Blog 4 - The Angel Experiment

The young adult science fiction/fantasy series Maximum Ride by author James Patterson is about six remarkable children. As if growing up wasn’t difficult enough, these children ages six through fourteen deal with something more difficult than even the worst schoolyard crush – they have wings. That’s right; these children are 98% human and 2% avian, the successful result of genetic experimentation. Besides being a wonderful adventure novel for teenagers (one of my favorites growing up), the series acts as a social commentary, arguing that while science has made many positive advancement there is in fact such a thing as going too far. The series is written from a first person point of view of the title character Maximum Ride, a fourteen year old “Avian-American” not only struggling with the normal difficulties of puberty but also on the run with the other five members of her Flock from the scientists who created them. By using a first person narrative of the genetic experiment herself, the reader gets a very personal, often touching sense of how science can harm rather than help.
“The six of us… were made on purpose by the sickest, most horrible “scientists” you could possibly imagine. They created us as an experiment… We grew up in a science lab/prison called the School, in cages like lab rats. It’s pretty amazing we can speak at all. But we can – and so much more.”
The idea of putting children in cages seems to the reader like a horrible thing. The novels read much like what you might hear from a genetically altered lab rat if it could speak.