Author & Consultant
                      Charlie Price

LIZARD PEOPLE

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                   ...LIZARD PEOPLE

 

Canton Public Library

October 2007
Lizard People by Charlie Price is a great book about mental illness. You are able to step inside the mind of someone who is suffering with this disease and also see the impact it has on a family. This books also has a couple mysteries intertwined keeping it action packed and interesting.

Ben Mander is a great character who I was able to relate to even though I had not experienced most things he had. This book is a quick read and one worth checking out.


 http://cantonpubliclibrary.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

 VOYA

Ben's mother is suffering from schizophrenia. His father took off after the psychotic episodes started increasing in violence and frequency. Because Ben is seventeen, he is too old for foster care and too young to be left on his own. After Ben meets a teen named Marco in a psych ward waiting room, he hopes that he has found a friend. When Ben locates Marco and they begin talking, things get strange. Marco tells of trips through a wormhole from the present to the year 4000, a time when mental illness will have a medical solution, and back again. When Ben tries to share Marco's story, Ben's own sanity is questioned. Part mystery, part science fiction, and part family drama, this novel has a little bit of everything. The book is short, with brief chapters, so that it has the appearance of appealing to a reluctant reader, but the wandering story line is more suitable to an avid reader. It is great to get a glimpse of a teen dealing with mental illness issues, but the time travel and the mystery surrounding Marco's identity make it more difficult to engage in Ben's everyday life. The last chapter is an epilogue from the viewpoint of a peripheral character thirty years from the present, but the brevity and the vagueness makes it more confusing than satisfying. There are aspects of this novel that could make for an interesting discussion, but the audience might be quite limited.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up
Ben Mander's mother can't or won't take medication to control her mental illness, and his father has left home and will no longer help. The teen does his best to cope, but when his mother makes a scene in the school office and has to be physically removed, Ben is not sure how he will continue. While she is being admitted to the psychiatric unit, yet again, he meets Marco, who says that his mother is also there. Through a series of meetings, Marco tells a fantastic story of traveling through a wormhole to the year 4000 where he meets Lizard People, much like the ones that frighten Mrs. Mander in her delusional states. Unsure of what to believe, Ben goes back and forth trying to maintain his own reality in spite of overwhelming odds. In the end, all problems do not miraculously disappear, but the troubled teen gets the help he needs. Price writes honestly and with compassion about a number of issues: living with a parent who has a mental illness, the fear of inheriting this affliction, hoping for a cure, and the lack of support available for families. Characters are believable, and the plot, alternating between reality and the future land of the lizards, moves quickly and contains enough mystery to keep readers involved.

Kirkus Reviews

Seventeen-year-old Ben Mander has a particularly tumultuous life: His mother, a paranoid schizophrenic, refuses to take her medication and when under duress, spins outrageous tales of Lizard People; Ben's father, divorced from his mother and estranged from his current girlfriend, spends most of his days haunting sleazy bars and crashing in cheap motels. While waiting for his mother to be admitted to the psychiatric ward-where, according to Ben, one can "meet the nicest people"-he befriends charismatic Marco, who tells him wild stories of visiting the future-and of the same Lizard People his mother described. Ben's struggle to hang on to reality and the intensity of his situation is compelling; he is so sadly adult for his age, though at the same time so solidly teenaged in his thoughts and rash decisions. With wild, manic pacing, readers are pulled alongside Ben to discover what is real-and what is not-building to an unsettling conclusion that is sure to leave them talking about this psychological thriller long after the final page is turned. (Fiction. YA)  

FlamingNet.com

Ben thought his junior year of high school couldn't get any worse. After his mother suffered another mental breakdown, he was scared of the road ahead, even though she was locked up in an institution for three days. Her mental health had declined ever since Ben's dad had abandoned them. In the waiting room of the hospital, Ben met an older boy named Marco whose mom was also in the institution. Ben is intrigued by Marco because he tells incredible stories about time travel. Ben sets out to discover where Marco's been, and where the rest of Marco's family is. Ben thought he had a normal life for a boy with a mentally ill mother, but then he realized the total opposite was true.

The book, Lizard People, was fantastically written and was definitely a page turner. It was realistic, but there were unexpected events readers would not expect. Charlie Price added every necessary detail to each chapter. I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories dealing with time travel, or prefers books about people with mental illness. My favorite character in the book was Z, Ben's best friend's sister, because she was highly intelligent and witty in every way, plus she was sweet and innocent. I loved the specific personalities that each character owned, and the way Charlie Price described them.

It has some frightening situations. Some alchohol and street drugs.

Reviewer Age:11

Reviewer City, State and Country: Osseo, Wisconsin United States

http://www.flamingnet.com/bookreviews/newreviews/newbookreview.cfm?title=Lizard People

SUMMARY

 

Ben Mander’s mother believes she is one of the “Lizard People” and has recently been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Ben’s dad, long divorced from his mom, is not much help with things leaving Ben to deal with the situation alone. That is until he meets Marco, a teenagers who knows a lot about mental illness and offers Ben a scary look into his own possible future.
 
REVIEWS
 
 "High-schooler Ben is overwhelmed.  His father has disappeared, leaving Ben to cope with his mentally ill mom, who believes that she is one of the Lizard People who will take over the world.  After his mother enters a psychiatric hospital, Ben meets a fellow teen, Marco, whose mother has also been admitted.  Over the next several weeks, the two boys struggle with their mothers' care and begin a tentative friendship.  Then Marco spins a tale of time travel to the year 4000, where he claims to have learned the cure for mental illness.  As Marco incorporates the Lizard People into his story, Ben is increasingly spooked.  Who's crazy now?  Author Price creates a strong, realistic view of a caretaker teen whose adolescence is hijacked by a parent's mental illness.  In addition to coping with his day-to-day survival, Ben must also face an additional terror -- his own potential madness.  Price's graphic depiction of Ben's gradual escape from reality into a future without mental illness is a powerful metaphor and a savvy message that brings real hope to readers." 
-- Booklist, Aug 2007
 
Readers who enjoy a novel with a subversive streak will relish the gamesmanship in this idiosyncratic, genre-hopping story from the author of Dead Connection. As the novel begins, Ben Mander, a junior, rushes into the high school office, where his psychotic mother, in the middle of a loud, delusional episode, is attacking a secretary: “She... is a Lizard!” All but abandoned by his father, Ben feels a kinship with Marco, a youth he meets in the lobby of the psychiatric hospital as both wait for their mothers to be admitted. Price takes care with the details—the father's slow backing away, the social workers and their limits, hospital and insurance policies—and he slowly builds a sense of Ben's growing isolation and immersion in adult problems. Meanwhile, Ben meets Marco again, and becomes engrossed in the stories Marco tells, about a future 2,000 years away that offers hope for people like Ben's mother—but that also overlaps, to an alarming degree, with the substance of Ben's mother's delusions. The pace quickens and the plot grows increasingly complex as the author blurs (for readers as well as for Ben) the distinctions between Ben's experiences and his expectations that they are valid, that he has not crossed over into his mother's illness. Raising questions about time travel and using extremes of mental health, Price's story taps into classic teenage feelings of alienation and gives them an original exploration. Ages 12-up.
-- Publishers Weekly
Aug 2007