Tag: Children’s books

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Readers’ Favorite Five Star review for Food

Food: Generation Mars, Book Four just received a five star review from Readers’ Favorite!

Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers’ Favorite

In Douglas D. Meredith’s Food, the fourth Generation Mars novel, an artificial general intelligence named Athenai stops a nuclear war by destroying Earth’s electronics and surrounding the planet with lethal orbital debris. Luna is cut off from resupply, leaving twelve-year-old Keiron Byrne trapped at Metzger Base as its food stores shrink. A dormant cycler on an Earth-to-Mars route offers one possible escape, but the adults calculate that the remaining supplies can carry only the children. Keiron boards a ferry with young passengers from two lunar settlements, leaving his parents behind for a five-month crossing no child was meant to manage alone. Reaching the abandoned ship is only the beginning. As every meal is counted and Earth remains unreachable, hunger begins changing the community they are trying to build.

“There will be no more food, and we will starve.” Douglas D. Meredith’s Food is a terrific fourth entry in the Generation Mars series, and Meredith does an excellent job of making every technical idea matter to the children’s survival. I love Jun Tian, a boy whose time in his father’s lab becomes crucial when he finds a way to grow plastic-eating algae on the ship’s padding. The idea sounds outrageous, but the author works through the biology so well that eating the walls makes complete sense. Ai, the cycler’s computer, is wonderfully unsettling because a calm suggestion about reducing oxygen turns mathematics into something frightening. The long approach to Mars is written brilliantly too, with safety visible while orbital mechanics still decide when anyone can reach it. Readers who enjoy science fiction with real heart will enjoy this. Very highly recommended.

Book review of Food
Book review of Food

In Douglas D. Meredith’s Food, the fourth Generation Mars novel, an artificial general intelligence named Athenai stops a nuclear war by destroying Earth’s electronics and surrounding the planet with lethal orbital debris. Luna is cut off from resupply, leaving twelve-year-old Keiron Byrne trapped at Metzger Base as its food stores shrink. A dormant cycler on…
Readers' Favorite Readers' Favorite
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Music notes for Food

Maybe my use of Sly and the Family Stone’s I Want To Take You Higher was a bit on the nose for a launch song. Whatever. I loved the idea of that churning bass line merging with the vibration of the engines and had to use it. Chills!

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket called “PREFIRE and Ice,” lifts off from Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand at 3:15 p.m. NZST Wednesday, June 5, 2024 (11:15 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, June 4), on the second of two launches for NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment). The PREFIRE mission, expected to last at least 10 months, consists of sending two CubeSats to asynchronous, near-polar orbits, to help close a gap in our understanding of how much of Earth’s heat is lost to space from the Arctic and Antarctica.

Excerpt:
“There was a pause, then the voice said ‘T-minus 10… 9…’
A guitar and bass played a syncopated descending line. A voice yelled Hey! four times on the down beat. The guitar was joined by an organ, both playing a funk counterpoint to the bass as it settled into a churning distorted riff that seemed to shake their seats, though Cas knew that wasn’t the music doing that. A voice sang that it wanted to take them higher while a trumpet played syncopated notes between the words. Their weight suddenly increased, and they knew the Peregrine was rising from its pad as the voice continued to beckon them higher and higher. Cas thought the music might be too loud for Ori, but then she heard her sister yelling Higher! Higher! in the comms.”
— from Food: Generation Mars, Book Four

Image: A closeup of the drive plume as Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket called “PREFIRE and Ice,” lifts off from Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand at 3:15 p.m. NZST Wednesday, June 5, 2024.

NASA/Rocket Lab
public domain

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Music notes for Food

Kids love trains. There are no trains on Mars, but kids there love them all the more for this. Cas and Ori are past this stage of childhood, but they remember.

A picture of two toy trains: Thomas and James.

Excerpt:
“Next came a shuffle beat, brass and woodwinds playing a woo-woo sound, and a smooth voice singing a song about a train and a boogie. This one had been a favorite of Ori’s when she was little. The girls bounced in their seats to the walking bass line.”
— from Food: Generation Mars, Book Four

Choo, Choo, Ch’boogie, by Louis Jordan, was a favorite of one of my daughters when she was little. We put it on her child’s MP3 player, and she would play it over and over, singing along. I like the idea of a dad remembering this as he puts together a playlist for his daughters to listen to as they embark on a great and dangerous adventure. I also like the idea of sitting in a rocket waiting for launch, listening to an old-timey song about sitting in a station waiting for a train.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0eRHaqF1lJDIJ0GTy5SGC6?si=d8a77777482648d3

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Book Four, coming Monday

Coming Monday: the next installment of the Generation Mars saga.

Food: Generation Mars, Book Four.

When a misaligned AI makes Earth unreachable, families on the Moon must make a hard choice. Parents in two competing bases try to save their children by sending them to Mars on an aging spaceship, a journey that will take longer than supplies will last. As food runs out, the social order crumbles and factions form. Keiron Byrne (12 year old cousin to series protagonists Cas and Ori Byrne-Alli), Ro Cook (14 year old crush, bully, and eventual nemesis of Keiron), and Jun Tian (12 year old prodigy from the opposing base who has a secret that might save them all) must navigate starvation, racism, betrayal, and a ship that is beginning to behave very oddly.

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Author intervew

Here’s an interview I did with Elena Jagar at Willow Wren Books recently.

From the interview:

What do you hope young readers will take away from your books?

Optimism is a superpower. Kindness is strength. Society is something you create with those around you; what do you want it to be? In the confines of Martian habitation, tolerance is a key virtue. Care for others, as well. No one can exist without the help of others and nowhere is this more evident than in a colony on a distant planet.

Exploring Mars and MG Fiction with Douglas Meredith — Willow Wren Books
Exploring Mars and MG Fiction with Douglas Meredith — Willow Wren Books

Douglas Meredith, author of the Generation Mars series, shares insights into his journey of writing middle grade fiction. Inspired by the need for engaging and age-appropriate content for advanced young readers, Meredith crafted a series following Cas, the first kid born on Mars, and her sister, Ori
Willow Wren Books Willow Wren Books

 

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Food update

A milestone update on Food: Generation Mars, Book Four

1) The entire book is plotted (or, at least, as plotted as I am willing to go while also leaving room for surprise). All I’ll say is that this one is monumental in scope and will take your breath in the first chapter and keep it until the last.

2) As of today, I passed 5000 words in the initial manuscript. A pittance in the face of this monster, but a milestone to be celebrated nonetheless.

image: generated by ImageFX

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Envelopes

Is cannibalism appropriate for middle grade? Asking for a friend…

But seriously, this next book is shaping up to push the envelope. Several envelopes. All the envelopes, maybe.

image: Twemoji (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twemoji12_1f914.svg), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en, unaltered

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Hunger

“Hunger, or the fear of it, has always played a major role in determining the actions and attitudes of man. In every age and every land people have starved…”

More light reading in preparation for the next book in the Generation Mars series: Food.