Mile Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man novel like no other-for the better

In a very simple overstatement in the world of books, there are books for the genre fans, books for the general audience, and those that target the niche. Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man novel, yet it’s unlike any web-slinger book, graphic novel or story that you’ve read before. “You” could be a Spider-Man fan who thinks that they’ve seen every vehicle that the character can entertain from. Miles Morales: Suspended is the most unlikely of superhero novels. We often point out to educators, parents or students the merits of reading graphic novels or comic book. This book takes that, turns it on its head, and literarily invites Spidey fans to go someplace that they’ve never been before.

It starts with the book’s title, Mils Morales Suspended, and the illustration on the front cover that shows Miles dangling upside down. He’s suspended in air, high above the city’s urban landscape. However, in this book, the majority of the story takes place when Mile Morales is suspended, as in ISS, the in-school variety. It’s the slow boil dread of The Breakfast Club where silence is mandatory, sleep is an impossibility, and work, regardless of how busy you might think it is, must happen.

To make the book even more puzzling from the outset is that aspects of it are written in prose. There will be four lines of poetry on one page, that are placed between two pages of traditional sentence and paragraph narrative. Sometimes the stanzas might be a couple of pages long and are then separated by a half-blank page. The text, even when it’s a more traditional sentence structure, might be as esoteric and dreamy as a realistic painting from the mid-1800s. It could muse about the seemingly erratic movements of a spider in the corner that seems to have no rhyme or reason, only before its prey wanders into the sticky surroundings of the area that it wasn’t looking at.

Miles Morales Suspended allows ample time for the reader to think about what it’s like to be Spider-Man. It’s in the white spaces between the differing presentation of the text. Some of the text is right-centered, left-centered, centered, in italics bolded or blacked-out. It’s in the dreamy manner in how Miles deals with his suspension and the nagging thought that something is wrong in the school today. If you’re a superhero fan who picked up Miles Morales: Suspended in a hurry you need to be aware that there is action.

In the final act of the book there is a lot of action. It’s also important to point out to those readers that the action is not typical. Miles doesn’t fight a typical villain. The villain in Suspended is a new one who is very creepy and exists with Morales on the same level. They have more in common than they don’t and that bond is one that makes their conflict play out in a very real and measured way.

Because this is a Miles Morales Spider-Man-centric story, some illustrations are done in a more manic, graffiti style that’s consistent with the Miles Morales from the movies. There aren’t many of them, but they add to the payoff and help build up the mystery as the story moves forward. From the book’s cover you’ll see a very small clue as to the danger that Miles will face in the school.

What readers will find surprising is how quickly they’re able to discern, yet not care, about the differing presentation. The poetic elements blend directly into the sentences, and then back into poetry without sacrificing the speed or tension of the story. If anything, the tension in the story increases because the pause, blank space or change in narrative device allows readers to translate the conflict in their own way. Moreover, the very few onomatopes that are sprinkled through the book act like an alarm to readers who need an extra nudge to pay attention.   

There’s a fight in school that illustrates this perfectly. In the span of two pages we see sentence fragments, individual words, poetry, and paragraphs that take readers through the conflict in a way that’s intense, detailed, understandable, and brief. Not only that, but it’s that altercation that helps set up the final conflict.

Miles Morales Suspended is a novel that does the same thing, to a degree of the welcome mat effect of comic books in graphic novels. In those mediums, they use art and graphics to usher people through reading and engaging in a complex story. In this book, it uses one of the most well-known superheroes in the world to get kids to read a book with over 50% poetry and the remaining percentages mixed between stark sentences, random thoughts, and paragraphs.

All the while it’s entertaining those who are along for the ride and surrender their adverse emotions to poetry. This is not lovey lovey-dovey poems about unrequited dreams and regrets. This is jarring, attention-getting poetry that wakes you up, shows you a different way to communicate and does it with a Spidey sense of flair. As it almost did with me, the presentation of the book will throw off many readers. However, those upper middle school or high school readers who want a fun, unexpected read that offers up some superhero similarities should jump into this web.

Miles Morales: Suspended is a Spider-Man novel and by Jason Reynolds with illustrations by Zeke Pena and is A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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