The Icarus Show

October 24, 2016
British author Christie offers a haunting story about searching for friendship and beauty while enduring cruel taunts. Early in the first term of secondary school, Alex learns how to deal with bullies: “Don’t React” is his motto. People who do react, like his neighbor David, get tagged with horrible nicknames and move to the bottom of the pecking order. Being friends with someone like David could be social suicide, but Alex can’t help being drawn to him, especially after learning that David is behind mysterious notes inviting students to witness an incredible feat of human flight. If anyone could construct wings able to carry a boy through the air, David could—or so Alex thinks until he recognizes another side to David’s scheme. Through Alex’s naïve and compassionate perspective, readers see glimpses of David as a loner with enormous artistic talent and a heart broken by his father’s abandonment. Christie sustains real suspense as the motive behind David’s plan comes into focus, along with whether he’ll be successful in proving that a boy can fly and the role that Alex will play. Ages 8–12.

October 15, 2016
"Coming soon!...A boy is going to fly! Do you believe it?...Will you be there "A spate of mysterious announcement letters just like that, each accompanied by its own feather, circulate around Lambourn Secondary School. Narrator Alex Meadows is at first fearful but then becomes intrigued, welcoming the distraction from the usual routine. While he has been successfully employing a don't-react strategy against the provocations of bullies like Alan Tydman, his neighbor David "Bogsy" Marsh chooses the opposite tactic and suffers for it. Alex eventually discovers that Bogsy is the one sending the notes as they navigate their emerging friendship, confront their tormentor, and ultimately participate in what becomes the Icarus Show. Alex's warm relationship with his elderly neighbors plays a significant role when one, learning that Bogsy is in serious trouble, gives helpful advice and summons his real-life Daedulus to save the day. With Alex's chatty narration, Christie employs an ambitious and promising story structure and some cinematic imagery, laced with British nuance. Although development between plot points is occasionally heavy-handed or lacking in depth, the overall message will resonate. Alex is silent on matters of race; readers will likely infer that he and his classmates are white. An aspirational mix of Greek myth and painful truths for middle-grade readers. (Fiction. 9-12)

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December 1, 2016
Grades 5-8 Alex Meadows is surviving his first term at Lambourn Secondary School by making himself invisible. Invisibility is achieved by not reacting to thingsa trick he learned from his cat. His new neighbor and classmate David Marsh is a reactor, earns the unkind nickname Bogsy, and is ostracized by his classmates, Alex included. Then the notes start to appear, hinting at the spectacle of a boy who will fly, and daring Alex and his classmates to believe in the possibility. The idea of a real-life Icarus suggests a touch of magical realism, but this is grounded in the everyday pains of schoolyard politics. The book expertly portrays the dilemma of the bystanderthere isn't always a straight line from thought to action. Alex's close relationship with his elderly neighbor, now in a nursing home, provides him with an adult filter through which to view Bogsy and to better understand his strong, strange mind. This book, which could have plummeted under its own gravitas, holds steady and delivers a meaningful, dramatic finale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)