Noah Zarc (Mammoth Trouble) by D. Robert Pease is a rollicking space adventure that jumps through time with the Zarc family as they try to save animals (yes, two by two) from Earth's past to repopulate a planet barren of animal life. Noah Jr. is busy getting in trouble for unscheduled tests of his thermsuit when his parents fail to return from a mission to the Ice Age. Noah and his brainy brother and teenage sister jump through time and space to try to rescue their parents only to find that Hoan - arch enemy of the ARC (Animal Rescue Cruiser) project - has kidnapped their mom. And that's just the beginning of adventures that take our young heroes from the moon to Mars to many different space-times on Earth. Pease gives the ancient nature of the story of Noah's Ark a nod, while updating it to the year 3000 in a completely fresh way. I especially like the tender puppy-love story between Noah and Adina, the Ice Age orphan girl who shows ancient people to be a lot smarter than we'd expect.

One of the great things that I love about science fiction has always been the willingness of SF authors to tackle social issues. I would love to see more middle grade science fiction precisely because I believe that middle grade kids are primed and ready to debate the kinds of social issues that SF dives into. Noah Zarc is light and fun, but it is also "serious" science fiction (as opposed to "comedy" focused MG SF, which doesn't usually have the same impact in a philosophical sense). Noah Zarc is chock full of gadgety devices and space-time travel, but Pease also gives a nuanced spin to the political dynamics of repopulating Earth with long-extinct animals while people remain trapped in crowded colonies on Mars and Venus.

Loaded with action and adventure, this story goes easy on the violence. I don't know the reading level of this book, but I'm guessing around 4th or 5th grade. With its light-touch adventure and advanced reading level, this makes it a perfect read for advanced readers as young as 6. And older kids, as well as animal lovers of any age, will love the adventure and time travel conundrums.

Susan Quinn via Amazon.com and SusanKayeQuinn.com

Noah Zarc is a twelve-year-old boy living in the future. He and his family command a ship that retrieves animals from the past in preparation for re-inhabiting a post-apocalyptic earth. Noah, although he is a paraplegic, is a fantastic spaceship pilot and time-traveler. He thinks his life just can't get much better...until his dad is trapped in the Ice Age and his mom is kidnapped and taken to thirty-first century Mars. Noah quickly learns things aren't as they seem, and he has to find the strength within to pull through it all. The fate of the future world is in his hands.

This book is amazing! It is slightly above my kids' reading level, but it was still tons of fun for me. I love how it takes the story of Noah's Ark and interprets it in the future. It also teaches a lesson about how we are abusing the earth's resources and basically killing our own planet every day.

Since Noah is paraplegic and primarily in a "wheelchair," there is also the message of not letting disabilities hold you back. His physical condition is certainly not dwelt upon. We know he uses the chair and a special suit that helps him walk when needed, but he carries on just like any other child--well, any other child in the future. The focus is on his talents, his incredible wit and ability to pilot spacecraft better than anyone else in his family. Sure, it is bothersome at times to depend on other things to help him move around, and he sometimes uses his chair as an excuse to not help his brother and sister (with little success), but not once does he let his condition define who he really is.

Some of the time travel stuff was pretty much beyond my comprehension, but it isn't written in a way that you need to understand what they're saying. Actually, most of the characters don't understand it either, so it just brings the reader into the story even deeper.

It was loads of fun to travel into the past to the end of the Ice Age and learn that cavemen weren't as dumb as we think. And then, in the same breath, we get to go to the future and see what life on Mars might be like. All through the story, you never know where or when you'll find yourself! What a splendid adventure!

Cassie McCown - via Amazon.com and GatheringLeavesReviews

Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble is a wonderful novel written by D. Robert Pease. It's set in the future and tells of 12 year-old Noah, a paraplegic boy who lives with his family on a large spaceship called the Arc. Told from Noah's point of view, he introduces us to his family: sister Sam, brother Hamilton, father Noah Sr., mother Hannah and his dog, Obadiah. The family has a special mission: to go back in time to retrieve specimens of extinct animals and bring them forward to the future. This is imperative, thanks to humans finally causing the complete depletion of natural resources on Earth in the 24th century and inhabiting Mars and Venus. Earth has finally recovered enough for animals to once again live upon the planet so the Zarcs are collecting two of each species from the past.

All is not well, as we find out when Noah's parents go back to Earth's last Ice Age, to retrieve a rare deer. They are ambushed by Haon, a malcontent who doesn't want the animals to have Earth, humans should. He attacks Noah Sr. and kidnaps Hannah, to hold her and her vast biological knowledge hostage to his demands that the humans on Venus (who live in deplorable conditions) be allowed to repopulate Earth, instead of the animals the family has collected.

Sam, Hamilton and Noah succeed in rescuing their father by taking the Arc back to the Ice Age and make the acquaintance of a group of Neolithic people who live in the area, after their smaller ship, the Morning Star, is attacked by a mastodon and has to be destroyed in defense of the ship and the people who have taken in Noah Sr.

Noah makes friends with Adina, a girl about his age, while helping with butchering the mastodon for the people's food storage and for a feast. He is both astonished and horrified at the conditions they live in and how quickly people age due to their harsh lives in the cold climate. He wants to help Adina in some way but the only thing he can think to do is give her his coat before he leaves for good in the morning.

The family leaves Ice Age Earth and pursues Haon back to Mars 3024 A.D. Noah is amazed and astonished to find a stowaway: Adina! He had forgotten that he had left an identification device in his coat pocket and she was able to use it to hide onboard the Morning Star before it left. She reiterates that she has no family and no future, preferring to take her chances with the Zarc family.

From there, things move pretty quickly but I don't want to spoil it for anyone. This is a wonderful book, told well and with few misspellings or grammatical errors. The writing is tight, with all the questions answered in just the right places. The many technological terms were easily understood.

The one concern is Adina's use of the term "meter" to indicate measurement, not long after she meets Noah. I understand that Noah is wearing a translator and that may be what he heard and we are reading from his perspective but for the reader, it's hard to imagine Neolithic people using that word as a form of measurement; they would have more likely used something like "fingers" or "hands." There are several other instances of Adina using very vague terms of measurement, "many" for more than five and "pride" for the length of a mastodon's tusks, just not contemporary forms of measurement.

It's also a bit bothersome to not know what the Poligarchy is and why that term was used to describe a ruling council for humans. Although the term can easily be looked up, it would disrupt the reader's focus. A sentence or two about the Poligarchy and how/why it is called that would be welcome.

The Zarcs are personable characters, worth caring for and about. It's sad to see this as a stand-alone book; I think many folks would like to read more about Noah, Adina and the family, myself included. There is very little violence and no vulgar language to speak of, so I can highly recommend this book for 14 years old and up. It's a keeper!

Rasenna via Amazon.com

I can't say enough good things about this book. Younger readers will love it and so will their parents. It is a well written, fast paced little story that keeps you on your toes. It is a lot of fun to read and also makes you stop to think we and all the animals share.

M. hampton "mama4888" via Amazon.com

A thousand years in the future, mankind has practically destroyed the Earth, wreaking havoc on its environment and animals before being forced to relocate to Mars and Venus while the Earth slowly recovers. The Zarc family is allowed to travel back in time to save two animals of every species from extinction, and bring them to new habitats on their ship, the ARC--Animal Rescue Cruiser--in order to repopulate the Earth when it is ready. To most people, the Zarcs are interplanetary heroes. To Haon, they are messing with things better left alone in order to steal the Earth from its rightful inhabitants: humans. And Haon will stop at nothing to prevent them.

Twelve-year-old Noah Zarc believes in what his family is doing, but when Haon kidnaps his mother and strands his father in the Ice Age, Noah, his brother Hamilton and his sister Sam are determined to rescue their parents, no matter what. After time-traveling to the Ice Age, Noah has a close encounter with a mammoth that attacks the ship, and befriends an Ice Age girl while Hamilton goes after their mother. He returns with word that Haon has kidnapped their mother to force her to create a nano virus that will destroy all animal life on planet Earth--and everything the Zarc family has worked so hard to save. So begins Noah's quest to save his mother and the future of animalkind on Earth from Haon's grasp.

Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble is an adventure-filled journey that jumps from present-day Earth to the Ice Age, Mars, and medieval Scotland. With plenty of advanced tech--from assassin bots to thermsuits to the ARC itself--the future looks like a pretty cool place to be, and Noah's mission to save his parents, even in the midst of overwhelming danger, proves that things haven't changed too much, even with mankind scattered amongst the stars. With the heaps of trouble Noah gets into, the prospect of more will keep the reader turning the pages in anticipation as Noah heads towards his inevitable clash with Haon--and discovers some astonishing things about his family along the way.

Misti Pyles via Amazon.com and the Fort Worth, Texas Examiner

Normally I don’t read juvenile fiction, but this book was a pleasant surprise. I really liked it and found myself reading way past midnight to finish it.

Let me elaborate (mild spoiler alert).

Noah is very young, only twelve, and he’s a paraplegic. But don’t think this handicap will hold him back, oh no. Especially not in a future where he can zip around in his magchair, float in zero-g and use electrical prosthetic legs. Besides, it’s not in his character. He is very dynamic, very mature and sweet as well, and he has some plans for the evening – like, save his mother who has been kidnapped, save a girl's life in prehistoric times (yes, lots of time traveling in this novel) and find out who Haon (the bad guy) really is.

The voice is fresh and natural, funny and just right for Noah’s age, never tiring and never confusing. Noah’s inner conflict is nicely juxtaposed to lots of fast-paced action scenes, and his emotions ring true.

The other main characters are also rounded and relatable, including Noah’s siblings and parents, the girl he saves, and even the bad guy, which I thought was great.

I admit that there were a few things that bothered me. One of them was the very obvious symbolism of the Arc of Noah, which was repeated through the story, from the family name (Zarc) to the ARC, the great spaceship with its unique mission, and the retelling of the story here and there. I’d have preferred a more subtle use of this. Furthermore, I found that the principal questions of time travel, which are complex and mind-bending at best when one tries to understand them, are treated a little too lightly for my taste here. If supposedly crushing a bug in the past can change the future, how about taking living creatures out of the past, how would that affect the present?

Yet, keeping in mind that this is a story for young teens, and that these questions have not been answered yet, I can’t complain much about this point.

After all, I highly recommend this story for young teens, and if a grumpy, hard-to-please reviewer like me enjoyed this novel, then I bet they will love it.

Chrystalla Thoma via Amazon.com and GoodBookAlert

See all the reviews for Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble on Amazon.