Monthly Archives: September 2009

Lift off! (Nit Boy 1), by Tristan Bancks

Here is my review of Nit boy: Lift off! as posted to my work blog aboutthebooks.


Eleven year old Lewis Snow has a wild blonde afro and his hair has never been cut. It is filled with nits of course, and he considers them his pets. He has even made some money by passing them to other kids so they could get a few days off school. However, adults typically want to get rid of Lewis’s nits. None more so that Mrs Herrick, the deputy principal. She is after Lewis, or more specifically after his nits, and will stop at nothing to get rid of them.

Interlaced with this story is the story of Ned, the world’s first jumping nit, who lives on Lewis’s head. Ned’s father is determined to see nits learn to jump and spread through humans like no nits have ever done. But Ned is a home body. He’s not interested in jumping and exploring the world.

Lift off is a wonderful and funny story about the tightly linked lives of Lewis and Ned as they face the expectations of those around them and the danger posed by Mrs Herrick, their mutual enemy.

There is also sequel called Bug out! which I have just started reading, I’ll post a review shortly unless someone beats me to it.

Leviathan trailer

Those of you who have been following BookBoy for a while may have picked up that I have a bit of a thing for Scott Westerfeld. I mean, he’s not Johnny Depp, but boy can he write.

Anyway, you may also have heard me mention his upcoming book Leviathan, due out very soon. Just to tease you a bit more, here’s a trailer.

The adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E Pearson

I used to be someone.
Someone named Jenna Fox.
That’s what they tell me. But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the facts and statistics they fill me with. More than the video clips they make me watch.
More. But I’m not sure what.

Jenna Fox has just woken from a one year coma following a car accident. She now lives in California instead of Boston. She knows nobody except her parents and grandmother. She remembers nothing from before the accident. She has to learn everything again. Her parents show old home movies and tell her what happened, but there are gaps. Some things do not add up.

This is one of those books that works best if you don’t know too much about it, so I’ll keep it short. I guess you would call it science fiction, but don’t let that put you off if you’re not particularly a fan of that genre. It’s a powerful story about ethics, identity, and the lengths to which a parent would go to protect their child.

It is wonderfully written, challenging, beautiful, and well worth reading. Trust me.