Andrew Smith’s novel Grasshopper Jungle, a wild and totally original adventure about giant killer bugs terrorizing a small US town, is on the longlist for the Carnegie Medal. Here again he puts adolescent boys at the heart of a sophisticated and skilfully structured sci-fi story.
Fifteen-year-old Ariel first escapes death in his country’s civil war by hiding in a refrigerator, later to be saved from the hell of a refugee camp and offered a new life with a family in the US. There he spends a summer with his adopted brother Max at the strangely sinister Camp Merrie-Seymour for boys.
A separate strand of the story involves the survivors of an expedition to the Arctic in the 1800s, another describes the nightmare road trip of ‘the melting man’ – a deranged individual who is quite literally falling to pieces. The three stories are linked, everything leads back to the bizarre activities of the research laboratories where Max’s dad works.
Extinction, identity, freedom of choice, language, war and brotherhood, they’re all themes in this extraordinary novel. ~ Andrea Reece
| Reading age: | 14+ |
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith
The Alex Crow is aimed at readers aged 14 and over.
The Alex Crow features in the following genres: Young Adult Fiction, Books with reviews by our Reader Review Panel, eBooks of the Month, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Recommendations
Paperback. Not Available.
The Alex Crow was written by Andrew Smith and published by Egmont Books Ltd an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd
The Alex Crow has 277 pages
