![]() ![]() Mim lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her father and his new wife, Kathy, but she refers to the town as Mosquitoland, and it doesn't feel like home. The opening page of MOSQUITOLAND is one line - "I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay" - and the second is the first in a series of letters to an unspecified relative named Isabel, to whom Mary (or Mim, as she prefers to be called) is chronicling the story of a 1,000-mile journey she took to get home to her mother. This is an ideal pick for teen readers who appreciate well-written stories about self-discovery. In keeping with the characters, the language is occasionally strong, and a couple of characters drink or smoke cigarettes. There are some intense scenes (a deadly bus crash, a child molester who attacks two teen girls, a couple of fistfights, and one knife-wielding thief), as well as a strong attraction between a 16-year-old and a 21-year-old that stays just inside the boundaries of appropriate, but it's nothing most mature teen readers couldn't handle. Author David Arnold's debut novel explores many challenging subjects, including psychosis, sexual assault, divorce, blended families, depression, suicide, sexual orientation, intellectual disability, and, of course, friendship and first love. Parents need to know that Mosquitoland is a powerful coming-of-age novel about the brilliant, half-blind, mentally ill 16-year-old Mary Iris Malone, who's on a tumultuous four-day trip from Mississippi to Ohio to reunite with her sick mom. ![]()
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