Munmun

Starred review from February 5, 2018
In Yewess, an alternate America where money (called munmun) dictates one’s physical size, 14-year-old Warner, his older sister Prayer, and their disabled mother (all rat-size “littlepoors”)
are barely surviving; the siblings’ father was crushed when someone stepped on their house. Warner finds some solace in the communal slumberland of Dreamworld, where everyone is “middlescale.” The siblings set off with their friend Usher to find a rich husband for Prayer, but their journey is fraught with indignities and danger (“If we just all stick together then no one’s getting facechewed by a rat today,” says Warner as they set out). After being jailed, Warner is freed when a young woman named Kitty makes him her pet project; her wealthy father offers him a chance at success, but “scaling up” comes with a price. In a brash and wildly inventive novel, Andrews (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) effectively uses a gonzo alternate reality to frame urgent issues that include income inequality, rampant consumerism, and class disparity. Warner may be small, but his giant heart and brutally honest narration propel this intense, cuttingly funny novel. Ages 14–up. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris Endeavor.

January 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-"Being littlepoor is notsogood," observes Warner, the rat-size narrator of this thought-provoking dystopian epic in which humans' physical size mirrors the amount of "munmun" (money) in their bank accounts. The protagonist, along with his sister Prayer and their friend Usher, set out across the semi-recognizable landscape of southern California with a scheme to earn enough munmun to "scale up" to at least middlepoor. The journey doesn't go as planned, and in the fallout, the companions endure alternate-world versions of the myriad indignities and outright dangers that poor and homeless teens face in today's America: condescension, manipulation, mind-numbing jobs, indifferent justice and health care systems, graphically depicted sexual abuse, and the middlerich attitude that the poor should be grateful for any crumbs they get. It's not subtle in the way that Gulliver's Travels, M.T. Anderson's Feed, and Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" series aren't subtle; it's social commentary with a bite. This book also includes action and humor to leaven the mix. It evokes Patrick Ness's "Chaos Walking" trilogy in its stream-of-consciousness narration, full of invented words and spellings that reflect Warner's littlepoor illiteracy. This world has no clear racial or ethnic groups, but skin colors that include rubyred and gray; a shared dream space where people communicate; and the "scaling" process that changes people's sizes in tandem with their financial fortunes. Readers will race to reach the conclusion and Warner's appropriately Pyrrhic victory. VERDICT Endlessly discussable and a first purchase for public and high school libraries.-Beth Wright Redford, Richmond Elementary School, VT

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2018
In a world where wealth--the titular munmun--determines physical size and people range from littlepoor (rat-small) to bigrich (10 stories tall), three tiny teens set out to scale up; a wild ride ensues.Rendered a paraplegic by a cat who bats her about like a rat, Warner's mother orders him to take his sister, Prayer, to law school and help find her an upscale husband. Warner's skeptical--they're illiterate, for one thing. Usher, a literate friend with palsy who's smitten with Prayer, joins them. Trouble starts when they accept a ride from a middlerich man and end up in his model-train layout. Worse is to come. Prayer's looks, Usher's smarts, and Warner's ability to shape Dreamworld (a place accessible only in deep sleep, where all are of equal scale) fail to prevent disaster. Offered a home and education by a politician, Warner insists Prayer be invited, too. They're hardworking and motivated, but some littlepoor deficits prove intractable. Warner's distinctive voice and language compel readers to pay attention to this detailed world. Wealth rather than skin color (orange, ruby, plum, gray) confers status. Bankers Scale Up those who've acquired wealth and Scale Down those who've lost or (rarely) relinquished it. Literally embodied in the characters, income inequality becomes a horrific reality; economic theories and realpolitik sangfroid are juxtaposed with their real-world consequences. Angry and the victim of his best impulses, Warner's no superhero. Superpowers and soothing bromides won't mend his broken, fragile world; pull the right thread and it might unravel.Brilliant, savage, hilarious, a riveting journey through a harsh world that mirrors our own. (Dystopian fantasy. 12-17)

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January 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Here's a bizarre premise: in Andrews' scathing satire of economic inequality, rich citizens scale up to hundreds of feet tall, towering over littlepoors so small they live in shoeboxes. Getting out of poverty is almost impossible when there are no schools small enough to learn in, and it takes hours to traverse the distance a rich person could walk in a single step. But littlepoor Warner is trying to scale up anyway. In a wry, rage-filled voice peppered with A Clockwork Orange-type slang, Warner narrates his Dickensian journey through an unjust system designed to keep bigriches gigantic and littlepoors miniscule. Andrews gives himself a gargantuan task here, and there are elements that don't deliver. For a novel skewering a system so inexorably tied to race, for instance, the absence of a critique of racism is glaring. And yet, there are pithy, sharp moments, too, particularly the illuminating descriptions of the vast, visible gulf between rich and poor. Though it occasionally misses the mark, it nevertheless offers a unique, caustic, thought-provoking lampoon of America's obsession with wealth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2018
In Andrews's satirical dystopian world, one's physical size is directly related to one's wealth or poverty. "Bigriches" are gigantic; "littlepoors" are so tiny they can be killed by "middlerich" footfalls. The one place everyone is the same is Dreamworld, where littlepoor protagonist Warner has powerful talents for shaping dreams. Andrews uses a mixture of colloquial slang, words run together, and phonetic spelling in this allegory about economic inequities.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)