Momentum

Saci Lloyd

Having loved the Carbon Diaries series, I was really looking forward to getting stuck into Saci Lloyd’s new book, Momentum. I was not disappointed. Though Momentum is not part of the same series, it also engages with relevant issues: the ever-increasing problems of rising energy prices and global warming.

Set in a London in crisis. Hunter, a rich Citizen, has a passion for free running. Uma is an Outsider, blamed for a crime she didn’t commit. When they are both chased by the merciless Kossaks their lives cross. They must work together to save the people they love.

Although Momentum is fiction its resonance of a possible reality chilled and enthralled me. This book kept me thinking long after I had turned the final page.

Tom Smeeton (aged 12 years)

Wonderstruck

Brian Selznick

When a copy of this novel was first placed in my hand, I almost dropped it. It was a daunting leviathan of a book from the outside, at 640 pages long and I dreaded reading it. However, do not let this put you off. When it came to reading Wonderstruck (by the creator of Hugo Cabret, now being made ifnto a film by Martin Scorsese) my initial thoughts evaporated by the sheer creativeness of the content. It proved to me the point: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’

The story is split into two parts; the written pages which are set in 1977 about a boy who lives with his aunt, uncle and cousins on Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, and the pencil-drawings in-between, which illustrate in amazing and descriptive detail, the story of a deaf girl in 1927. The boy is unfortunately deafened, and seeks his father in New York, as his mother was in a fatal accident a few years back. Meanwhile, the girl seeks refuge from her solemn life stuck at home in Hoboken by stealing away to New York as well.

In the concluding pages, you finally realise the connection between the two characters, which could not be gleaned from the book before, and how the two stories are related. All the ends are tied and the writing and drawings intermingle into one story. I don’t want to give too much away, but it ends on a high…

I would recommend this book to anyone 10 or over, even though it is quite thick, I read half of it in one sitting. It goes incredibly fast, and the mixtures of pictures and prose make the story come to life. It is heart-warming, emotionally uplifting and eye-opening into the world of a deaf person.

Even though you may not be able to empathise completely with the deaf characters, the thought of anyone travelling alone to a vast, confusing and busy city is terrifying, and a memory most people, including me, know from their past.

This book I a creative masterpiece from the award-winning Brian Selznick, a ‘silent film on paper.’, and a great novel that leaves you, as it should, wonderstruck.

By A.G Phillips, aged 14