Munmun - Hardcover

Andrews, Jesse

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1419728717 ISBN 13: 9781419728716

Publisher: Amulet Books, 2018

Synopsis

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person’s physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers.
 
Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute—and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning, but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger richer people don’t ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter—there’s no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them?
 
A brilliant, warm, funny trip, unlike anything else out there, and a social novel for our time in the tradition of 1984 or Invisible Man. Inequality is made intensely visceral by an adventure and tragedy both hilarious and heartbreaking.

About this title

About the Author

Jesse Andrews is the New York Times bestselling author of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and the screenwriter of that book’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize–winning movie adaptation. He’s also the author of The Haters, which Booklist called “effortlessly readable, deeply enjoyable,” in a starred review. He lives in Brooklyn.
 

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—"Being littlepoor is notsogood," observes Warner, the rat-size narrator of this thought-provoking dystopian epic in which humans' physical size mirrors the amount of "munmun" (money) in their bank accounts. The protagonist, along with his sister Prayer and their friend Usher, set out across the semi-recognizable landscape of southern California with a scheme to earn enough munmun to "scale up" to at least middlepoor. The journey doesn't go as planned, and in the fallout, the companions endure alternate-world versions of the myriad indignities and outright dangers that poor and homeless teens face in today's America: condescension, manipulation, mind-numbing jobs, indifferent justice and health care systems, graphically depicted sexual abuse, and the middlerich attitude that the poor should be grateful for any crumbs they get. It's not subtle in the way that Gulliver's Travels, M.T. Anderson's Feed, and Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" series aren't subtle; it's social commentary with a bite. This book also includes action and humor to leaven the mix. It evokes Patrick Ness's "Chaos Walking" trilogy in its stream-of-consciousness narration, full of invented words and spellings that reflect Warner's littlepoor illiteracy. This world has no clear racial or ethnic groups, but skin colors that include rubyred and gray; a shared dream space where people communicate; and the "scaling" process that changes people's sizes in tandem with their financial fortunes. Readers will race to reach the conclusion and Warner's appropriately Pyrrhic victory. VERDICT Endlessly discussable and a first purchase for public and high school libraries.—Beth Wright Redford, Richmond Elementary School, VT

About this edition

• Publisher: Amulet Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1419728717
• ISBN 13: 9781419728716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416