Book Review for Code Orange

Code Orange
By Caroline Cooney
Delacourt Press, 2005


I’ve just read Caroline Cooney’s young adult novel Code Orange for the second time. I am still so very impressed and compelled by her riveting combination of character development and research; the two go hand in hand in this novel, because the more the main character learns, the more afraid he becomes, and the harder his choices get.

Some people are better researchers than fiction writers. We get the feeling that what they really want is to show the reader how interesting their topic is—and it usually is interesting. But that’s not what we go to fiction for. We read fiction because we want to learn about people, others experiencing things that we find connections to. The best fictional characters, like the Velveteen Rabbit, become real simply because we believe in them so completely.

Caroline Cooney understands the difference. Each of her novels centers around a certain theme—forgiveness, sundered families, identity—and you know that she’s done her research. But that’s not why you read. You read because the main character—always a teenager—grabs your attention and your heart from the first words.

That’s exactly what’s going on in her gripping novel, Code Orange. The title refers to the Homeland Security danger alert codes implemented after 9/11, and hints at the sort of danger that will be encountered in the book. The main character, 16-year-old Mitty Blake, accidentally comes across a hundred-year-old envelope full of smallpox scabs in an old medical book, but at the time he has no idea what he is handling. Then, he begins his research for a school science paper, and begins to realize that he may have contracted the world’s most terrifying disease—a disease that is supposed to have been eradicated 30 years ago. From there we follow his journey into fear and paranoia, illness, bioterrorism, and worse. It’s utterly compelling, and incredibly suspenseful; as Cooney counts off the days from exposure to infectiousness, we are as impatient and fearful as Mitty is. And she cuts us no slack—is that headache just a headache, or is it the onset of smallpox? Is Mitty chilled because it’s February in New York, or is it a symptom of smallpox? She won’t tell Mitty, and she won’t tell us.

Cooney uses Mitty’s science research paper as a way of feeding us the information we need to have to become as scared as Mitty is. Mitty writes in his own words about the symptoms and development of smallpox, how it is passed from person to person, how it was eradicated and how it might return, and chillingly, about its potential uses as a weapon of bioterrorism. It never feels too farfetched, especially since Mitty can come up with a million reasons why this couldn’t really be happening. We know the incredible odds as well as he does. But we are still as afraid as he is.

Even more interesting than the smallpox storyline is Mitty’s character development. When we first meet him he is the ultimate teenage boy slacker. He cares for nothing but music and the girl he’s crushing on, and he’s filling a seat in an advanced biology class that his parents paid the school to put him in. But through his research and the fear that he might contract smallpox—and even worse, give it to others—we see him grow up. He realizes what’s important, and he learns how to act on his newly discovered feelings of love and loyalty. In the end, Mitty is no longer a slacker in any sense. Mitty knows what the right thing to do is, and he acts on it.

I would recommend this book for middle school age and up (including adults). The terrorism theme might be scary for the younger kids in this age group, but in my experience it’s better for them to be a little bit afraid and to ask their parents or teachers about it, than to hear something on the radio or TV and be terrified. Much as adults might hate it, terrorism is now a part of our children’s lives, and like all difficult subjects, kids must be exposed to it in controlled amounts. Since the book has no violence, only the threat of violence, I think that even pre-adolescent kids can handle it. And adults will find that they can’t put it down, and don’t want to, until they know how it ends.