Review: Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars

Pinkwater, Daniel (1979). Alan Mendelsohn, the boy from Mars. New York: E.P. Dutton. 248 pages.



Summary & Evaluation: Not only is Leonard Neeble the new kid at Bat Masterson High School but he's also the least popular. After befriending Alan Mendelsohn, an equally unpopular kid who claims he's from Mars, the two begin to have strange adventures as they discover the strange Samuel Klugarsh and his patented Klugarsh Mind Control course. Quickly achieving the right level of omega brain waves, Leonard and Alan achieve "state twenty-six" and begin to realize the untapped potentials of their mind as they discover extra-dimensional worlds--culminating in the two saving the "lost" land of Waka Waka while creating a lasting friendship.

Never having read Daniel Pinkwater before, I'll admit that I picked this book up because Daniel Pinkwater seemed to be popular in YA lit (there were tons of his books on the shelf) and because the cover was so off-the-wall (with a painting of two children in robes, surrounded by motorcyclists and topped off with a bizarre, flat-faced dragon). The cover fits perfectly with Pinkwater's eclectic subjects, as the story quickly progresses from being a story about poor, unpopular Leonard Neeble to revealing a sci-fi laden world where Leonard and Alan can do all sorts of wonderful things with the power of their minds. The book is less of a morality tale than it is a pulpy sci-fi tale, but that keeps it from getting bogged down in the moral of the story and allows the reader to just have a good time.

Booktalk Hook: A lot of really great sci-fi stories rely heavily on a new set of created terminology, and this story's no different. Of course, that can make it impossible to read from the middle of a story and have anyone understand you, so I wouldn't be reading from this book. Rather, I'd probably go into a description of this book, dropping some terminology along the way to keep the interest up ("so these two students walk into a dingy old bookstore, not knowing that they're about to understand how to control people by studying the patented Klugarsh Mind Control course and attaining state twenty-six!").