The lion of Mars

Jennifer L. Holm

Book - 2021

Bell has spent his whole life--all eleven years of it--on Mars. But he's still just a regular kid-he loves cats, any kind of cake, and is curious about the secrets the adults in the US colony are keeping. Like, why don't have contact with anyone on the other Mars colonies? Why are they so isolated? When a virus breaks out and the grown-ups all fall ill, Bell and the other children are the only ones who can help. It's up to Bell--a regular kid in a very different world--to uncover the truth and save his family...and possibly unite an entire planet. Mars may be a world far, far away, but in the hands of Jennifer L. Holm, beloved and bestselling author of The Fourteenth Goldfish, it can't help but feel like home.

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Subjects
Genres
Science fiction
Published
New York : Random House 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Jennifer L. Holm (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
259 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Audience
Ages 9-12.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (page 257).
ISBN
9780593121818
9780593121849
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

In the year 2091, 11-year-old Bell leads a mundane life in America's small, underground settlement on Mars, along with a handful of adults and other orphaned children. He knows little of Earth and its various life-forms and cultures, a fact not helped by his home's self-imposed isolation from the nearby settlements of other nations, sparked by a mysterious incident, years before, that resulted in an American's death. Holm moves slowly in the first half, exploring Bell's quiet, day-to-day existence on the red planet as he worries over friendships, does chores, and begins to ask questions about his expanding awareness of the universe he inhabits. The excitement ratchets up when the children make an unauthorized excursion in a rover, curiosity driving them to peek in on neighboring settlements and voice growing doubts about their separation. The point comes to a head when a virus infects all of the American adults, forcing the kids to seek aid from their neighbors. The plot and setting are elegantly simple, yet the story proves completely engaging, driven by a charming cast of gentle characters and, more so, by Holm's lean, measured prose, which moves briskly and seems to strike a resonant note on every page. An unexpectedly cozy work of sf--celebrating science, community, and cooperation--that will have readers feeling right at home on Mars.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling, three-time Newbery Honor Book author Holm is as popular as ever in the wake of her Sunny graphic novels, and her dip into sf--with a plot that happens to feature an unchecked virus--is timely.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Peppered with such intriguing scientific details as the pervasive nature of Mars dust, Holm's (The Evil Princess vs. the Brave Knight) absorbing speculative novel is anti-isolationist at its core. Though 11-year-old Bell has always lived on Mars, he's a pretty regular kid: he loves cats, worries about friendships, and asks a lot of questions. Bell and four teenagers live with six adults and cat Leo in a homey, self-sustaining underground settlement "held together with duct tape," sharing chores (harvesting algae to manufacture toilet paper, for example) and learning about a perplexing Earth through digi-reels and the adults' memories. There are only a few rules in the Mars Settlement Mission, the most important being "no contact with foreign countries, ever," the result of a deep rift between various countries' settlements. When a serious virus strikes the adults, though, Bell and the other kids realize that the policy might become deadly. Holm's science fiction setting is rendered with a keen sense of place grounded by identifiable sociofamilial relationships (as the youngest, Bell is occasionally pressured into dangerous situations) and a clear philosophy about the power of cooperation: "Lions who are rejected by their pride do not survive long." Ages 8--12. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review

Eleven-year-old Bell is the youngest resident of the American settlement on Mars. Along with the older kids -- like Bell, all orphans transported from Earth -- and the settlement's adult staff, Bell spends his days in a colony constructed within the lava tunnels of Mars, going to class, working on the algae farm, cleaning up dust, and staying far away from the French, Finnish, Chinese, and Russian settlements, which are firmly off limits following a fatal rover accident many years earlier. Bell is closest to Leo, the settlement's cat, and Phinneus, who oversees the farming operations, and he misses fourteen-year-old Trey, who seems to be avoiding him in an effort to fit in with the older kids. When a disease carried by stowaway mice on a supply ship infects all the settlement's adults, Bell and Trey team up to seek help from the other settlements, and discover that the Americans have cut themselves off from a vibrant international community of settlers over a series of misunderstandings. The kids' determination to stay in touch with their new friends brings fundamental changes to life on Mars. Although the messages are less subtle, and more pointed, than in some of Holm's (Full of Beans, rev. 7/16) previous books, the well-wrought setting, including thoughtful depiction of lowish-tech Martian life, and a strong cast of well-developed characters make for an intriguing and compelling read. Sarah Rettger March/April 2021 p.90(c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Eleven-year-old Bell is basically a normal kid--except for the fact that he lives on Mars. Bell is the youngest of the children in America's Mars settlement. Life on Mars is pretty good; all the adults are caring, and although there are a lot of responsibilities, there are just a few strict rules, including a ban on contacting other nations' settlements. The arrival of a shipment of supplies from Earth is a cause for celebration, but soon the adults in the settlement begin getting deathly ill. Bell and the other children have to break the rules and seek out help before it's too late for all of them. Holm puts care and thought into her worldbuilding, dropping hints about what is happening on Earth while indicating that there is a whole universe to be explored and leaving the details to readers' imaginations. She borrows from real science to create her vision of the future, something that will intrigue science-minded readers and maybe even make it a gateway to science fiction for some. The characters are endearing, the story is compelling, and the book has a positive but not didactic message, although the conflict is resolved a bit too easily. Bell is part of a community on Mars that is without racial categories; he describes his skin tone as being in the midrange of those around him. A delightful space adventure. (author's note, additional resources) (Science fiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter One Nest The trip to Mars was the hardest thing they'd ever experienced. That's what the grown-ups said. The small, cramped ship. The constant fear of something going wrong. The knowledge that they could never return to Earth. But honestly, it sounded like a cakewalk compared to sharing a bedroom with Albie. Because he snored. I hadn't had a decent night's sleep since Albie started bunking with me. I'd tried just about everything to block the noise: earplugs, sleeping under the blanket, even a thick hat with earflaps. But none of them worked. It was surprising because Albie was perfect. He was easygoing and did his chores without complaining. Of all us kids, he was the least likely to throw a fuss. The grown-­ups trusted him, even Sai. But it turned out there was one thing Albie wasn't good at: sleeping quietly. And I didn't know which was worse: Albie's snoring or Trey wanting to change rooms For as long as I could remember, Trey had slept in the bed across from mine. My drawings of cats and his drawings of aliens had papered the walls. Our plastic models crowded the shelves together. Then, two months ago, Trey suddenly asked to switch bedrooms. Next thing I knew, Trey was sleeping across the hall in the older kids' room with Vera and Flossy, while Albie was snoring in mine. And me? I wasn't sleeping at all. Neither was Leo, from the looks of it. The old cat was sitting up in bed, flicking his tail in annoyance. This room-­switching thing had happened once before. Back when Trey and I were little, the grown-­ups had moved us boys into one room and the girls into the other. Albie was older than me and Trey and so he was allowed to stay up later. The problem was that Albie would make a lot of noise when he came to bed, and he'd wake us up. The experiment was abandoned after a week. Now, all these years later, Albie was keeping me awake again. Across the room from me, Albie let out a loud, waffling snort. I groaned, pulling the pillow over my head. "Albie," I said. He didn't move. "Albie!" I shouted. He sat up abruptly, looking around the dimly lit room in confusion. Albie was tall, with broad shoulders. Darby said he would've made a good football player. Football was an Earth game where you threw around a ball and knocked into people. I didn't really understand it. "What's wrong, Bell?" Albie asked, his hair sticking out crazily everywhere. It was always funny to see him without his Dodgers ball cap. He only took it off at bedtime. "You're snoring!" I said. "Oh," he said. "I thought there was an emergency." "It is an emergency! I can't sleep!" "I'm so sorry, Bell," he mumbled, and lay back down. "I promise not to snore anymore." It was hard to be angry at Albie. He was kind and gentle--­a big teddy bear when it came right down to it. A big snoring teddy bear. "Aw, dust it," I muttered. Albie could have the room to himself. I grabbed my blanket and left, Leo padding after me. Not that I blamed him. Even a cat couldn't take Albie's snoring. V Leo and I walked down the twisting corridor, our way lit by the cool blue light of nighttime. The light changed to mirror the time of day. In the morning, the blue would transform to a warm, bright yellow. This was supposed to help us have a sense of time because the settlement was mostly underground. It had been built in a giant lava tube--­a massive, cavelike space left behind by flowing lava millions of years ago. It was the perfect prebuilt habitat, keeping us safe from the surface dangers of Mars--­radiation, extreme freezing temperatures, and dust. The interior walls were constructed from a space-­tech gray rubber that curved gently, flowing from one room to the next like a smile. The rooms were round, almost bubble-­like, for improved structural integrity. Sai told me he'd thrown out the old rules when he designed the settlement. Apparently, on Earth, people lived in boxy structures with hard corners. Earth sounded sharp to me. This corridor was a history of my childhood. There was the spot where I banged into the wall with my scooter. The scratches on the ceiling from when I'd tried to make my toy spaceship fly. (It didn't work.) And, of course, the ruler on the wall where Meems recorded our growth with a thick black pen. She joked that as some of the first human children to grow up on Mars, we were a living experiment. Farther down the way was a board with digi-­pics of us when we'd arrived on Mars. We were much older now than the babies on the wall. Albie was seventeen, the oldest in Earth years. Then came Flossy (sixteen), Vera (fifteen), Trey (fourteen), and me (eleven). I might have been the youngest, but at least I still knew how to have fun. Unlike the older kids who became moody grumps when they turned thirteen. Of course, in Mars years we were much younger. It took Mars 687 days to go around the sun, so a "Mars year" was 687 days, which meant I was only five and Trey was seven. Ahead of me, Leo stopped to sniff at something, his tail flicking in the air. When I was little, there had been a lot of cats. Bella. Mochi. Harley. Sesame. Little Cat. As the years went by, the cats died, and Leo was the only one left. But I still remembered them all. Then Leo and I were leaving the children's wing and passing the shared areas--­the recreation room and the mess hall and kitchen--­that bookended the two sleeping wings. The recreation room was illuminated by the flickering light of a digi-­reel that someone had left playing. Like the rest of the settlement, the room was painted a pale blue. It was supposed to be a soothing color that mimicked the Earth sky. There was an L-shaped couch with a loop rug woven from old clothing. Darby had created the rocking chair from plastic barrels. Everything was recycled on Mars. Even the plant that decorated the room was made from algae paper, although it was getting old and the leaves had become brittle and started to crumble. Aside from the couch and rocking chair, there was the small plastic table we had played at when we were little. These days, it held Flossy's sewing machine and fabric instead of our clay and crayons. Then there was the plastic display case next to the wall, which housed the rocks we children had collected over the years. After that was the mess hall. It smelled like tonight's supper: an algae casserole that was one of Salty Bill's standard meals. No one was around, so I made a quick stop in the kitchen and grabbed a few ginger cookies. Salty Bill didn't like anyone taking food when he wasn't there, but I figured he wouldn't miss them. Then I was in the grown-­ups' wing. First was Meems's room. I could find my way to it with my eyes closed; when we woke up sick at night, she was the one we went to. Past it was Salty Bill's room. Across from it was Phinneus's room. As I passed Eliana and Darby's room, I could hear soft snoring. Eliana had always complained about her husband's snoring, but I never understood what she was talking about. I sure did now. Everyone's rooms were dark except for Sai's. There was light under his door, and I wondered what kept him from sleep. I left the living quarters behind and followed the corridor that led to the work areas. This part of the settlement was usually buzzing with activity during the day. But in the middle of the night, the only sound was from the air scrubbers humming softly in the background like a lullaby. I passed the exercise room, Sai's workshop, the sick bay, various workrooms, the generator room, and, my favorite, the algae farm. Excerpted from The Lion of Mars by Jennifer L. Holm All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.