iBoy

Gr 8 Up—All that was on Tom Harvey's mind that afternoon was meeting up with Lucy, the girl he kind of liked, at her apartment in the slummy south London Crow Town towers where gangs run rampant and violence is a way of life. "Hey Harvey!" someone yells, as an iPhone sails out a window 30 stories up, striking Tom in the head, sending phone fragments deep into his brain. When he comes out of a coma 17 days later, he realizes that he and the phone have become one. He learns that Lucy was gang raped and uses his abilities to try to bring a sense of justice to what happened to her. The story goes with a superhero feel rather than trying to attempt a scientific explanation of Tom's ability to access top-secret files internally, surf the Web, channel electrical charges, watch and blink to record videos, and mentally email and text friends and enemies alike. Amid detailing his comic-book superpowers and his fight with a villainous villain, the author raises some interesting points for discussion. Was Tom wrong to transfer £1 each from 15,000 different accounts into a single account so his grandmother could pay the bills? Is his vigilante revenge justified? This book is not for serious scientific readers, but it's just the thing for those with a willing suspension of disbelief who like some grit and challenge with their "Zap!" "Pow!" and "Smack!"—Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX