The Plant People

Dale Bick Carson

I tracked a copy of this down last week. I hadn't read it since it originally came out; we're coming up on three decades since then. Despite the estimated fifteen thousand books that have crossed my eyes since then, images from this book were stuck (most of them distorted, as it turned out, but still kind of accurate) in my head after all this time. It obviously made a pretty serious impression on me when I was nine years old. What else could I do but grab the library's copy and take a trip down memory lane?

For the most part, it was a satisfying trip, but I am somewhat depressed to say that much of the pleasure was of a purely nostalgic bent. Looking at it with considerably older eyes, I saw all the flaws in the book that may well explain why it's been so obscure for so long. The paper-thin story revolves around Mike, a teen from Cactus, Nevada, who rides back into town one evening to find the town covered with fog that contains small dancing lights. Soon after, members of the community start changing; they get docile, almost catatonic, and odd markings begin appearing on their skin. Things are looking very, very strange in Cactus...

There's so much potential for a great horror story here, as evidenced by the fact that the same premise has been used a number of other times and come up with winners. But Carson's revelation of why the fog affects some people and not others is handled so woodenly it might be one of the town's namesake plants, and the social criticism at the heart of the book is handled in painfully amateur fashion. Ten-year-olds could do (and, in some cases, have done) better in school book reports.

But what made such an impression on me as a eight-year-old, and what remains so effective on a second reading twenty-eight years later, are the pictures. Rather than your typical illustrated kids' book, The Plant People is illustrated with photographs, almost film stills. These are truly chilling (and while I don't remember for sure, I'd hazard a guess that to a nine-year-old obsessed with monster movies, they were nightmare-inducing). They are definitely worth checking out, especially if you're in your impressionable years. Unfortunately, you may never get the chance to do so. Neither Amazon nor Bookfinder has a single copy listed. Your best bet would probably be Interlibrary Loan; I can vouch for at least one WorldCat library having a copy, since I just borrowed it from them.