Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Infobox Book |
name = Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Daniel Pinkwater
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction, Young adult novel
publisher = E. P. Dutton
release_date = 1979
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 248 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0525253602 (first edition, hardback)
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars" is a novel by Daniel Pinkwater, published in 1979.

Plot summary

The story is about a portly kid named Leonard Neeble moving from his old neighborhood to West Kangaroo Park. There Leonard goes to a new school, Bat Masterson Junior High. He suffers greatly at the hands of the other kids, even the other nerds, until one day a new student appears in his class: a boy named Alan Mendelsohn, recently relocated from the Bronx. They are soon friends. Together they go back to Leonard's old neighborhood where the two meet Samuel Klugarsh, owner of an occult bookstore, who claims to have developed a course of psychic training called "Klugarsh Mind Control." Samuel Klugarsh sells the two friends a kit for learning how to produce "Ω (Omega) waves," a type of brain waves supposedly generated when one meditates one's way into the mental state known as "State Twenty-Six."

Leonard and Alan soon learn how to go into State Twenty-Six, but all they can make others do is take off their hats and rub their bellies. The friends get tired of mind-control and go back to Samuel Klugarsh's store for a refund.

Instead of what the two wanted, Samuel Klugarsh lets Leonard and Alan trade in their mind-control set for a course in "Hyperstellar Archeology," the study of lost civilizations such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Waka Waka, along with a copy of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Alan and Leonard are skeptical of the course's wild claims and predictions until they unexpectedly find a prediction in the text mentioning them both by name. They start to take the book more seriously, and when they follow its directions for interpreting Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary, they get better results with their telekinesis and mind control experiments.

Later, the two boys run into Samuel Klugarsh at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor, and their conversation is overheard by a biker who happens to be Clarence Yojimbo, the author of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Clarence is passing through town with his biker-gang of folk singers, and he sets them straight on the real secret purpose of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary: when decoded with the proper key, it is an instruction manual for travelling among different planes of existence. The two learn how to do this and go to Waka-Waka. There they discover that the fleegix-obsessed people of Waka-Waka are ruled under the government of the cruel Nafsulians: Manny, Moe and Jack who pretend to be a deadly monster. Alan Mendelsohn and Leonard Neeble are able to make the three Nafsulians take off their hats and rub their bellies, which just happens to be the Nafsulian gesture of submission.They cannot take back the gesture so they had to relinquish control of Waka-Waka.

While in Waka-Waka Leonard learns that Alan really is a Martian. In the Waka-Waka plane of existence Martians travel to and from the earth so Alan is able to let Martians know that his family is stranded on earth and arrange for them to be taken back to Mars. Alan and Leonard then go back to West Kangaroo Park where Alan is picked up by a spaceship.

Leonard, after recovering from the shock of losing his best friend, begins to follow in Alan's footsteps by studying independently, showing up the teachers during classes, and participating in an alternative gym class where they play chess or do yoga.

Leonard eventually decides to throw a party at a restaurant called the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlour in his old neighborhood. He meets Samuel Klugarsh there and Klugarsh gives Leonard a letter from Alan Mendelsohn. Alan says that Leonard can come visit him in "the Bronx, if you know what I mean," for the summer.

Availability

Alan Mendelsohn is no longer in print. However, it can be found in Daniel Pinkwater's 1997 compilation of 5 novels.