Fuzzy mud is pure poison, but even the vile mud's clueless creators are treated compassionately in this playfully pithy middle-grade novel from Louis Sachar (Holes).
Woodridge Academy is a fancy private school surrounded by woods that the students walk around, not through, to get to class. The older boys warn of a deranged, woods-dwelling hermit. But the scariest thing in Heath Cliff, Pa., is not that bloody toothless hermit, but SunRay Farm, a secret lab that alters the DNA of slime mold to create one-celled microorganisms, or "tiny Frankensteins," to burn as an alternative fuel source for an overpopulated, car-obsessed planet. On a trek through the forbidden woods with her friend Marshall Walsh, fifth grader Tamaya Dhilwaddi stumbles upon this Biolene-brand fuel in the form of some curiously "fuzzy" mud. When Chad, a bullying classmate, shows up to beat up Marshall, Tamaya impulsively smashes the toxic goo into his face, unwittingly triggering a massive outbreak of a heinous, rash-producing infection. While this is certainly a cautionary tale about humankind messing with nature to calamitous effect, the lively narrative also deftly captures the emotional turbulence of Tamaya, a latchkey kid with divorced parents who doesn't want to be a Goody Two-shoes; Marshall's struggle with Chad's power over him; and Chad's anger over his parents' neglect. Bouts of middle-school malaise alternate with entertaining, over-the-top transcripts of secret U.S. Senate hearings with Biolene representatives.
Fuzzy Mud asks readers to contemplate overpopulation and how far humans will go to accommodate the world's increasing resource consumption, but Sachar keeps his story buoyant with snappy dialogue and plenty of action. --Karin Snelson, children’s editor, Shelf Awareness