Max Disaster #1: Alien Eraser to the Rescue [Hardcover]

Marissa Moss (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up | Series: Max Disaster

Welcome to Max’s secret collection of inventions, comic strips, and random thoughts about school, family breakups, and the power of Alien Eraser.

Pimply older brothers. Good parents who get into bad fi ghts. Lucky for Max, he has a place to jot down his mixed-up thoughts and brilliant ideas. In a quirky mix of comics, concoctions, and contraptions, Max tells the
story of his topsy-turvy life — and how he tries to hold it and himself all Together.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2–4—These eye-catching transitional readers pack a lot into each slim volume: comics, humor, common childhood problems, science experiments, history, science fiction, and more. Flip-flopping between a comic and notebook format, the narratives follow the everyday life of an elementary school student and the supposedly real comic adventures of an alien eraser that claims to have taken over his brain. The alien's plan is to inspire Max to draw comics about his "glorious deeds," which include such feats as building the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Besides having his brain controlled by an alien, Max has an assortment of other things to deal with: a moody teenage brother, a boring teacher who confiscates his favorite belongings, and parents who have recently separated. He expresses and illustrates these everyday troubles with humorous, colorful drawings and diagrams of imaginative inventions, such as the "referee robot," designed to control fighting parents; and the "Book-to-Brain Zapper," which translates books into one's own words, creating a "report [that] miraculously writes itself with NO spelling mistakes." These books are full of fun, facts, and adventures that are sure to capture the interest of both reluctant and avid readers.—Melinda Piehler, Sawgrass Elementary School, Sunrise, FL
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About the Author

Marissa Moss fi rst wrote about Max in 2003. She is the author of many books for young readers, including the hugely popular Amelia’s Notebook series. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 56 pages
• Publisher: Candlewick (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0763635774
• ISBN-13: 978-0763635770
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,611,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marissa Moss has been telling stories and drawing pictures to go with them for as long as she can remember. She sent her first book to publishers when she was nine, but it wasn't very good and it never got published. She didn't try again until she was a grown-up, but since then she hasn't stopped.

The idea for the first Amelia's Notebook came from the notebook Moss kept when she was a kid. Amelia is a lot like her and the things that happen to Amelia really happened to Marissa (mostly).

Along with Amelia, Moss has created many characters and is especially drawn to history. Historical books allows her to imagine what it's like to be alive in a different place at a completely different time. And then there are the Max Disaster books which allow her to play with scientific experiments, inventions, and comic strips.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, tender and captivating!, May 12, 2009

By 

perry shell "perry shell" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Max Disaster #1: Alien Eraser to the Rescue (Paperback)

My children and I love Marissa Moss's AMELIA'S NOTEBOOK series and we are thrilled to have these two equally wonderful MAX titles as well. Max is a smart and sensitive character who kids easily relate to and Moss is a magician when it comes to transforming Max's feelings into funny, engaging, colorful art and literature. Max's observations of human nature (and of science!) are keenly insightful, poignantly kid-like and often hilarious, all at once -- no easy feat. Each page of these books contains a world of complexity, and the zany, endearing robots and eraser people Moss/Max invents masterfully reflect and crystallize Max's emotional world. It is refreshing and a joy to come upon books with so much heart and intelligence, and we are grateful to Ms. Moss for creating them! Brava and keep 'em coming.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Heavy divorce-coping book masquerading as a fun adventure, March 12, 2010

By 

Greg J. Lovern - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Max Disaster #1: Alien Eraser to the Rescue (Hardcover)

My 6yo boy picked this up at the library. Looking at the front and back covers and glancing through a few pages, it looks like a cute story about a boy who imagines adventures with aliens and other characters he draws on pencil erasers.

And that's how it starts out. It also starts out with two fun "scientific" experiments, which I did with my two older boys (6 and 3) and they LOVED it. So the third night we were all excited to see what new turns the eraser adventure would take and what tonight's experiment would be.

But that's when the book got weird. Suddenly it became a heavy book about coping with divorcing parents. There was still a thin veneer of eraser adventure, but no more experiments that we could do.

My kids don't need to worry about that. I don't appreciate being trojan horsed into it.

I certainly understand the need for books that help kids cope with divorce, and I might recommend this book for a kid who's parents are divorced or divorcing. But the book's cover should indicate that's it's really about coping with divorce. This book is NOT what its cover indicates it is.


UPDATE:

Most of my reviews get mostly positive reviews, so it's interesting that this one is 0 for 3. Do people come to this book expecting a heavy book about coping with divorcing parents? Nothing on the cover or back hints that it's that kind of book. Certainly a book like that has it's place and is valuable for kids who are going through that ordeal. But it's weird that this book pretends, on its cover and back, to be something else, and so gets read by kids for whom a book like this would lead them to worry about whether their parents were thinking of getting divorced.

For kids who's parents are not divorced or divorcing, and who do not have close friends or relatives who are going through that, this book is a weird and inappropriate choice.