Bloom

Written by Kenneth Oppel

HarperCollins Canada

978-1-4434-5031-7

312 pp.

Ages 10-14

February 2020

Many Canadians would recognize Salt Spring Island as a popular tourist destination off the coast of British Columbia. But what's happening on this Gulf Island in Kenneth Oppel's latest middle grade novel, Bloom, would have most running away. Unfortunately, there will be nowhere safe to run.

All teens have their angst but Anaya, Petra and Seth have challenges that are unique. Anaya Riggs may have to deal with acne and asthma but she also lives with severe allergies to just about everything: gluten, dairy, eggs, smoke, dust, pollen, etc. Her former friend and all-around popular girl Petra is allergic to water and cannot allow it to contact her skin without developing a burning rash or hives. New kid Seth Robertson, who has been moved from foster home to foster home, is now living with an elderly couple Mr. and Mrs. Antos on their farm and always wears long sleeves to hide the scars that track up and down both arms. 

Then a hard rain comes down for several days and changes everything. Anaya's allergies improve and her acne clears up. Petra can wash with this rainwater–she collects as much as she can–without any reaction. And a strange black grass begins to grow just about everywhere around the world and at an alarming rate.

Pretty much all anyone talked about now was the black grass. How it was crowding out crops, how nothing killed it. You couldn't go on your phone or turn on the TV without people talking about how it was showing up everywhere, and what was this stuff, anyway? (pg. 50)

Attempts to eradicate the grass by mowing or chainsawing it or applying herbicides or fire are futile or dangerous. Anaya's father, a botanist at the Ministry of Agriculture's experimental farm, is working hard to identify the plant, including those germinated in the water Petra has collected, and even Anaya gets involved collecting soil from the school yard, one of the few sites without the black grass. Soon enough, though, the schoolyard becomes a minefield of pit-plants that swallow prey, whether it be a deer or humans. Oddly, Petra, Anaya and Seth are not affected by the pit-plants' acidic walls or tranquilizing gas emissions.

As Mr. Riggs and a research associate head out to the eco-reserve on Cordova Island where the black grass appears to be dying, the three teens are taken by Dr. Stephanie Weber, a scientist with CSIS, to a military base in Vancouver in the hopes of learning what makes them special and possibly developing a vaccine. But what is discovered about the teens is much scarier than anyone ever anticipated.

The word "bloom" suggests something unhurried and beautiful and captivating. The plants in Bloom are nothing like that. They are aggressively growing, violent in their attacks and devastating in their effects. Worse yet, the last line in the book is a harbinger that more, perhaps even worse, is still to come in the next books in The Overthrow series. (Book 2 in the series, Hatch, is set for a fall 2020 release while we'll have to wait until the summer of 2021 for the final book, Thrive.) Bloom is thrilling and scary, a story with all the hallmarks of an edge-of-your-seat cliff-hanger–although you'd more likely be hanging by vines above a lake rife with machine-gun water lilies–blending a survival tale with an action-adventure involving clashes with dangerous life-forms. 

Though Anaya, Petra and Seth, as well as the parents, social workers, and military, carry the story forward, Kenneth Oppel's plot steals the story. It's bizarre, it's compelling and you can't read fast enough to learn what is happening. Kenneth Oppel may resolve Bloom to readers' satisfaction–we do learn what the plants are and how the teens are different–but there's obviously so much more to their story. I'm looking forward to an even more twisted plot when we revisit the kids and the source of Bloom's plants in Hatch and Thrive.

The Almost Epic Squad: Mucus Mayhem

Written by Kevin Sylvester

Illustrated by Britt Wilson

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-5779-7

187 pp.

Ages 8-13

September 2018 

In a hospital nursery in Dimly, Manitoba thirteen years earlier, a storm overloads the emergency lighting system and four babies are showered with the glowing dust from the reidium bulbs (the once famous Dimly Bulbs).  Four babies, four characters, four books.  This is Baby Flem's story. 

Baby Flem is actually Jessica Flem, an extraordinary gamer of Gang of Greats who is bizarrely afflicted with allergies. The thirteen-year-old, whose nose had been affected in the accident, must use copious tissues as well as her puffer, to relieve her congestion. Turning 13, Jessica is prepared for her annual checkup and bizarre questioning by Dr. Fassbinder, now of the Insitut de l'ennui, and another superfluous visit from her "babysitter" Garvia Greep who gifts her with a diary in which to chronicle her "changes."

Her voice sounded sickly sweet like a snake trying to do a Taylor Swift imitation. (pg. 25)

Dr. Fassbinder's questions about magic and flying and other weird stuff may seem outrageous but not as crazy as the small green gummy-like man who appears amidst her used tissues to sweep them up. Dr. Fassbinder doesn't seem too flummoxed by the green janitor who grows as Jess uses more tissues but disappears when finished, though her only friend, Cliff Snuffington, is fascinated by her "snot golem." (Of course, he's the guy who collects her used tissues, calling them "ori-gummy creations" and gathers them in plastic sandwich bags for his collection.)

Then the really weird stuff starts happening. You're probably wondering how things could get any weirder.  Well, Jess's notes begin disappearing from her diary; she discovers a dossier about her situation; her parents disappear; an old blimp manned by Garvia Greep starts pursuing them; a talking lab mouse named Algernon comes to their aid; and Jess tries to control her mucus-transforming power. And all the while she is participating in a Game of Greats tournament, aiming to reach Grand Master.

Transforming mucus into creatures to do your bidding, whether cleaning or fighting bad guys, may not exactly be a superpower all would aspire to have but it's completely appropriate for a young teen of the The Almost Epic Squad. (We'll have to wait for Books 2, 3, and 4 by Ted Staunton, Lesley Livingston and Richard Scrimger, to learn about the almost epic superpowers of the remaining thirteen-year-olds. See below for details.) Mucus Mayhem is an elevated Captain Underpants for the middle grade set. The humour is slightly gross but always clever, with a splash of the supernatural and filled with the action of chases, mad science and nefarious plots. The irreverence of Kevin Sylvester's premise will freak out and amuse readers to no end. And his punning and crackerjack writing will have everyone giggling with its tongue-in-cheek sauciness.

My head was swimming. But then my nose completely jammed and I began my tissue tango–nose, tissue, garbage basket. Or, more accurately, floor. Nose. Tissue. Floor. Repeat. Cha-cha-cha. (pg. 25)

Illustrator and cartoonist Britt Wilson's black-and-white cartoons pepper the story and will grab a few more readers who love artwork to help move the story, though Mucus Mayhem is already a zippy read of laughs and ickiness.

From The Almost Epic Squad: Mucus Mayhem by Kevin Sylvester, illus. by Britt Wilson

Fortunately, with additional titles in the series slotted for January (What Blows Up by Ted Staunton), May (Super Sketchy by Lesley Livingston) and September (Irresistible by Richard Scrimger) of 2019, it looks like The Almost Epic Squad will be tickling funny bones for a while.

Covers of The Almost Epic Squad books (covers not finalized for Super Sketchy and Irresistible)

Delicate

by C. K. Kelly Martin
Dancing Cat Books
978-1-77086-452-8
230 pp.
Ages 14+
November 2015


Who wants to be called “delicate”? Porcelain dolls, maybe.  But the teens in C. K. Kelly Martin’s Delicate would be loathe to be called delicate, regardless of the challenges, physical and emotional, they have to endure.

Delicate is told in the alternate voices of second cousins, Ivy and Lucan, who haven’t seen each other in seven years since Lucan’s mother Sheri told her cousin Lisette, Ivy’s mom, about seeing Ivy’s dad with another woman at a hotel.  The two teens will become reacquainted at a 75th brithday party for a relative, but first they are involved in their own dramas.  Life is drama after all, isn't it?  Ivy is devastated by her boyfriend Jeremy’s break-up with her after 18 months together and learning that he’s hooked up with her best friend Betina.  And Lucan is dealing with his divorced mother’s embarrassingly physical relationship with Julian, a man much younger than her, as well as trying to negotiate his best friend Des’s volatile relationship with girlfriend McKenna.  After the family get-together, Sheri helps Ivy get a summer job at her merchandising firm which is just around the corner from the Mill Street Café where Lucan gets a job,  and soon the two teens are comparing and sharing their lives with each other and declaring themselves absurdly delicate, though they both have tremendous strengths that they still have not recognized.

Fortunately, they enjoy each other’s company (how much is surprising) and the fresh perspectives on their respective issues.  Ivy vacillates between longing, anger and vengeance with regards to Betina and Jeremy, by whom she has been infected with an STI, even getting Lucan involved in a dog-napping scheme, while Lucan begins to see the abusive nature of Des and McKenna’s relationship, enlisting Ivy’s help to defuse its volatility.

The tenuous nature of relationships is made very clear from the plethora within Delicate: Des and McKenna, Ivy and Jeremy, Ivy and Betina, cousins Sheri and Lisette, Lucan and Des, and so many others.  The relationships between boyfriend and girlfriend, friends, husband and wife, parents and children and other relatives are all so delicate in that any incident or series of circumstances could destroy or alter them, shattering them to shards that may or may not be reconfigured.  I spent most of the book worried that Lucan’s peanut allergy–which I incorrectly assessed as his delicacy–would be his downfall but I was mistaken.  That would’ve been too obvious and C. K. Kelly Martin is never obvious.  Her other books (My Beating Teenage Heart, 2011; Yesterday, 2012; Tomorrow, 2013; The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, 2014) have always fascinated me by her analysis of the complexity of the human condition and Delicate takes that one step further by examining both the obvious and the unseen and showing the immensity of both in affecting our lives and the way we see ourselves.  More importantly, C. K. Kelly Martin exposes the ways we hurt each other, sometimes deliberately, some accidentally, and some through negligence, and provides an upfront perspective on dealing.  Maybe that's all you can hope for.  Thankfully C. K. Kelly Martin does reassure the readers that being Delicate is not an indictment, just human.