The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson

Our protagonist, Walter Mortinson, lives in the town of Moorsmouth, which is the living embodiment of the word dreary. Smog literally obscures the vision of its inhabitants, for one. Walters only enjoyment comes from his inventing, but unluckily for him, his mother is against his passion, calling it dangerous and pressuring him to pick up the family business and become a mortician. Cordelia, his next-door neighbor, is a moody girl with her own secret reasons to want to leave home. Together, they run away in Walters family hearse towards Flaster Isle, where famed inventor Horace Flasterborn has invited Walter to come be his apprentice. As we read, we (and the characters) are given glimpses into Walters mysterious past and his ultimately propelled into his future.

THE REMARKABLE INVENTIONS OF WALTER MORTINSON by Quinn Sosna-Spear is full of vivid imagery and dripping humor, and the narrators voice completely pulls the reader into the odd and fantastic world of the story. As much as each character is told to us, they are even more so shown to us instead. The masterful effect of this story lies in the space between its words.

The back of the book of my advanced readers copy tells me that Quinn hopes to share the humor, poignancy, and adventure in things such as loss, as dreary and impossible as they may seem. I dont know what better review to leave than to say that she has more than succeeded. Though the world shes built is as fantastical as any one of Walters inventions, her poignant encapsulation of the human feelings within it are irrevocably true and will reverberate in your heart and mind. I feel as though if I were to find myself in a Moorsmouth of my own life, I should now be better equipped to find a way to breathe despite the smog.

I vastly enjoyed reading this and strongly recommend it, including for adults. This is not a book that I love primarily from many of the lenses I usually read from (educator, parent, kidlit lover, middle grade lit lover, etc). Rather, I find that I love this book as a human, and as lover of words and their power.

MY THOUGHTS
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book. From the synopsis, I mainly expected a fun middle-grade book, and I did get that, but there was so much more to unpack from this novel.

This book, unsurprisingly, is mainly about a young boy named Walter Mortinson. Walter loves to invent odd things, but in the town of Moormouth, people are meant to work in tedium and kids are not supposed to have an imagination or to know things. Walter’s mother thinks that he needs to stop inventing, as it will only lead to trouble, and join the family mortuary business. After an escalated argument, Walter finds a letter in the trash addressed to him from Flasterborn, the famed inventor. Flasterborn wants Walter as an apprentice, so Walter sneaks off into the night, taking Cordelia (a classmate who was once a friend long ago). They travel through odd towns, mirroring the adventure Walter’s own parents took on the way to Moormouth fourteen years before.

I’ll admit that it took me a bit to get into this book. Sosna-Spear carefully describes all of the settings and every character, even the smallest ones. At first, I did not see the purpose in this because these details would interrupt the story and some of these characters would never be heard from again. I would take breaks from this book and it was seeming to be a three-star read. Then, after a bit of a break from this book, I picked it up again and…I began to notice more purpose to all of these details. I liked learning everyone’s hopes and fears and I was less bothered by interruptions from the past.

I mentioned this briefly in my little run-down, but throughout Walter’s adventure, we also get chapters that take place fourteen years before as Walter’s parents take the same route (although they took the route the other way around, so their story is backwards). I loved seeing all of the odd settings that the characters came across and there was so much imagination involved in creating these settings (which makes sense as imagination is a huge part of this book). They can be strange and feel random, but the way they are described makes them purposeful and it is just fun to see how each town differs in its way of thinking. I wish that more time could be spent in each town then there was. In truth, I feel like at times we didn’t get to stay in a moment long enough. I’m not sure how I feel about that because I’m glad that the book is not talking down to readers by overly explaining what things mean or what happened, that is up to the reader’s discretion. s to decide.

While the settings are a huge part of this book, the characters are the biggest part. I mean, Walter is in the title. The entire book we see these interesting things, but they are nothing without seeing how the characters react to what is around them. I mentioned how each character is shown in careful detail what their hopes and fears are. Well, with the main characters, we are shown that not everything is simple. With each odd encounter, we learn more and more about the main characters (Walter, Cordelia, and Hadorah, who is Walter’s mother). It’s interesting that so much attention is given to Hadorah, the main adult in the story. You really want to hate her in the beginning because she seems to be trying to squash Walter’s imagination, but there is so much more at work in the story. Because there is a mix of past and present, we also see how much the past is affecting the characters, but we don’t fully understand it until we near the end of the story.

Now, the ending of this book is a five-star ending. The ending of this book was absolutely fantastic, even though it broke my heart. In fact, once I got to the last one hundred or so pages of this book, you could not tear me away. This part of the book made me feel so many things and everything was coming together in a way I did not expect nor want to happen, but I felt like there was just so much said in the last portion of the book. Right now I’m struggling to even type out how the ending of this book made me feel because the best way to see that is just by reading this book.

IN CONCLUSION
Overall, this is a fantastic book. There is just so much in this book about imagination, family, friends, and there is just so much creativity. If it weren’t for my earlier struggle, this book would be five-stars, but who knows. Maybe I’ll reread this someday and up my rating. I do recommend this book and I hope this book gets the attention it deserves. I noticed that Quinn Sosna-Spear has another book coming up, The Thirteenth Hour, and you bet I’m going to read that one when it comes out.

THE REMARKABLE INVENTIONS OF WALTER MORTINSON by Quinn Sosna-Spear is a fantastical book with so much vivid imagery. There are many things to like about this childrens fiction book, though I dont know the age range Id recommend for it. Walter is an easy hero to cheer for with his convictions and his curiosity. The lands that Walter and Cordelia go through are all very descriptive and rank high on the imagination scale. Kids will love all the creative names and characters and the language in the book is pretty straightforward. But there are some drawbacks. The jumping back and forth in time in Hadorahs chapters is confusing. You think you are in one timeframe and you are in another and that lost me a bit as a reader. Im curious if my daughter would feel the same if she read it. Also, because there is so much going on in this book, one of the major plot points seems to just magically wrap up and a few never are resolved. Finally, everyone is so dark and dreary that it dragged me down a bit as a reader saving all the joy until the end. However, I loved the ending, the way the relationship with the Mortinson family plays out, and the journey that Walter goes on to find his hero and finds something else instead, and the gift he gives his friend. I will keep this one for my daughter to read when shes a little older and cant wait to see what pictures she draws to go with it. 3.5 stars. Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this advance review copy. All opinions are my own.

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