Malcolm Orange Disappears
by Jan Carson
Eleven-year-old Malcolm Orange has grown up in the backseat of an ancient Volvo station wagon, crisscrossing America with a diminishing collection of grandparents, one good-for-nothing father, an increasingly absent mother, and an unfortunately ordinary brother. Their journey ends abruptly in a pay-by-the-week motel in Portland, Oregon when his father finally abandons the family. Impoverished and alone, the remaining Oranges find themselves living in Chalet 13 of the Baptist Retirement Village. While his mother develops her own strange means of coping with the loss, Malcolm Orange begins to disappear, becoming more perforated each morning – until there is little of the original Malcolm left. Desperate for a cure, he enlists the help of Soren James Blue, her talking cat, Mr Fluff, and the very elderly members of the People's Committee for Remembering Songs. Malcolm and his friends set off on a hilarious and heartbreaking adventure to discover a cure for disappearing. On...