MARTians

by Blythe Woolston

Overview

In a near-future world of exurban decay studded with big box stores, daily routine revolves around shopping—for those who can. For Zoë, the mission is simpler: live.

Last girl Zoë Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, is starting work at AllMART, where "your smile is the AllMART welcome mat.” Her living arrangements are equally bleak: she can wait for her home to be foreclosed and stripped of anything valuable now that AnnaMom has moved away, leaving Zoë behind, or move to the Warren, an abandoned strip-mall-turned-refuge for other left-behinds. With a handful of other disaffected, forgotten kids, Zoë must find her place in a world that has consumed itself beyond redemption. She may be a last girl, but her name means “life,” and Zoë isn’t ready to disappear into the AllMART abyss. Zoë wants to live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763680503
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/13/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	HL690L (what's this?)
File size:	947 KB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Blythe Woolston's first novel, The Freak Observer, won the William C. Morris Debut Award. She is also the author of Black Helicopters, an American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection and a Montana Book Award Honor Book. Blythe Woolston lives in Billings, Montana.

I was born in Montana. My dad was a logger and my mother worked as a cook. They tell me that I was a difficult baby: slow to talk, indifferent to affection, and attractive to rattlesnakes. Maybe that was true, but I talk way too much now and haven’t seen a rattlesnake for several years.

I was the first person in my family to go to university; I really had no choice because I was a book-loving day-dreamer who was unable to do useful stuff like cutting down trees. Even though I always liked to read, writing books was never my goal. I worked in libraries, taught school, and wrote indexes for books about history and science. In fact, I only started writing books because I wanted something to read one day, but I didn’t have a book like the one I wanted to read. As it turns out, writing fiction is very much like reading – at least the way I do it, which is without an outline or any idea how things will end. I’m not picky about where and when I write. If I were, I’d never get anything done. My life is very chaotic– or at least unpredictable.

Ten things you might not know about me include:
I love watching jellyfish in aquariums. My favorites are the Sea Gooseberry and Moon Jelly.
I am nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. I like using both telescopes and microscopes, but I refuse to wear glasses.
I am an atrocious speller. I have papers from the 5th grade that appear to have been written by a confused chimpanzee – it isn’t just the spelling; it is also the penmanship.
If my original career plans hadn’t gone wrong, I’d be a cowboy-astronaut.
The first time I took calculus, I got an F, which is to say I flat-out failed the course (. . . proving I was not destined to be a cowboy-astronaut).
When I travel, I collect sand from deserts and beaches. Sometimes I end up bringing sand home in one of my socks. Socks are handy little bags.
I like to try to repair machines. I fail more often than I succeed, but I like the process either way.
I like radishes.
I am afraid of bears, although I find them wonderful.
I am the least interesting person I know.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/10/2015
Woolston (Black Helicopters) nods to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles as she envisions a bleak, near-future suburban wasteland of empty housing developments and thriving big box stores. After an unexpected early graduation when her high school is permanently closed “in the interest of efficiency,” Zoë Zindleman receives a job referral for AllMART. That same day her “AnnaMom” announces that she’s moving away and leaving Zoë behind. Eventually Zoë goes to live with other homeless kids at the Warren, an abandoned strip mall across from the AllMART. Snapshots of Zoë’s life as a trainee provide glimpses of a pervasive corporatocracy, and a populace all but deadened to reality. Zoë’s flattened narration reflects the disjointed, disconnected nature of her existence, and while Woolston keeps the focus on Zoë, offhandedly mentioned details about her world (“I’m not an Otakusexual—although I respect toonophilia as a sexually responsible choice”) and chilling corporatespeak (“Your smile is AllMART’s welcome mat”) will set imaginations spinning. It’s a terrifying extrapolation of the here-and-now and, like much of Woolston’s fiction, far too close for comfort. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Subtle callbacks to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles enhance the mood of eerie devastation for those who catch the references but don't detract for those who don't. Cheery commercial scripts, news transcripts, and other ephemera of this plastic society punctuate Zoë's narration, bearing witness to her grim environment, which, heartbreakingly, has no defeatable villain. A gorgeous and gut-wrenchingly familiar depiction of the entropic fragmentation of society.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Woolston, author of the Morris Award–winning The Freak Observer (2010), does a superb job creating a world that is part Kafka and part Orwell, while the regular integration into the narrative of quotes from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles further lends an otherworldly quality. Told in Zoe’s flat, affectless first person voice—one that is beautifully articulated—the novel has an increasingly ominous tone that invites anxious speculation about the future of the three young people in a soulless world. The one is both haunting and unforgettable.
—Booklist (starred review)

Zoë’s flattened narration reflects the disjointed, disconnected nature of her existence, and while Woolston keeps the focus on Zoë, offhandedly mentioned details about her world (“I’m not an Otakusexual—although I respect toonophilia as a sexually responsible choice”) and chilling corporatespeak (“Your smile is AllMART’s welcome mat”) will set imaginations spinning. It’s a terrifying extrapolation of the here-and-now and, like much of Woolston’s fiction, far too close for comfort.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

It is excellent, excellent, excellent, the sort of book that challenges and possibly changes a reader’s worldview.
—Kirkus Reviews

Zoë's voice is utterly distinctive...It's not hard to have affection for Zoë.
—Chicago Tribune

The parody of media manipulation, commercialism and retail psychology (as parroted by the savvy, order-seeking Zoë) is often laugh-out-loud funny, but underneath the satire of MARTians is the story of girl in search of love and family wherever she can find it.
—Shelf Awareness for Readers

Readers [will] feel for Zoë, who has been abandoned and had her future co-opted by corporate greed.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Readers will be quick to make comparisons to contemporary society. They will also root for Zoe to break free. Pair this with Marie Lu’s Legend (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011) and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (Tom Doherty Associates, 2008).
—School Library Connection

Readers interested in thought-provoking stories set in unusual environments will enjoy.
—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

09/01/2015
Gr 5–8—In a dreary near future, big box retail companies own everything—schools, doctors, even people, if they're not careful. For Zoe Zindleman, this world has always been a well-oiled machine guiding her through life. But when Zoe's mom is forced to leave town seeking better work and Zoe's school hustles her into the workforce a year early, she is left rudderless in her decaying subdivision. When the buses stop running and the water is in danger of being shut off, a strange boy finds Zoe and makes it his job to guide her. Wary but with few options, Zoe follows him into the small and dirty world of people like her who've fallen through the cracks. Previous Morris winner Woolston's writing is smart and atmospheric, leaving readers to fill in many of the blanks about Zoe's world. The protagonist is an interestingly uncommon lead, slow to distrust the consumer-centric society she's grown up in. Many of the themes and moments can be thought provoking, even heartbreaking—especially set against such familiar territory as toy departments and food courts. Overall, though, many readers will feel slighted by the lack of narrative progress. Woolston picks up many interesting threads through the short book but sees few of them to clear or compelling conclusions. VERDICT Readers interested in thought-provoking stories set in unusual environments will enjoy this quick read, but those looking for a thrilling page-turner may be disappointed.—Amy Diegelman, Vineyard Haven Public Library, MA

School Library Journal

★ 2015-07-22
A 15-year-old girl supports herself with a retail job as her close-to-reality dystopia spirals into hilariously surreal (yet tragic) chaos. Zoë Zindleman doesn't mind school and enjoys math (the foundation of responsible consumer citizenship). One day her weepy, drunken teacher is interrupted by the small-government Governor's shocking announcement: schools are privatized, all students are graduated, and everyone gets an e-tificate of graduation and a job referral. Many students are pipelined straight from the classroom to prison, but lucky Zoë is given two choices: AllMART or Q-MART. Thank goodness for the job, because Zoë's beloved AnnaMom comes home with news of her own: she's off to hunt for a job, leaving Zoë to fend for herself in their empty cul-de-sac. As the quirky humor dissolves into the baffling unrealities of loneliness and commerce, Zoë moves into an abandoned mall taken over by other unwanted children all looking out for one another. As a new AllMART trainee, Zoë—or Zero, according to her name badge—performs menial, unending, and Kafkaesque work, always with a smile: remember, a "smile is AllMART's welcome mat"! Subtle callbacks to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles enhance the mood of eerie devastation for those who catch the references but don't detract for those who don't. Cheery commercial scripts, news transcripts, and other ephemera of this plastic society punctuate Zoë's narration, bearing witness to her grim environment, which, heartbreakingly, has no defeatable villain. A gorgeous and gut-wrenchingly familiar depiction of the entropic fragmentation of society. (Science fiction. 13-17)

Kirkus Reviews