The Mutant Mushroom Takeover, realistic scary fiction for middle grades

Our 11-year-old read came into the bedroom with The Mutant Mushroom Takeover under his arm. He tossed the book on the bed. “How was it?”, I asked. “It was too scary, so I couldn’t finish it”, he said as he got another book from our nightstand. If books were meat he’d be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, so I was curious about this one. About half of the way through the book I understood what he meant, but wanted to add a caveat. It’s not that scary. It’s more of a slow-building, realistic fiction book that’s perfect for middle school students.

For those middle school readers, it’s absolutely perfect. When they’re reading the book they’ll be thinking to themselves if it really could be happening. The book takes place in modern times and doesn’t have any science-fiction elements. The two teen main characters are normal and don’t have any superpowers, yet they find themselves in the midst of a highly believable and localized zombie apocalypse.

It’s a dream. They’re filming a movie. We went over all of the possibilities as to what was causing the mutant mushrooms and trying to figure out what was happening to the people of Shady Pines. It’s a sleepy little town and Maggie’s dad recently had to leave town to work in his new job as a scientist. In the meantime, she’s staying with her grandmother and hanging out with her best friend, Nate.

Nate loves to do videos and fancies himself as a rising YouTube star. He’s just looking for the next big video scoop that’ll go viral and then he’s on to bigger and better things. The two of them hear about some odd glows that are coming from the forest. Their imagination gets the best of them and they convince themselves that it’s probably a UFO. They see a glow coming from the forest and get closer to investigate it when the town recluse who lives in a shack out there confronts them. Actually, his dogs chase them first, some helicopters appear and a pack of mysterious vans show up too. Before the kids can escape from the forest the old man dies, but not before giving them a grave and serious warning.

Maggie is much like her father and quite the scientist. She knows that there must be a logical explanation for the glowing mushrooms. It’s the insects that fly in an attack pattern or those that have a herd mentality that start to concern her. When people start physically acting sick and behaving like they’re possessed she and Nate really start to freak out.

The Mutant Mushroom Takeover is a middle-grade book that hits all of the buttons for ages 12 and up. What those readers will find is a realistic fiction book that constantly has them questioning the truth and what is possible. It’s a lot of fun and has a sense of well-paced dread that builds up to a very satisfying conclusion. With only 30 pages left in the book, I was wondering how they’d tie up the plot, and not leave any ends dangling for a cliffhanger. It does, and in doing so it also sets up a very fun book series, A Maggie and Nate Mystery that hopefully has other stories of this caliber up its sleeve.

The Mutant Mushroom Takeover is A Maggie and Nate Mystery, written by Summer Rachel Short and on Simon & Schuster.

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