Kidsreads.com - THE DOOM MACHINE by Mark Teague

THE DOOM MACHINE
by Mark Teague
The Blue Sky Press/Scholastic
ISBN: 9780545151429
Ages 9-12
320 pages

Mark Teague’s work --- his artwork, at any rate --- is instantly recognizable to anyone who has known a kid in the last dozen years. His hilariously inventive illustrations for such books as HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT? tell stories in their own right. Now, with THE DOOM MACHINE, his first work of intermediate fiction, Teague proves that his storytelling skills don’t start and stop with illustrations, but he is quite a talented writer as well.

Let me set the scene for you. The year is 1956: the dawn of the Cold War and the height of the country’s infatuation with all things outer space. Jack Creedle is a paper delivery boy in the small town of Vern Hollow. He tries to stay one step ahead of the town police chief (and the chief’s bullying son, Grady) while not worrying his well-meaning mom too much and spending as much time as he can “borrowing” supplies from the local junkyard to fix up old cars. Perhaps inspired by his Uncle Bud, a dedicated inventor, Jack is a talented, budding mechanic. So it’s good thing that he’s around when Dr. Shumway and her daughter roll into town and can’t roll back out again because their car has broken down. Young Isadora is an aspiring scientist --- with some surprising skills --- who looks up to her accomplished mother but wishes she had a little more excitement in her life.

It turns out that Isadora is about to find excitement in spades. There have been recent reports of extraterrestrial activity in Vern Hollow, and, although Dr. Shumway and Isadora don’t believe a thing until they have found empirical evidence, pretty soon empirical evidence finds them. Determined to escape from the quarantine imposed by the Outer Space Division of the U.S. Army, they load up Dr. Shumway’s newly souped-up station wagon with Uncle Bud and his destabilizer machine (cleverly disguised as a refrigerator) in tow. When they encounter an alien search party, they (and the extremely valuable machine that can create holes in space) find themselves taken on board the huge flying saucer, prisoners of a ruthless alien commander named Xaafuun who just can’t stand “ooman bings.”

Mark Teague’s debut novel is a nonstop adventure, a wild and whimsical joy ride through time and space. What’s remarkable is how Teague manages to include semi-serious ideas about time travel, quantum mechanics and relativity into what is, in the final analysis, an exuberantly ridiculous plot, an homage to the adventure stories of yore. In the style of old 1950s science fiction television shows and movies, THE DOOM MACHINE is a crazy combination of fact and fiction (okay, mostly fiction) as Jack and company encounter dozens of different alien species as they careen through space on an interstellar journey that none of them (or any of Teague’s readers) will soon forget.

And, of course, the novel just wouldn’t be complete without Teague’s own numerous illustrations scattered throughout, bringing to life even more vividly the crazy worlds of his imagination.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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