Maximum Ride 3: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

So, summer is over, your kids are headed back to school, where they will be immersing themselves in whatever the latest “No Child Left Behind” guidelines are, and will no longer have hours of free time in which to immerse themselves in the latest 700 page wizard novel. You want them to have something interesting to read in their free time, right? A book that they can really get into, really relate to? Well, I have the perfect book – Maximum Ride 3: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, by James Patterson.

You might be familiar with James Patterson from his Alex Cross novels, and from two books he wrote called “When the Wind Blows”, and “The Lake House”, in which he introduced characters that were kids, raised in a “School”, where they had been subjected to experiments that gave them lighter bones, more muscles, and, well, wings.

That’s right, wings. And while it might have seemed implausible in a book written for adults, Patterson had the brilliant idea to take the same idea and write it for teens, and I can’t imagine that he had any idea what the impact of the books would be. When I joined the MotherTalk Blog Book Tour for this book, I had no idea what the impact would be on me!

The Maximum Ride series is not just three books about flying kids – it is an Internet phenomenon, thanks mostly to Patterson’s brilliant idea to have Fang, the oldest boy character, be a blogger. He uses his blog as a way to spread the word to other kids about how the same evil scientists that created the bird-kids are now planning mass genocide, and to rally the kids of the world to help stop it from happening.

I don’t know how Patterson did it. I don’t know if he’s been secretly lurking around on blogs and message boards or what, but the passages in the book that are blog posts and comments? Completely believable as coming from kids. See for yourself by checking out Fang’s Blog. Or Max’s MySpace page. Or the official Maximum Ride site, or the Movie page, or the Wikipedia entry! I don’t know how I haven’t heard about this before, but I love it! I love that Patterson has so seamlessly blended these three books and the online world together.

One other great feature of Maximum Ride 3 (and, I assume, the other two books in the series), are the short chapters. Short, as in, two to four pages. A kid can tuck one of these books into their backpack and read a few chapters on the bus on the way to school, or during one of those always-too-brief “free reading periods” at school, and not have to stop in the middle of the chapter. Or, they can do like I did, and sit down to start reading, and read 174 pages in one sitting, because I kept wanting to see what would happen next.

I don’t think this is the end of Maximum Ride. With a movie in the works, I think more books (and movies) will be coming. I might be 40 years old, but I love Young Adult Fiction (remind me to tell you about some of my favorite YA book series some time), and I loved Maximum Ride 3. I’ve already checked out book 1 from the library and I have book 2 on my waiting list. Fang, Max, Iggy, Nudge, Angel, Ari, and Total are great characters for anyone of any age!

Tagged as: Books