Parents' Guide to

Mosquitoland

By Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Unforgettable story of a girl's 1,000-mile journey home.

Book David Arnold Coming of Age 2015
Mosquitoland Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

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age 14+

Based on 3 parent reviews

fibrorat
fibrorat Parent of 18-year-old
November 16, 2017
age 13+

I LOVED this book and could not put it down. I am thinking my 13 year old son is ready for it now and can't wait to see if he loves it as much as I did.

ivytlee
ivytlee Adult
May 12, 2016
age 16+

AMazing

Mosquitoland by David Arnold is amazing!! It is the perfect book for a lazy day, I finished it in less than 24 hours. Mary Iris Malone makes her way from Mississippi to Cleveland to visit her sick mother. On a greyhound bus, she meets a quirky cast of travelers. The characters are unique, refreshing, and dynamic. It's so beautifully written that I promise you that you won't want to put it down. It's an adventure from start to finish. Unlike typical young adult books, this novel is beautifully written. It captures the thought process of a girl with mental illness and gives insight on what it is like to live with one. The book deals with a lot of real issues like suicide, sexual assault, and mental illness. I highly recommend it.
See all 3 parent reviews

What's the Story?

The opening page of MOSQUITOLAND is one line -- "I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay" -- and the second is the first in a series of letters to an unspecified relative named Isabel, to whom Mary (or Mim, as she prefers to be called) is chronicling the story of a 1,000-mile journey she took to get home to her mother. Mim lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her father and his new wife, Kathy, but she refers to the town as Mosquitoland, and it doesn't feel like home. After discovering that her beloved mother is sick back home in Cleveland, Mim decides to steal her stepmother's secret stash of cash and take the first Greyhound bus headed for Ohio by Labor Day, which is only four days away. Mim is no stereotypical teenager: She may or may not suffer from psychosis; she's temporarily blind in one eye; and she has a displaced epiglottis and can pretty much vomit on command. All these issues -- and more -- come into play as Mim travels the 947 miles and meets a host of strangers, some heroic, some villainous, but most somewhere in between who change her life.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (3):
Kids say (10):

David Arnold has created an unforgettable main character in Mim. Readers don't need to relate to her or even like her to feel invested in her story, which takes bizarre, heartbreaking, but always revelatory twists and turns. In Arnold's crisp prose, Mim comes alive in all her flawed glory. A loner whose best friend is her mysteriously absent mother, she would love to be played by Kate Winslet in the imaginary filmed version of her life, but she later amends this choice. She categorizes the kinds of suburban teens who act, dress, and think the same as the "Generics," who don't treasure fierce individuality the way Mim does; in her letters, she's as beautifully damaged and in need of hope and friendship as Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower or Laurel in Love Letters to the Dead.

So here's this puking, half-blind, unpredictable girl who hears voices in her head, and all she wants is to reach the one person in the world she knows loves her unconditionally. Along the way, she meets an older woman, Arlene, and two guys -- Walt, a homeless teenager with Down syndrome living under a bridge in Independence, Kentucky, and Beck, a gorgeous 20- or 21-year-old college guy who was on the bus with her -- who quickly become her close friends (and in the case of Beck, her unattainable love interest). They each make Mim reconsider the way she closes herself off to anyone other than her mother. This trip is anything but easy, and at times it's so hard and heavy you want to reach out and hug Mim (or slap her, or both), but there's hope, too -- a conversation you don't want to end, a chaste kiss full of promise, a new beginning after so many old hurts.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the popularity of books about life-changing road trips. Why are road trip books such a compelling metaphor for the journey of life?

  • Discuss the way the author switches between the epistolary sections and the standard narrative of Mim's trip. Do you like the way Mim's flashbacks and random thoughts in her letters switch to the continuation of her journey?

  • What do you think of the romance in Mosquitoland? Is it appropriate? Believable?

Book Details

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