The Reinvention of Edison Thomas

March 15, 2010
Houtman's debut presents the singular voice of Eddy, who sees the world from a different angle. He attends Drayton Middle School, but prefers disassembling old machines in his basement, gathering scientific facts (which he shares in excerpts from the “Random Access Memory of Edison Thomas”), practicing Morse code, and avoiding loud noises, crowds, and Mitch (a friend-turned-bully). Eddy sees a counselor, who aids him in developing his nearly nonexistent social skills—despite having a head for facts and data, he's incapable of understanding figures of speech—and managing his general anxiety (“He had made a huge logical error. As big as Uluru/Ayers Rock . No, even bigger”). When the local crossing guard's position is eliminated, Eddy invents a device to make the intersection safe. With help from his classmate Justin, Eddy might just win first place at the regional science fair and make his first true friend. A perceptive look at a complicated mind, the novel is steeped in the world of science (binomial nomenclature appears throughout), and the quirky humor and authentic characters should have wide appeal. Ages 8–up.

June 1, 2010
Gr 5-8-Eddy is distraught when his entry in the science fair doesn't win. When his disappointment, coupled with the gymnasium hubbub, peaks, he squats on the floor, covers his ears, rocks, and chants chemical-compound names to himself. Eddy's sensitive nerves act like antennae, soaking up anxieties that cause him to recoil. The boy has high-functioning Asperger's syndrome and his intolerance of noise, and of other students' inadequate entries, is realsadly, as real as the people who avoid him. Former playmates have grown up and turned into mean adolescents. At the same time, Eddy overlooks students who try to befriend him, because he is unable to understand social cues. When the school's crossing guard is let go, the boy obsesses over every imaginable calamity that could happen to children in the street. He loves the structure of science and tinkers endlessly with recycled gizmos and wires, and, following his counselor's advice, puts his worry to work inventing a traffic-signal device. It's curious to walk with a mind that works differently, where channels are isolated, fraught, and amplified, but readers will get a chance to do just that with this protagonist. Unfortunately the secondary characters are shallow and unconvincing. Also, the clever insertion of Latin scientific names and other facts from Eddy's bank of "random access memory" illustrates his extreme intelligence and will make the title appealing to science fans, but for average readers such detail is overwhelming and distracting."Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2010
Grades 5-8 When your parents name you Edison Thomas after the famous inventor (and a family tradition to name members after famous Thomases), you are a ready target for bullies. If your interest really is inventing, you are brilliant, and you have trouble decoding social cues, youre an even bigger target. Readers will catch on more quickly than Eddy that his longtime friend, Mitch, is behind the mean-spirited pranks that are being played on him. The storys main plot, about Eddys efforts to invent an intersection-warning device to replace the safety crossing guard, who was eliminated in budget cuts, is fun to follow, but this novels real strength is Eddys gradual understanding of true friendship. Eddy gets counseling to help him decipher the basic social cues that elude him (his condition is never directly stated), and his responses to common idioms are both humorous and sensitively drawn as he learns not to take everything literally. As an added bonus, the text includes related scientific facts, from The Random Access Memory of Edison Thomas, which will intrigue budding scientists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)