Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Title: Mosquitoland

Author: David Arnold

Series: None

Publisher: Viking Children’s

Publication Date: March 3, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Realistic Fiction; Adventure; Contemporary; Disability; Coming-of-Age; Young Adult

Pages: 352

Format: Hardcover

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After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, "Mosquitoland" is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

“I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neutrons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.”

This book was a Book of Woah. As in, I couldn’t stop saying “woah” every five pages.

Mary Iris Malone is weird and unique and running away from home. She’s going to save her mom, who was abandoned and is now sick. Mary has to save her mother if it’s the last thing she’ll do, and she’s putting every resource she has into finding a way to Cleveland. She’ll stumble across different characters, each a little bit weirder than the last, until she finds a way back home.

This book gave me shivers. Chills. Goosebumbs. You name it, I got it. I devoured every little word, every perfectly written phrase like a feast. A literary feast of bottomless wisdom and refillable intelligence. I couldn’t stop rereading the really excellent quotes, scared that I would forget them or the fact that they even existed. I want to own this book just so I can read it over and over again, and commit the really good things to memory.

The character were by far some of the best that I have read ever. Mary Iris Malone, just by herself, was a unique character expertly crafted into something I’ve never seen before. With her messed up uvula, her one blind eye, and her war paint, she was fantastic to read and watch throughout the story. She was unapologetically weird, and is relatable by everyone, I think, because inside of everyone, there’s a little bit of an anomaly.

“Because even today, inasmuch as an anomaly is a thing that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. I can think of no more appropriate word to describe myself.”

The book is written like a journal some parts, and in normal novel format in others. You witness her journey from two sides, and you can barely wait to see how it will end. In the story, Mary travels with interesting characters that deviate from every strand of normal you could think of. From an old woman with a box she won’t let go of, to a boy with Down Syndrome and a contagious smile, Mary is accepting of everyone’s oddities, probably because she is a bit odd herself. She makes life-long, priceless friendships with unexpected allies and teaches the reader how important it is to just be.

I don’t know what I expected from this book. All I know is that I got everything I bargained for plus a little more. I can’t wait until this book gets the attention it deserves, because it deserves all the attention in the world. I loved this book, its messages, and its characters. In my mind, it’s one of the classics, and I cannot wait until other people experience it for all its magnificence.