam-Blam! Darren shot him in the back of the head. His face exploded. I heard a thunk as part of it hit the door and then a dull thump as Baseball Bat’s body slumped to the floor. A dark stain marred the door, like someone had hurled a blood-filled water balloon against it.

A girl I knew walked up while I was talking. Laura. A lot of kids called her Ingalls because of her name and the old-fashioned long skirts she always wore. I didn’t because, well, she was cute.

I dreamed about Laura. The first dream was just weird, not particularly embarrassing. (The embarrassing one was stupid. Black lace under that long denim skirt? I doubted it.)

The few trees still upright were stripped of their branches, lonely flagpoles without a nation to claim them.

I stabbed the tip of my staff forward in a desperate strike. I’d practiced it thousands of times in forms and on Bob, the training dummy, but I had never figured I’d have to use it for real. I lunged, stepping with my right foot. I aimed for his eye, guiding the blow with my right hand, thrusting with my left.

The result was spectacularly disgusting. His eye pretty much exploded. Blood and some kind of fluid streamed down the side of his face. He staggered back a few steps toward the fire.

Darla began washing it using a bowl of water and hand towel. As she scrubbed the scabs, it hurt. When she finished that and washed the area around the wound, it felt good. Too good. By the time she finished, I had a hard-on so intense it hurt. It was pretty obvious, too, even in her dad’s loose jeans. The heat in my face at that moment had nothing to do with the fire.

It wasn't a big pelt; our hands were constantly touching, sliding against and over each other, slick with rabbit brain.

“Certainly,” Rita Mae said. “A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn't eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.” She shuddered.

He smiled, a twisted thing that crawled across the bottom of his face.

Darla jumped and let out a yelp. Maybe I should have been startled, as well. Finding myself in a room with a corpse would have scared the bejeezus out of me only five weeks ago. But I’d seen a lot of corpses since I’d left home; this fellow wasn’t the worst—and probably wouldn't be the last.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.

Book of the Week: CHARLIE JOE JACKSON'S GUIDE TO EXTRA CREDIT by Tommy Greenwald

Long days and pleasant nights, Esteemed Reader. Charlie Joe is at it again in Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Extra Credit and Tommy Greenwald has got a genuine series on his hands. I'm looking forward to reading Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Summer Vacation, about which Tommy Greenwald's site says "All I can tell you right now is that this book will be just as hilarious as the first two books..." 

In response to this, I must ask just how hilarious did Mr. Greenwald find his own books to be:)

I kid, I kid. I found the first Charlie Joe Jacksonadventure to be hilarious and his second is even funnier. There's depth to both of Mr. Greenwald's books, but more important than lessons learned or "true meanings" and other such garbage English teachers long to read essays about, the Charlie Joe Jackson books are good time reads. If you pick up a Charlie Joe Jackson book, you know what you're going to get: a sarcastic tale of adolescent angst that will be fast and fun to read, and that's important.

There likely won't ever be a Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to the Meaninglessness of Life or Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Dealing with Your Friend's Death After She Fell off the Special Bridge You Used to Create Fantasy Worlds Together. This ain't that kind of party pal, and Tommy Greenwald's readers know it ain't that kind of party.

If I had to guess, I'd say Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Summer Vacation will involve Charlie Joe in a predicament caused by his own avarice, be composed of short, breezy chapters, many of which will be only one page to make the reading faster for reluctant readers (Greenwald's bread and butter), and it will feature hilarious 1-page "tips" from Charlie Joe himself. The style will be uniform to the first two books because Tommy Greenwald has established a precedent and made an implicit promise to his reader of a brand. There will be return readers because they know what they're going to get and they now know they can trust Tommy Greenwald to deliver the goods. Assuming Mr. Greenwald is amused rather than offended by that crack I made regarding how much he enjoys his own books and sends me another free copy, I'll be a return reader as well:)

If you haven't read either of Charlie Joe Jackson's tales thus far (stop reading and head to an independent bookstore, or, amazon if you don't have time to make a stand for social change in your consuming), here's a taste of what your going to get:

Reading and schoolwork are the backbone of every child’s education.
It’s extremely important to study hard, and respect your teachers. The best way to make sure you get good grades is to do your work on time, and take great care and pride in everything you do. Try not to rely on extra credit if you don’t have to, because it can turn out to be a very difficult process.
So, that’s my first tip.
Or at least, it would be if we were living in fantasy land.
But we’re living in real life, so ignore everything I just said.

All of our favorite characters from Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading are back for round 2, including Eliza, the "it" girl who has a crush on Charlie, and Hannah, the girl Charlie fancies, and could it be that she's starting to fancy him? I'll never tell, but one of my favorite things about reading a sequel is so often it's a visit from old friends. There are some new characters as well and ole Hannah may just have some competition in the field of being crushed on by Charlie Joe Jackson. But of all of the lovely ladies in Charlie's life, my favorite of Greenwald's descriptions goes to Eliza:

Everyone cheered.
Eliza was used to people cheering in her presence, so she ignored it.

Just as in the first book, it amuses me that Charlie Joe has so little interest in books, yet he genuinely cares about his grades:

…but going home to a lousy report card was kind of like going to a scary movie with your friends even though you hate scary movies. There was no way out.

Charlie Joe is often a walking contradiction, it's true, but this time out Greenwald raises the stakes. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson are so dismayed by Charlie Joe's report card they threaten to make him spend his summer at Nerd Camp, and not the good Elissa Brent Weissman kind. 

Charlie Joe would rather spend time with his friends and romantic entanglements. I'd love to read a Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Dating, but unless Charlie Joe starts aging a little faster each book, that's probably never going to happen. 

Charlie strikes an agreement with his father: if he can get all 'A's and one 'B' on his next report card, he doesn't have to go to camp smarty pants. But as Charlie's buddy, Katie (who I think also has a thing for Charlie Joe, middle grade player) puts it:

"You're a really smart kid, but you hate to read and you hate to study. Your homework is always late and always lazy. And even in the easy classes you find a way to get on the teachers' nerves all the time. So what do you expect? I'm not sure why four days out of the year you suddenly get all guilty and upset about it. It's who you are."

And so begins Charlie Joe Jackson's quest for extra credit, which leads to a series of hilarious episodes in which Charlie Joe acts in the school play, joins the Student Goverment Council, and my personal favorite, poses as Byron Chillingsworth, famous boy foxhunter, for his art teacher:

Changing in the bathroom was an adventure. I could barely get the green shorts on, they were so tight. There was also a white shirt, a red vest, a checkered jacket that was way too small, and a hat that looked like Peter Pan’s.
I looked in the mirror. I laughed, until I remembered it was me. Then I kind of cried a little inside.

Like Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading, Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Extra Credit is a fun and very funny read for all ages. It comes highly recommended from me and I'm looking forward to Charlie Joe Jackson's future guides. And now I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Extra Credit:

I took a big swig of chocolate milk and immediately felt better. Chocolate milk is like that.

Katie bought herself a bag of carrot sticks, which are like potato chips without the goodness.

My dad shook his head. “Charlie Joe, this is NO GOOD.” (The capital letters mean he said it loud enough to make the dogs go into another room.)

I could swear Mr. Twipple had tears in his eyes. “This is the late John Gielgud,” he said, “one of the greatest Shakespearean actors ever to grace the stage.”
We watched some more.
“And, when I listen to Sir John, I remember why I got into this business.”
It didn’t seem like a great idea to point out that one the worlds’ greatest actors ever and a middle school Drama teacher weren’t necessarily in the same business.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.

Book of the Week: YOU WILL CALL ME DROG by Sue Cowing

You Will Call Me Drog is a great book for readers of any age, but I think it will especially appeal to upper grade school and middle school readers, particularly those readers whose parents either have divorced or are in the process of divorcing. So hand a copy of You Will Call Me Drog to the morose adolescent in your life whose parents don’t love each other anymore:) 

What a lot of middle grade books about divorce we’ve reviewed here, Esteemed Reader. Statistically speaking, children are still far more likely to experience their parents filing bankruptcy than filing divorce, if that cheers you up any:)

You Will Call Me Drog isn’t just about divorce, of course (with a horse at its source). But in a way, it reminded me of a dark version of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. 6th grader Parker Lockwood is a boy who needs a friend to help him cope with his unresolved feelings from his parents divorce (feelings that will follow him around long after the scope of this book, I’m sure). What he gets is a hand puppet named Drog. What does Drog look like? Well, here’s a picture of author Sue Cowing modeling the latest in high fashion hand puppets:

Drog is loud and opinionated and never stops talking. The problem is, so far as Parker knows, he isn't making Drog speak. Drog gives every appearance of being his own sentient being:

“Ha, ha. That’s funny, Boy. Nothing makes me talk. I say what I please when I please. Which is a lot more than I can say for you.”

There’s just one other little problem. Once Parker puts Drog on, he can’t take him off again. Every time Parker tries, Drog squeezes his hand painfully. Parker attempts any number of methods to remove Drog, including attempting to drown him, which struck me as a bit morbid until I remembered puppets don’t have lungs.

I stuck one blade of the scissors into the puppet sleeve and squeezed the handle. Nothing. I squeezed again, and again, until my hand cramped. Why couldn’t I cut? It was only cloth, but I might as well have been trying to cut rock. The scissors broke apart on the next squeeze, and I threw the two halves across the room.

Drog has an opinion on everything and most of his opinions are decidedly negative, especially his opinions about Parker, whom he calls only “Boy." Some of Drog’s opinions about Parker’s parents in particular are just a little too close to Parker’s own secret thoughts for comfort. Could it be Drog is an outward manifestation of Parker’s subconscious desire to speak his mind?

 Is it possible Drog is really Tyler Durden (I never get tired of comparing children’s books to Fight Club), a split fragment of Parker’s mind that wants Parker to hit him as hard as he can (that totally happens a couple times before the book is over). That’s what Parker’s parents and friends and pretty much everyone thinks:

Late one night, Mrs. Belcher got one of her Great Ideas. She decided our class should make a puppet theater and put on a puppet play. Everyone could tell she was doing this to keep me from becoming the class weirdo, but I appreciated it.

So, it’s time to apply the principal of Ockham’s Razor and determine the most likely scenario: has a magical puppet taken control of Parker’s hand for the purposes of destroying his social life one piece at a time, or is it possible the whole thing is happening mostly in Parker’s mind. The brilliance of this story is that Cowing never tells us for sure which scenario is actually playing out. She provides plenty of evidence for both arguments, and though she strongly hints in favor of one, she never decides for the reader whether Drog is real.

And what difference would it make if she did? Whether Drog is alive in the world or only in Parker’s warped imagination, the result is the same. Drog is funny and you’re going to love him. He enjoys creating a bit of anarchy now and again, has a proclivity for belly dancers, and above all he says what he wants when he wants without regard to social taboo. 

In one hilarious scene, Drog drags Parker to a strip club (don’t worry parents, they never get past the front door). In this scene, at least, I prefer to imagine Drog is real because it amuses me to wonder what interest a puppet without a lower half would have in naked ladies. And, of course, there’s no chance a 6^th grade boy would ever have a subconscious desire to go to a strip club:)

Real or no, Drog says the things Parker can’t. Things that maybe need to be said. One of Drog’s most memorable comments is made to Parker’s estranged father:

“Let’s face it, Daddy-O.” Drog said. “Parker and his mom, they were your practice family, no? And now you've got a new wife and a new kid, and you've got it down. So Parker’s just kind of an embarrassing first try, am I right?”

It strikes me that so many of the books about divorce I've reviewed here have featured lousy fathers, most memorably Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom. Oh sure, there’s the occasional lousy mother, such as in How to Survive Middle School, but for the most part it’s lousy fathers. I wonder if this disproportionate percentage has anything to do with disproportionate percentage of female middle grade authors to male:) In my writer’s group of 6, I’m one of 2 boys—just saying. 

Note to self: when writing own middle grade book about divorce, make sure and let mom have it:)

In a way, Drog is a nearly perfect metaphor for a writer. I’m not sure if Sue Cowing intended this or not, but what is a writer’s story if not a hand puppet independently saying the things the writer isn't ready to say directly? 

I would like to have been a fly on the wall when Andrew Lloyd Webber showed his much younger wife Sarah Brightman The Phantom of the Opera script in a which a creepy old (and totally gay, or why does he collect all those candelabras) guy lusts after and tries to manipulate a young soprano, only to have her leave him for a younger, straighter fellow. “Why, yes, I think our marriage is built to last, Sarah. Why do you ask?” Similarly, I would have killed to see the look on Joey Lauren Adams’ face when Kevin Smith asked his very “liberal minded” girlfriend at the time to star in Chasing Amy.

It isn't me, the writer will insist. It’s the characters that say these things, it’s the plot that motivates them. Mrs. Ninja knows to read any manuscript of mine featuring a black woman married to a goofy white guy very closely:) 

Writing is a form of hypnosis, both for the reader and the writer. The writer convinces himself that he is writing a story unrelated to his own life at all, or maybe it’s a little related, but that’s just a coincidence. The story is a hand puppet that’s come to life and just happens to be saying the things I really want to say:) 

I've always said I don’t know how I really feel about a topic until I write a story about it. There may be some people capable of examining their subconscious thoughts and desires without need of an intermediary object, but we writers mostly need our hand puppets.

And that’s going to conclude our Drog blog:) You will read You Will Call Me Drog and you will enjoy it. Make sure you come back Thursday to see Sue Cowing face the 7 Questions and join me the next two weeks as we have two more books to discuss before I again descend to my smoke and candelabra filled dungeon beneath the opera house to compose The Middle Grade of the Night. But for now, say you’ll share with me some favorite passages from You Will Call Me Drog (love them, that’s all I ask of you):

I didn’t want to hear any divorce-for-kids version…

I wanted to believe that, but it was easy math. If Mom had loved Dad a little more or me a little less, then one plus one plus one would still equal three. Together. Any way you looked at it, I was a factor.

Dad. Ringing the bell of a house that used to be his house, even though he knew I was the only one inside.

When I opened the car door it hit me, the smell of him in the car, the brown smell. That sounds awful, but I mean the smell of warm coffee and leather and cloves and cinnamon—from his shaving lotion, I guess—all mixed together. The memories in that smell surprised me, made me feel like a little kid again, and I wished I could cry for myself.

“Do you ever wash your pants, Boy? There are some nasty bits in your pocket I don’t appreciate having my nose shoved into.”

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.

Book of the Week: THE MOUSE AND THE MOTORCYCLE by Beverly Cleary

How about some nice classic middle grade this week, Esteemed Reader? I’m all for these up and coming whippersnappers we've had here to face the 7 Questions and I enjoy reading their books every week. But sometimes, you've got to go back to your roots and read a work that has endured longer than many of the authors I’ve interviewed and the literary agents (had to work in another link) have been alive. That’s not to say some of these newfangled books won’t go on to become classics, but if middle grade fiction were the rapper world, then Beverly Cleary would be Dr. Dre:) Respect the mouse. Respect his motorcycle.

We have discussed previously what makes a novel a classic and as I recall, my response was “I don’t know.” What gripping, illuminating stuff this blog is made of:) But I do know a classic when I see one. The Mouse and the Motorcycle was published in 1965, was still a top librarian recommend when I read it as a child in 1987, and is still picked up by eager readers now in 2012. I loved this book and its sequels and kids still love them. Plenty of books have been published since 1965 and have since gone out of print, yet this story of Ralph S. Mouse remains as popular with readers as ever.

Something about this book made it stand out from the pack. Part of that something has to be Beverly Cleary, who also gave us Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby (another post, Esteemed Reader) who, like Ralph S. Mouse, are gods in the pantheon of middle grade fiction. But that’s not all, because Cleary also wrote Ellen Tebbits, Muggie Maggie, and Sister of the Bride, which have failed to keep the same staying power.

I don’t know how Clearly pulled off the magic imbued in The Mouse and the Motorcycle. If I did, I would reproduce it, and then the Book of the Week section of this blog would be filled with my books. But I can speculate and paw at her methods the way the confused monkey men pawed at the monolith at the beginning of 2001.

So that we may discuss the techniques employed by Cleary, let’s dispense with my review: this book is awesome! It’s one of the best books ever written, middle grade or otherwise, and if you haven’t read it, stop reading this review and go get a copy. If you want to write successful middle grade--and as you’re here, I’ll assume the thought has at least crossed your mind--you owe it to your craft to read this book.

I love this story and either you do too, or you will once you read it. It’s impossible for me to imagine anyone disliking this novel, unless certain religious zealots somehow find the idea of a vulgar mouse riding a secular motorcycle an abomination in the eyes of God:) So let’s role up our sleeves and pop this book’s hood to see what’s driving the engine.

As is usually the case, a good place to start is with the book’s first sentence:

Keith, the boy in the rumpled shorts and shirt, did not know he was being watched as he entered Room 215 of the Mountain View Inn.

Now there’s a good old fashioned hook if I ever read one!  Plenty of horror novels have begun with similar sentiments and the sentence, taken by itself, is a bit off putting. What sort of story is this anyway? Who is watching Keith and why and should we be concerned? 

Note, Cleary doesn’t actually confirm who is watching Keith until chapter 2 (even though there’s a spoil-sport illustration of a mouse peering out of his hole) and by then then the reader’s interest has been thoroughly peeked. And that, of course, is the point. By the time the reader has satisfaction to the question of who is watching Keith, Clearly has raised other story questions and made a few promises to the reader and the pages will continue to turn.

The next thing to notice is Cleary’s ability to get completely inside the heads of her characters and to take us with her. Her characters do not seem to exist to serve the plot. Rather, the plot arises from the motivations and actions of her characters. More on this in a moment, but first I want to share a passage with you. Many writers have presented us with a believable child’s perspective (I continue to seek them out for interviews), but how many writers outside of Hilary Wagner can give us a believable mouse’s perspective:

At first he was disappointed at the size of the boy who was to occupy the room. A little child, preferably two or even three little children, would have been better. Little messy children were always considerate about leaving crumbs on the carpet. Oh well, at least these people did not have a dog. If there were was one thing Ralph disliked, it was a snoopy dog.

Next Ralph felt hopeful. Medium-sized boys could almost always be counted on to leave a sticky candy bar wrapper on the floor or a bag of peanuts on the bedside table, where Ralph could reach them by climbing up the telephone cord. With a boy this size, the food, though not apt to be plentiful, was almost sure to be of good quality.

The third emotion felt by Ralph was joy when the boy laid the apple core by the telephone. This was followed by despair when the mother dropped the core into the metal wastebasket. Ralph knew that anything at the bottom of a metal wastebasket was lost to a mouse forever.

Sure, there’s a bit of telling: Ralph felt hopeful (blasphemy, my critique partners would cry), but who cares? Clearly does plenty of showing elsewhere and the important thing is how much consideration she has given to Ralph.

Was she a method writer? I imagine a young Beverly Clearly standing up quickly when someone came into a room, an embarrassed look and crumbles of cheese on her face, yet still trying to assure the interloper that she was most certainly not crouched on all fours attempting to see the world from the perspective of a mouse.

Ralph S. Mouse lives at the Mountain View Inn, and what he wants is to eat the boy’s crumbs (perfectly believable motivation for a mouse) until he sees Keith playing with a toy motorcycle. Ralph wants to ride that motorcycle and was there ever a child anywhere who didn't hope that a cute talking mouse would come to them and want to play with their toys? 

Keith is lonely and so is Ralph. They each need a friend and they both love motorcycles. The fact that they are of different species does not present a problem, as explained in my favorite passage from the book:
 
Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.

In my own writing, I almost always start with plot and then find characters who are up to the job of servicing it. I like to imagine Beverly Cleary began with a mental image of a mouse on a motorcycle and worked her way up from there:

How would a mouse get a motorcycle? Perhaps a boy loaned it to him. Perhaps they’re friends. But that’s not a story, that’s a situation. Hmmm… (eats some cheese)… I've got it! The boy gets sick and Puke the mouse (from an early draft) has to use the skills he learned riding the motorcycle to save the boy’s life.

I speculate, of course.  For all I know, Cleary spent weeks and weeks working on the characters and then added a plot, or perhaps she had a life-altering vision and upon waking, wrote all the prophet had told her. In any case, it got done. What do I know about how great literature was produced, I can’t even maintain a steady blogging schedule:)

One more point about plot and characterization, and we’ll call it an overly-long review. Mice are a natural fit for children’s stories, which is why there are so many books about them. Mice are small and a nuisance to adults, sort of like certain little Esteemed Readers. There are as many stories about mice as there are about actual children (probably not true, but it sounds true-ish). 

It is no wonder why Cleary chose a mouse to star in her children’s story, but it’s worth noting the kind of mouse she chose. She didn't go for happy go-lucky bachelor like Mickey, or a wise old fatherly mouse, or even a Fonzie parody. She chose a child as a mouse. 

There are two children in The Mouse and the Motorcycle and Ralph’s arc dovetails with Keith’s, or maybe it’s the other way around. And when choosing a character to empathize with, do you suppose children will be more interested in a sick kid lying in bed or an adventurous mouse who risks life and limb for a friend?

Here’s a nice after school special moment to illustrate my point:

You mean you aren’t mad at me anymore?” asked Ralph.

“I guess you might say I’m mad but not real mad,” Keith decided. “I’ve been lying here thinking. It wouldn’t be right for me to be real mad, because I get into messes myself. My mom and dad tell me I don’t stop to use my head.”

Ralph nodded. “I guess that’ my trouble, too. I don’t stop to use my head.”

“They say I’m in too much of a hurry,” said Keith. “They say I don’t want to take time to learn to do things properly.”

Ralph nodded again. He understood. If he had waited until he had learned to ride the motorcycle he would never have ridden off the bedside table into the wastebasket.

“I’ll never forget the first time I rode a bicycle with hand brakes,” reminisced Keith. “I took right off down a hill. I had always ridden bicycles with foot brakes, and when I got going too fast I tried to put on foot brakes only there weren’t any.”

“What happened?” Ralph was fascinated.

“By the time I remembered to use the hand brakes I hit a tree and took an awful spill.

Somehow, this story made Ralph feel better. He was not the only one who got into trouble.

“The hard part is,” continued Keith, “I am in a hurry. I don’t want to do kid things I want to do big things. Real things. I want to grow up.” You look pretty grown up to me,” said Ralph.

“Maybe to a mouse,” conceded Keith, “but I want to look grown up to grown-ups.”

“So do I,” said Ralph with feeling. “I want to grow up and go down to the ground floor.”

“Everybody tells me to be patient,” said Keith, “but I don’t want to be patient.”

“Me neither,” agreed Ralph.

And that’s going to do it. It’s so good to see you again, Esteemed Reader. Here are some of my favorite passages from The Mouse and the Motorcycle:

“To pilfer a pill,” said Ralph. “An aspirin tablet.” His answer was dramatic enough even for Uncle Lester. His entire family stared at him in disbelief. Not an aspirin! Not after his own father had been poisoned by one of the dread tablets.

“An aspirin!” Ralph’s mother gasped. “No, Ralph, not that! Anything but that!”

“Why, there’s  Ralph,” squeaked his Aunt Sissy, who thought she was better than the rest of the family because she lived in the bridal suite where, she led her relatives to believe, riches of rice fell to the carpet when the bride took off her hat and the groom shook out his coat.

“Ralph, stay here,” pleaded his mother. “You’re too young. Let you Uncle Lester go.”

“Well, now, let’s talk this over,” said Uncle Lester.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.