I received Louis Sachar’s latest middle grade, Fuzzy Mud, in the mail a couple weeks ago and deliberately read it before I looked up any professional reviews. It’s a given I would purchase it for my library, but I wanted to make up my mind as to its quality without other librarians telling me about it first. This is unusual for me since I normally read (or at least skim) a copious amount of reviews for every book I read before I dive in. But I’m glad I went into this one pretty blind. (In case you’d like to know now, it’s gotten positive reviews from all major trade journals, with a starred review from Booklist.)

My verdict: It’s good, but it’s not great. It’s going to be compared to Holes; of course it is. In comparison to that nearly perfect middle grade book, Fuzzy Mud is not quite as deftly plotted, its characters not as rich. It feels a little thin. Taken separately from Holes, it’s still a worthwhile read with a great middle grade voice, but even then, I wouldn’t call it a great book. It is a very good one, though.

Tamaya Dhilwaddi is in the 5th grade, and her mother forces her to walk to and from school with 7th-grader Marshall Walsh. They’re supposed to avoid the woods, but one day Marshall shoots right for it, telling Tamaya angrily that he knows a shortcut. Unbeknownst to her, Marshall is being bullied by Chad, another 7th grader, who has threatened to beat him up on his way home that day. Marshall hopes to avoid the bully, and he doesn’t particularly want to explain it to Tamaya, who rushes to keep up with him.

It turns out there’s a good reason to avoid the woods. Tamaya stumbles across something she can only call “fuzzy mud,” because that’s exactly what it looks like. And Chad finds them anyway. In their rush to escape the bully, Tamaya throws some of the fuzzy mud into Chad’s face. They go home and try to forget the incident – except Tamaya now has a strange rash that won’t go away.

As Tamaya’s rash worsens, the school notices that Chad hasn’t been seen in a while. Tamaya is stricken, knowing that while she just got some of the fuzzy mud on her hands, Chad got it in his face. Marshall won’t tell anyone that Chad is in the woods, but Tamaya knows she has to go see if he’s still there, if he’s still alive. By now, the school is on lockdown, but Tamaya manages to get away. This time, Marshall follows her.

The story is told from Tamaya’s and Marshall’s alternating points of view, though Tamaya’s is a bit more memorable. Interspersed are transcripts from a national hearing about the fuzzy mud, which takes place sometime after the other events of the book and show how catastrophically things escalated. There are also some ominous mathematical equations whose sums demonstrate the same thing in a different way. Both plot devices are well-used and very Louis Sachar.

Just what exactly the fuzzy mud is unravels over the course of this pretty short (under 200 pages) book. It’s a cool and somewhat unsettling concept having to do with clean energy and more broadly environmentalism and scarcity of resources – plus some animals rights issues, possibly, and the science of mutation. These are absolutely concepts kids can get, and placing them in the context of bullying and an adventure in the woods makes them digestible and interesting. The book has a dash of Wayside School since an understanding of exponents is essential to the story. It’s a slightly weird book (and a funny one), perhaps not as weird as Holes, but it has the same sort of flavor. It’s definitely a Sachar book, with writing that speaks well to a middle graders. He just knows how to write for this audience.

Where I felt a little let down was the overall thinness of the story. Middle grade books definitely don’t have to be (and most shouldn’t be) doorstoppers, but 192 pages feels not quite long enough to tell this story adequately. There are a lot of big ideas presented very quickly, particularly in the sections with the hearing/debriefing of the fuzzy mud incident. And because these sections split up the adventure in the woods at several points, Tamaya and Marshall’s story feels a bit scant, too. I felt that the bullying subplot with Chad was a little underdeveloped as well – its resolution felt too pat and a bit touchy-feely, with Chad’s about-face coming easily and quickly.

These weaknesses aside, this is a unique, fun, and interesting book for kids from a writer who excels at writing middle grade. There will be high demand and the concept should make it an easy sell.

Review copy received from the publisher. Fuzzy Mud publishes today.