Friday, January 8, 2010

The 13th Reality

I just started a new series by one of my new favorite authors, James Dashner. Boy does he know how to tell a tale. I originally read The Maze Runner, a great fantasy/science fiction book for young adults, and I couldn't put it down. I can't wait until its sequel comes out (10/2010 in case you're wondering). In the meantime, I discovered that he has written two different series, The Jimmy Fincher Saga, and The 13th Reality.

The first book in the 13th Reality series is The Journal of Curious Letters. Like The Maze Runner, I could not put it down. It reminds me of sort of a modern day version of A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. It's all about quantum physics, or "the kyoopy" (get it? Quantum Physics = Q. P. = Kyoopy), but instead of time travel being the focus, alternate realities are, 13 to be exact. Apparently there are 13 different versions of our world/life/time as we know it.

Atticus "Tick" Higginbottom is the kind of boy who gets stuffed into lockers. Little do Tick and his classmates know that he will soon be one of a very select few kids in the world who are being tested to see if they are worthy of saving the world as we know it. He meets Mothball (at least she didn't end up with her sister's name, Toejam), an eight-foot-tall woman, and Rutger, a tiny little roly poly man who likes to throw rocks to get Tick's attention. They become 2 of his best friends and help guide his way through all of the trials that he faces. He comes across many other characters, some good, some evil, most of them very strange. Getting his head flushed down the toilet is nothing compared to what he deals with after he accepts the challenge to save the world.

Like the Murry family in A Wrinkle in Time, the Higginbottom family is also very close. In my opinion, it seems pretty rare nowadays to find a main character who comes from a close, loving family (go ahead, I'm sure you will immediately be able to think of many examples that shoot that theory down), and I loved reading about the supportive relationship between Tick and his parents.

So anyway, I highly recommend this relatively new series for about 4th grade and up. We are working on getting the second book for our library, and the third will be published this coming April.

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