When MotherTalk put out a call for reviewers for Maximum Ride: Saving The World and Other Extreme Sports, I was eager to read it. My oldest daughter is an avid reader, and prefers exciting stories with fantasy elements. We've spotted this series before, but hadn't picked it up yet. I'm familiar with some of James Patterson's other books, hand-me-downs from my husband's airplane reading stash. His rapid fire, cinematical writing style makes for a quick, entertaining read, and I was curious to read his young-adult offerings.

Maximum Ride: Saving the World is the third book in a series that is projected to have several more books and a movie, too. A line early in the book has the narrator and main character "Max" commenting:

Ah, the joys of being an adolescent hybrid runaway.

Ah, yes... that pretty much sums it up nicely.

I willingly suspended disbelief as I tore through this book. Winged kids? Cool! Crazy mutants and plots to control the world's population and hybrid human/animal experiments and teen angst and evil corporations! Wahoo!

The thing about this genre (action fiction?) is that it plows breathlessly along, the plot proceeding so quickly that there is not much time for in-depth character development or descriptive writing beyond the basics. As someone who prefers literature that offers riches, this didn't meet my needs.

But here's the other thing - I'm not the target audience for this book. While my eight-year-old could probably follow the story, the heavy use of slang, sarcasm and faux-swearing (freaking, for example) and references to crack addicts and hookers make it a little too edgy for younger kids, say, the 8-12 year old range. Maybe I'm just sheltering my kids.

For a slightly older child, who is already well-versed in pop culture and sophisticated enough to understand the sarcasm and other elements, I think this would be a great series. The rapid-fire chapters and non-stop action are great for readers who don't like to linger, and the characters are undeniably cool. Best of all, even with all the strange abilities of the characters, these are plausible, real-world kids, with problems and emotions just like the target audience. They don't have everything figured out yet, and their flaws are both endearing and authentic.

With a tied-in blog, and an active community of enthusiastic fans, Maximum Ride will continue to build momentum. The publishers aren't waiting for the adults to catch up - they are speaking directly to kids through their sites, and from the enthusiasm of readers...and that is really cool. For all the press that the end of the Harry Potter series would equal the end to kids reading - I have to laugh. Maximum Ride offers a great chance for kids to escape into a fantasy world that resembles their own - and that is very appealing. This is just one of thousands of great options that will get - and keep - kids reading.

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