Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper

Starred review from February 4, 2008
Reisman's fast-paced, cinematic first novel, already optioned by Universal Studios, transcends its Spiderwickian premise to move in a different direction: it makes scientific concepts interesting and accessible. Like Newton's apple, a secret book—which contains so much power that it could become “the most dangerous thing in existence”—falls from above and hits the Everyboy protagonist, 11-year-old Simon Bloom from New Jersey, smack on the head. Titled the Teacher's Edition of Physics
, it teachers Simon how to turn himself into an 11-year-old superhero. As he tells his friends, the super-cool Alysha and tiny, cowardly Owen, “This Book tells me how science really works.... It only looks
like magic if you don't understand.” Using one of the book's formulas, he takes away Alysha's body's kinetic friction, and she slips and slides over dry forest leaves.The kids' personalities evolve as the book progresses, although the villains (they try to capture the book) are flat, stock characters. The narrator is British—“all the best Narrators are from Great Britain”—and members of an Order of Physics receive silly names, such as Ralfagon Wintrofline and Mermon Veenie. These mannerisms, by now familiar in novels for this target group, function almost as a kind of shorthand: kids who like ironic narration will like this title, too. Ages 9-up.