ZAPPED
by Prudence Breitrose
In Breitrose’s middle-grade adventure novel, a colony of gerbils gets a taste of the good life with help from a human boy and a shrinking machine.
Sophie, not yet fully grown, is judged too “bouncy” by the Elders of her colony of free gerbils. They send her on a mission for GRAPO (Gerbil Release and Progress Organization), which liberates gerbils all over the United States. She makes her way into an apartment and frees Fluffy, kept as a pet by 10-year-old Joe Newman. Fluffy reports that she has seen something extraordinary, which shakes the entire colony: it’s a device called a Nanozap, Joe’s inventor dad’s shrinking machine. Such a wonder could give the gerbils some much-desired prestige, outfitting them with human clothes and furnishings. They eye the Nanozap’s portable version, which resembles a “big old hairdryer.” But as the operation of this smaller machine still requires an opposable thumb, the Elders suggest shrinking Joe and asking him for help. Joe is surprisingly okay with this, and spends an hour or so a day gerbil-sized. The full-sized Joe devotes an afternoon to shrinking various items for the gerbils’ use, such as furniture humans aren’t currently using. Unfortunately, while the colony promotes equality among gerbils, some of them become greedy and demand more than their share of the flashy new things Joe has brought them. Meanwhile, the gerbils, who can shrink and “unshrink” Joe efficiently, discover that the Nanozap, both in its original and portable form, may contain a flaw that no one had spotted.
The author’s spry novel boasts a striking, largely tiny, cast. Short chapters energize the story, which jumps between Sophie’s and Joe’s easygoing first-person narrations. The gerbils overflow with personality; they earn money with a web-design business for oblivious humans, FaceTime with GRAPO’s out-of-state headquarters, and tolerate rats’ unfounded animosity. Much as in George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm (1945), the nonhuman characters represent communists. By contrast, the Newmans are capitalists (the Nanozap ignites much interest among billionaires). Breitrose smartly acknowledges the benefits and pitfalls of both economic systems. Still, the novel caters to young readers: Joe suffers familiar adolescent turmoil, from losing his friends when the Newmans move to enduring bullies at his new school and an obnoxious big brother. And while Joe does a few questionable things (such as lying and stealing), he does it to help the gerbils, aware that he’s crossing a moral line he’ll surely pay for later. More than anything else, the novel is witty and fun, with animated descriptions of characters “going up, up, up” a swinging ladder or “down, down, down” a building. There’s also clever uses of onomatopoeia, such as the Nanozap’s recurring sounds of “WHOOSH” when it shrinks Joe and “HSOOHW” when it makes him regular size again. Although the final act is a bit rushed, it brings the story to a gratifying close for all the characters.A multi-species cast powers this rollicking tale of family and acceptance.