To the Max: Maximum Ride: Saving the World and

...other Extreme Sports.

I remember staying up all night reading in the Summertime- one of the best things about Summer was not having to get up for school the next day so I could keep reading until I knew how the book would end. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Hemingway were two books that kept me up all night.

I just finished reading the sci-fi novel for teens, Maximum Ride by James Patterson. (Available at Amazon). It's the kind of book that could have kept me reading all night when I was a teenager. Part three of a trilogy the exciting story of the "bird kids" and their talking dog continues. I haven't read the first two volumes but I was able to follow the story and best of all keep reading inspite of the many motherly distractions around here ;).

The dialogue is lively, spunky and totally teen-speak. No one is going to feel condescended to, reading this. The storyline is simple but the 400 pages is full of plot "flyboy twists" "eraser turns", betrayal, redemption, hopes dungeon-dashed and then restored. I won't ruin the ending for you but I think you will come to like Max, the girl leader who is as tough a heroine as you will find and her goth bird boy friend, Fang and their misfit flock of bird kids.

One of the best things about the book is the relevancy of it with its theme of cloning, human-animal hybrids, evil science that ignores ethics, and the dehumanization of the "imperfect", "unfit" and those plotting their extinction. Since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, ethicists have pondered the what-ifs of man-animal combinations. All you have to do is read the Drudge Report to know that we are at that point.

It's an entertaining book that my kids will enjoy reading. Their interest was piqued when they were at the library and the librarian came upon this book and stopped, held it in her hands and said, "It's here."

Yes it is.