Mousetraps - Reviews

KIRKUS – September 2008
Adorable cartoons of mice getting caught in Rube Goldberg–esque mousetraps add a deceptively lighthearted note to Maxie's high-school tale. Maxie's first day of her junior year is shaken up when Rick, her old best friend from elementary school, appears in her classroom. Rick hasn't been seen since seventh grade, when he was brutally beaten by middle-school gay bashers. Now that he's back, Maxie isn't sure if she wants to renew the old friendship. High school is complicating all of her relationships, and it would be nice to have something simple again, something like her childhood playmate. Funny, though—Rick seems different these days. The bullying and homophobia hasn't stopped, but his reactions to it have changed. Sometimes he even frightens Maxie. What seems at first like a pat high-school story of friendship and coming-out becomes something very different, challenging assumptions about gender, sexuality and friendship. Rick and Maxie's thought-provoking story, juxtaposed against Hauser's renderings of Maxie's cartoons, is unexpectedly, richly dark, with no easy answers. Both chilling and sweet.

Bay Windows – September 2008
Meet the Judy Blume of the post-Columbine generation and her charming protagonist, Maxie. High school is tough for Maxie for all the usual reasons; not to mention that she's overshadowed by her athletic best friend and her over-achieving cousin, Sean, who's already taking college classes and is secretly dating the school's star football player. Maxie seems fated to be unnoticed until Rick returns to her high school. Close friends in elementary school, Maxie dropped Rick in sixth grade when she saw he was fated to be the kid everybody picked on. After a nasty bullying incident, Rick transferred to another school. Now he's back and assigned to be Maxie's lab partner in chemistry. This simple twist of fate unleashes an inexorable chain of "37 significant events," like the Rube Goldberg style mousetraps that Maxie doodles in her sketchpad, that leads to a troubled new friendship, mysterious pranks at school, and Maxie's first real kiss. Along the way Schmatz sensitively delves into alternative families, homophobia, and the ugly side of the unspoken class system of adolescence. It's rare to find an adult who writes young people so well; Rick's unhappiness and Maxie's confusion are handled with deft authenticity that is a pleasure to read, even when painful.

Reviewed by Brian Jewell

School Library Journal – November 2008
Mousetraps is about a boy named Rick and how he faces so much violence and cruelty from his classmates. It is also about his friend Maxie, whom he would spend most of his time with when they were younger, making mouse traps. Things change when Rick and Maxie are no longer friends in high school but end up being lab partners. Soon they start to remember their days of mouse trap making and start to rekindle their friendship. Mousetraps is a book worth reading because of its realistic characters and events. The reader can really relate to many of the characters and the problems they face. Mousetraps is so unlike the typical teenage love stories we all read about. Mousetraps focuses on the people we seldom read about, and problems we rarely see in stories for teens.

The cover of the book looked interesting but did not give away much about the book. From looking at the cover I was interested in reading Mousetraps but I did not know a whole lot about the book. Something about the cover made me want to pick it up and see what it was about. The cover reflected the contents of the book pretty well and even foreshadowed events that happen later in the book.

The most compelling aspect of this book is the changing relationship between the two main characters, Maxie and Rick. The way they start to become friends once more, and the obstacles that stand in their way keep the reader wondering what will happen next.

Reviewed by Avi G., age 14, member of Teens Know "Best" YA Galley Group

ALAN's Picks – August 2008
In less than two hundred pages the author dives into the lives and minds of several teenagers and their experiences. Maxie draws all the time, but does not consider herself an artist until there is a blast from the past. Her childhood friend Roddy, now Rick, has returned to school after being gone from town several years. Maxie's cousin, Sean, is gay and in love with the star football player Dexter. Dexter returns the sentiment. Maxie's best friend and snowboarder, Tay, experiments with drugs and pushes Maxie away. The author tells the story quickly, twisting their lives together seamlessly. The biggest issues are with Rick and his history with bullying and how he has dealt with and is dealing with the continuation of the childhood harassment. What could turn out to be a horrible Colombine-type incident is put on hold with some good old-fashioned moral fiber. The author, Pat Schmatz, presents the reader with bullying, drugs, frustration, homosexuality and the stability/instability of family in the lives of several teenagers and does it very well.

Reviewed by Jennifer Dixon, Woodstock, GA

Youth Today – January 2009
Until Rick shows up in high school chemistry class the first day of junior year in this novel, Maxie hadn't seen him since they were sixth-grade buddies who designed crazy mousetraps on paper. He disappeared that year after being injured in a violent attack during gym class. The incident was hushed up, but Maxie knows what happened, because her gay cousin, Sean, tried to stop the mob. Rick has grown tall and wary, but when they become lab partners, he's pleased that Maxie still draws amusing cartoons - on their lab work and this novel's pages. Away from school, they hang out. Assuming that Rick is gay, Maxie is confused by his mixed signals, especially his scary "laser-look." When "faggot" is keyed onto Rick's car, Maxie is supportive. Then Rick shocks Maxie with a kiss that goes very wrong. She's never seen such explosive anger, and now Rick won't see her. In this homophobic school rife with violent bullying, staffers look the other way, but Maxie's family doesn't. In a nail-biting conclusion, Sean, Maxie and her gay uncles come through for Rick and help avert his dangerous plan for the school. Without one preachy word, Schmatz opens the way for discussions of urgent issues affecting today's schools. (800) 328-4929, www. lernerbooks.com.

Reviewed by Cathi Dunn MacRae, former editor of Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)

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