Wow! eBook
McMUMMY
Author(s): Betsy Byars (Author)
- Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
- Publication Date: October 1, 1993
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 160 pages
- ISBN-10: 0670849952
- ISBN-13: 9780670849956
Book Description
While looking after an eccentric scientist’s greenhouse, Mozie discovers “McMummy,” a huge plant pod with a human shape and strangely human habits. By the author of Summer of the Swans. Jr Lib Guild.
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Gr. 4-6. Mozie has a problem–he looks too innocent to be believed, so no one takes him seriously. His part-time job watering plants in a brilliant, eccentric professor’s greenhouse takes a somewhat sinister turn when he is mysteriously attracted to a giant, humming pea pod. Although he jokingly christens the pod McMummy, Mozie quickly stops laughing when he can’t get anyone to believe that he may be in real danger. With the help of a beauty queen named Valvoline and the support of his best friend, Batty, Mozie follows his instincts and his heart through a wild chase, a sad end, and finally a hopeful beginning. If you booktalk this as the “Invasion of the Human Bean,” you won’t be able to keep it on the shelves. Janice Del Negro
From Kirkus Reviews
Professor Orloff has left Mozie to care for a greenhouse of experimental plants, with specific instructions for administering “Vitagrow.” As one particular “pod” grows to mammoth size, Mozie becomes apprehensive: Does it lure him against his will? Will it hatch? What is that humming? Accompanied variously by friend Batty and “Valvoline,” an aspiring beauty contestant for whom Mozie’s mom is making a sequined gown, Mozie tends the pod until an epic storm crushes both the greenhouse and the pod, which–cautiously inspected with Mozie’s deceased father’s Swiss army knife–seems empty. But what’s the leafy apparition that later disrupts the beauty pageant? This isn’t quite fantasy- -rational explanations are available for virtually everything- -but, unfortunately, waiting to see whether it is, or what Byars will come up with instead, doesn’t create enough interest to carry the story. Byars introduces several motifs without much development– Batty’s family is featured in the first chapter, then fades out, scientist Orloff never comes back, and Mozie’s yearning for his father is unresolved. Even the comically tangential interior monologues begin to wear thin; Mozie just isn’t as interesting as Bingo Brown, and his high jinks are tame compared to the Blossoms’. A minor effort. (Fiction. 8-12) — Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.