Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

This was the first book I ever read that in any way accurately described by experience of middle school, and as such, I really don't exaggerate when I say that it changed my life. If I could give one book to every adolescent in America, it would be this one.

It's also the book that got me started on collecting crank paperbacks and works on the paranormal and anomalous, so it's responsible for that entire bookcase worth of books that I don't have any more shelf space for.

Little-known but fantastic YA novel from Pinkwater, which manages to be both incredibly quirky and entertaining and teach valuable life lessons without ever quite seeming to do so. Leonard Neeble begins the eighth grade as a new student at a depressingly realistic middle school, with teachers who couldn't care less, no friends, and vacuously out-of-touch parents. He finally befriends a strange kid named Alan Mendlesohn, who has a knack for messing with the status quo and shares Leonard's innate smarts and curiosity. Together, the two get sucked into a strange world of psychic powers, new age con artists and interplanetary biker gangs, all the while dealing with equally absurd aspects of their middle school lives.

Filled with a love for show more old neighborhoods and local businesses, and a sadness even more relevant today at the disappearance of weird independent bookstores and quirky corner chili parlors, the book also is steeped in a healthy distrust of institutions and authority; everything from new age mysticism to psychiatry to religious dogma to suburban life gets put under scrutiny by Leonard, who learns above all else during the novel to think for himself, rather than buy what anyone else is selling. At the book's core is a rather astonishingly insightful reading of the entire purpose and destiny of civilization itself. Chock full of Pinkwater's trademark quirky characters and humor. The ending peters out a bit, but there's more than enough in the earlier pages to make this worthwhile for readers of any age. show less

This was the first Pinkwater book I ever read, at one of my sons urging. I loved when I first read it, and rereading it I was impressed by the way Pinkwater throws together cliched genre elements like mysterious bookstore owners and ancient secrets with genuine childhood sorrows, in this case moving to a new school. This is a classic.

Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars is one of Daniel Pinkwater's earliest books. I read it because it was mentioned by Yggdrasil Birnbum in The Yggyssey.

Leonard Neeble, the main character, befriends a the new kid in school. He's bored to death, having also recently moved to this new town. Nothing ever seems to happen her and his boredom is bringing out the worst in him.

Alan Mendelsohn claims to be from Mars. Now in later Pinkwater books, out of the blue statements should be taken at face value. But this book doesn't carry itself with the same bravado so it's hard to tell if Alan and Leonard are telling things as they are.

Although this book has its diehard fans, it didn't pull me into its story as much as I was hoping or expecting. Alan show more for all his bizarre stories is actually rather boring. He doesn't tell his stories with the same panache as Yggdrasil does. show less

One of my ALL TIME favorites from when I was a kid - used to re-read this one constantly. I read it again a year or so ago and it was just as good as I remembered!

One of my ALL TIME favorites from when I was a kid - used to re-read this one constantly. I read it again a year or so ago and it was just as good as I remembered!

Our main character moves to a new school and is thrilled to finally make a friend, Alan Mendelsohn. Alan and our main character go in search of comic books and end up with a machine that allows a person to control other people’s thoughts and actions. Will it work? And is Alan really from Mars?