Maggot Moon (Rollercoasters) (Michael L. Printz Award - Honor Title(s))

by Sally Gardner

Julian Crouch (Illustrator)

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book

In Sally Gardner’s stunning novel, set in a ruthless regime, an unlikely teenager risks all to expose the truth about a heralded moon landing.

What if the football hadn’t gone over the wall. On the other side of the wall there is a dark secret. And the devil. And the Moon Man. And the Motherland doesn’t want anyone to know. But Standish Treadwell — who has different-colored eyes, who can’t read, can’t write, Standish Treadwell isn’t bright — sees things differently than the rest of the “train-track thinkers.” So when Standish and his only friend and neighbor, Hector, make their way to the other side of the wall, they see what the Motherland has been hiding. And it’s big...One hundred very short chapters, told in an utterly original first-person voice, propel readers through a narrative that is by turns gripping and darkly humorous, bleak and chilling, tender and transporting.

• ISBN10: 0763665533
• ISBN13: 9780763665531
• Publish Date: 12 February 2013 (first published 30 August 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Candlewick Press
• Imprint: Candlewick
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780763665531

Reviews

[nannah]

This book. This tiny, amazing, horrific book.

It's difficult to get my thoughts in order.

On page four, I fell in love with the voice. I was absolutely involved with the protagonist and his story. Maggot Moon is definitely written with a less-is-more approach in mind, and it really works.

The MC, Standish Treadwell (who "can't read, can't write, Standish Treadwell isn't bright") is a teenager with dyslexia and heterochromia in a horrific, dystopian version of history where both make him undesirable. He lives with his gramps in the only house left on his street, and people keep getting "rubbed out" all around him.

But over the wall, he finds something that the Motherland has been hiding, something that gives him the stone he can use to bring down the giant.

This is a dystopia truly seen through the eyes of a youth. Not really understanding why or how things really work, just that this is the way it is, and that he's living in it (instead of overwhelming the reader with info about the book's dystopian society because the author wants to show readers all about their society and how it's run, how it's oppressive, how it's different, etc.).

This book is also terrifying. Not only because of the book's story, but because of the art accompanying each new chapter, which turns out to be about every two to three pages. It's definitely not for the squeamish. Illustrations of a fly laying eggs in a dead rats mouth are on each page opposite the chapter titles, and it can get pretty gruesome.

I fell in love with this book word by carefully-thought-out word. Standish, Gramps, Hector, Mr. Lush, Standish's beautiful relationship with Hector, Standish's bravery in the face of all that horror and death, and everything this tiny book had to offer. It's awful and frightening, but it's also amazing.