Max and the Millions

January 1, 2018
Max, a white boy who is the only deaf student and hearing-aid user in his English boarding school, loves building models, but his world changes when his brilliant mentor, Mr. Darrow, the school janitor, inexplicably disappears. When Max investigates Darrow's room, he discovers a minuscule civilization known as the Floor, populated by millions of tiny, sentient people. By using Mr. Darrow's special goggles, lip-reading, and a special setting on his hearing aids, Max can communicate with the warring populace, who have divided themselves up by hair and eye color (skin color is not mentioned) into separate factions: Blues, Reds, and Greens. With the help of Sasha, Max's white American roommate; Sasha's Sparkle Pony-obsessed little sister; Luke, a young Blue prince; and a Red girl named Ivy, Max helps unite the factions, saves the micro world from the evil headmaster, and discovers what happened to Mr. Darrow. Running parallel to Max's story is one that centers on Luke, in which Max is the Giant. In the author's note, Montgomery details his research into the experiences of deaf children. Max's feelings of social isolation due to his deafness are honest, and his growing friendship with Sasha is heartwarming. It is surprising that Max uses no technology beyond hearing aids to navigate the hearing world, but some of this can be understood as more of the headmaster's incompetence and neglect. While some of the details are inconsistently presented, much of the worldbuilding is deliciously clever.A fast-paced and enjoyable adventure that encourages readers to appreciate the small things in life. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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February 1, 2018

Gr 4-6-When their boarding school's janitor disappears, Max and his friend must sneak around their nasty headmaster to save the colony of tiny people developing a sort of early European medieval society in the janitor's rooms. The book alternates between Max's story and that of the tiny people, whose world moves faster than Max's and features three warring groups, each with their own hair color, led by their own silly royalty and tepidly reminiscent of Terry Pratchett's Carpet People. Max is a hard-of-hearing White British boy with no family and low self-esteem who occasionally trades upon his deafness to his advantage. Chapters are well formed and the action forward-moving, but the simplistic characters don't develop any depth as the story progresses, the dialogue is flat, and some readers may have a hard time suspending disbelief with the half-baked faux-science surrounding the tiny people. The bit with the over-the-top villainous headmaster is likely to be funny to some readers. Then there's the tiny people's trite travails and some gender-stereotype humor surrounding a group of marauding "Sparkle Pony"-obsessed five-year-old girls. VERDICT Recommended as a strictly additional purchase where there is demand for lighthearted books featuring deaf protagonists.-Rhona Campbell, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2018
Grades 4-7 A lonely, hearing-impaired boarding-school student is gobsmacked to discover an entire tiny civilization occupying the custodian's rooms. The color-coded mini-folk have split into three hostile nations that are on the verge of open war; assisted by a specially altered hearing aid, Max struggles to convince the squabbling people to put aside their differences and move to a safer home before evil Headmaster Pitt vacuums them all up. Both the cover illustration and the author play fast and loose with scale, as the mites in their hundreds of thousands are small enough to gather in separate cities and yet somehow large enough for Max to see details. Still, Montgomery unwinds a suspenseful plot, and along the way gives Max some surprisingly effective allies, from seemingly popular (but equally lonely) classmate Sasha to tiny Luke, newly minted young king of the diminutive Blues (and a bit of an idiot ). In the end, Max gets to choose whether to join Luke or stay with Sasha, and readers are likely to have different views on his decision.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)