The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito

by Tomson Highway

Illustrated by Sue Todd

Fifth House Publishers

978-1-92708-338-3

70 pp.

Ages 14-18

October 2016

Think of The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito as an illustrated script, a script of “a one-woman musical in one act” and it’s the story of Mary Jane Mosquito, the only female mosquito born without wings.  Dedicated to “disabled children everywhere. Because they make our world a special place to live in”, the story is both light-hearted and heartbreaking–quite a workout for the heart–with a powerful lesson about acceptance of self and others.

The book opens, as any script will, with information about place, time and characters (here, dramatis personae) and the scene heading.  There is a vamp playing just before a voice from offstage announces “the one and only, the very talented, and the very beautiful, Miss Mary Jane Mosquito” (pg. 9). Though the child who eventually comes out on stage, bedecked in a top hat and oversized coat of tails, is a little surprised by the audience, she goes on to tell them her story, starting with the secret that she doesn’t have any friends or know how to make them.

From The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito 

by Tomson Highway, 

illus. by Sue Todd

Peppering her monologue with songs, as “singing is the only thing I know how to do” (pg. 12), and teaching the audience some mosquito (or is it Cree or Ojibway?) words like friend (“weecheewaagan”) and song (“nagamoon”), Mary Jane tells of growing up in Petit Petit Le Paw, northern Manitoba, and trying to find a connection between her lack of friends and her lack of wings.  At Miss Kathleen B. Curdew’s Centre for Education of Very Young Mosquitoes, her teacher Miss Maggie May Ditchburn would cruelly make an example of Mary Jane and, in insisting they repeatedly sing while marching, almost drives out Mary Jane’s love for singing.

From The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito 

by Tomson Highway, 

illus. by Sue Todd

Eventually Mary Jane convinces her parents to send her to Winnipeg to stay with her Aunt Flo, hopeful of a better school life.  Sadly, there she finds herself the only mosquito in a school of flies, moths, hornets and more.  A brave attempt at making a friend is thwarted and Mary Jane, surprisingly, sees red and attacks Minnie Matouche.  Her Aunt Flo wisely tells Mary Jane that “You don’t trust yourself.  You don’t love yourself. And therefore you don’t let others trust you or love you” and recommends, along with a change in venue (to wherever the cabaret is being performed), that “when you show ten times the kindness, to others, sooner or later, it will come back to you, ten times ten times ten.” (pg 51) Even knowing that the corollary is also true, i.e., that doing something bad will also come back at you, ten times ten times ten, Mary Jane at 16, sets off by train for Ontario.  And now here she is, singing and making friends with members of the audience, and telling them

I don’t need wings to fly.  I can fly on my own just fine, thank you, in my heart.  It’s not what you look like that matters, Aunt Flo’s words ring in my ears like chimes in the wind, it’s what you give to others that counts. (pg. 64)

The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito is a full read.  There is dialogue and details of the character’s actions on stage, and verses of song and choruses, and audience participation, and production notes (it was originally performed at Stratford in 2001) and it’s a brilliant vehicle for teaching, reading, and performing.   The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito is a book sated with lessons and wisdom in a unique format, a little girl performing on stage to an audience with whom she is to become friends.

Because The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito has the feel of a folktale, a oral story told to teach, Sue Todd’s lino cut illustrations work perfectly in carrying the story from opening music to curtain drop.  The art is bold in line and shape and colour, popping off the page in emphatic presentation, not unlike Mary Jane herself.  There’s emotion and a self-assuredness to Sue Todd’s art that invites the reader to partake in the drama within.  With Tomson Highway’s evocative text and Sue Todd’s powerful art,  The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito could be a condemnation of the residential school system or of communities that still have not embraced diversity, but at its heart it just conveys the message that we don’t all have to be the same and that love and friendship can surmount just about anything.

Illustration from The Incredible Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito 

by Tomson Highway, 

illus. by Sue Todd

Image retrieved from http://www.suetodd.com

The Mosquito Brothers

Written by Griffin Ondaatje

Illustrated by Erica Salcedo

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-437-4

128 pp.

Ages 7-9

May 2015
(Reviewed from advance reading copy)

Humans may have silly inventions like glass.  But we have the power to pester them to total distraction. (pg. 41)

Can you think of a better time to review a book called The Mosquito Brothers than in July when our recent cool and wet days have me scratching for bug juice so that my face isn't littered with the very insects that don the cover of Griffin Ondaatje's latest from Groundwood Books?  I can't.

What Jonathan Livingston Seagull did for the gull, The Mosquito Brothers does for the much-maligned mosquito, giving a back story with family, flight, fancy and friends for one young mosquito named Dinnn (yes, triple n's).  Dinnn, one of 401 young born to Corrina Culiseta-Woo and Brad Needles, learns very early that flying is not his thing and vows to walk wherever.  Luckily being born in a puddle at the edge of the parking lot of the Lakeside Drive-In Theater provides convenient access to level ground and asphalt. Unluckily, walking is not a cool thing for a mosquito to do.  Not surprising, when Dinnn finds a leather jacket, he is convinced it makes him look cool, especially after his mother refashions its emblem to The Mosquito Brothers.  But, no one else seems to think it’s cool so while Dinnn follows all the mosquito protocols (e.g., going to school, studying life cycles, participating in Dragonfly drills), he dreams of having an adventure.

Knowing that his mother was from the Wild i.e., the countryside where she accidentally left behind her only surviving son from that batch of flying teeth, Dinnn sees the Wild as his chance to shine.  And when the red minivan that brought his mom from the Wild and picked his dad up at the gas station shows up at the drive-in, it’s Dinnn and the entire family’s chance for a road trip to the Wild.

Dinnn may be a mosquito but he’s every child who doesn’t fit in and wants desperately to be accepted, even popular.  He finds the means to be himself, much to the appall of his siblings and peers, but it’s only when the city mosquito reaches the country that he is able to be appreciated by others and appreciate himself as well.  With tongue in cheek (or is that proboscis in skin?), Griffin Ondaatje pokes fun, with sensitivity, to the need for most of us to fit in, even if it means putting on a heavy leather jacket that makes things even harder, and heavier, to assimilate.  (After all, just like Dinnn, we don’t always make wise choices as to what constitutes coolness, right?)

The Mosquito Brothers is a delightful story of accepting one’s strengths and weaknesses and finding ways to manage them.  Though the awareness that these insects hovering around brings me to distraction, Griffin Ondaatje and Erica Salcedo have created loveable individuals with quirky characteristics (for example, Dinnn's father is a floater who is drawn to the addictively large screen of the drive-in, and Gus is a stocky and hairy country mosquito who seems like more of a bruiser than a poker) who cause less irritation and more amusement than might seem possible in an early reader about mosquitoes.

Dinnn’s father sat in the school office for two days filling out registration leaves, but so many of his kids had pesticide allergies that the paperwork took all his energy, and he fell asleep in the hall by the juice machine. (pg. 36)

But, if you think The Mosquito Brothers is all fun and games, guess again because the plethora of valuable life cycle information, including an addendum of true or false questions, transforms the story into a dual-natured fact and fiction early reader perfect for laughs and learning in the classroom.