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Reviewed by:
  • Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar
  • Deborah Stevenson
Sachar, Louis Fuzzy Mud. Delacorte, 2015 [192p]
Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-99129-5 $19.99
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-74378-5 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-385-37021-9 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6

Pennsylvania’s Woodridge Academy is beloved by fifth-grade student Tamaya Dhilwaddi and now hated by seventh-grader Marshall Walsh, who’s become the victim of newcomer and bully Chad Hilligas. When Tamaya and Marshall, who walk home together, duck through the dense woods by the school so Marshall can avoid Chad, the bully nonetheless finds them, and Tamaya defends them by pelting mud in Chad’s eyes. Soon Tamaya notices that the skin on her hand that touched the weird mud is breaking out in a disturbing and bloody rash, and when it turns out no one’s seen Chad since her encounter with him, she realizes his mud-covered face must have begun to suppurate just as her hand has. She slips away from school and heads into the woods to save him, and Marshall in turn heads into the woods to save her. Interpolated dialogue from a fictional Senate committee hearing explains the science fiction element of the story—the “mud” is actually microorganisms bioengineered to create power and ordinarily confined to tanks, but they’ve now escaped and begun to multiply at a frightening rate. Sachar is a master at compact and unintimidating plotting; the school story unfolds with swift authenticity in its own right and then becomes tautly suspenseful as the mud’s potential lethality becomes apparent. Characterization is spare but generally effective (especially with Tamaya, who’s beginning to see that virtue doesn’t get you much cred from [End Page 50] your peers but adheres to it anyway) and the dynamics are credible, if a little overexplained when it comes to Chad’s bullying. The science doesn’t bear too much investigation, but that’s not really the point; it’s the unfolding plot, the centrality of the young people, and Tamaya’s conviction that doing the right thing may not be fashionable, but it’s important.

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