Tween Tuesday

Brainwalker by Robyn Mundell and Stephan Lacast

Summary from Netgalley:

Fourteen year-old Bernard is full of out of the box ideas—ideas that nobody appreciates. Not his ultra-rational father, not his classmates, and definitely not his teacher, who’s fed up waiting for Bernard’s overdue science project. You’d think with a hotshot quantum physicist for a dad, the assignment would be easy as “pi”, but with his relationship with his father on rocky ground, Bernard is under more pressure than a helium atom.And Bernard’s impulse control flies out the window when he’s stressed. So instead of turning in his project, he moons the class and gets suspended. Now his dad’s got no choice but to bring him to his work. At the Atom Smasher. It’s the chance of a lifetime for Bernard, who knows smashing atoms at the speed of light can—theoretically—make wormholes. How about that for the most mind-bending science project ever? But when he sneaks into the particle accelerator and someone hits the power button, Bernard ends up in the last place he’d ever want to be.
Inside his father’s brain.
And it’s nothing like the spongy grey mass Bernard studied at school. It’s a galaxy, infinite and alive. Like, people live there. A mysterious civilization on the brink of extinction, as unaware of their host as he is of them. But there’s zero time to process this. Bernard’s about to be caught up in an epic war between the two sides of his dad’s brain over their most precious resource:
Mental Energy.
With his father’s life at stake, Bernard must go up against the tyrannical left side of his father’s brain to save the dying, creative right side. But how the heck is he supposed to do that when he’s just a hopelessly right-brained kid himself?

Confession:

Reviewed from a copy received from Netgalley.

I liked this book, it is a good solid science fiction for tweens and older kids too if they are interested in the brain.  I like the way the author weaves in facts about the brain into the story, so that you learn a little bit about how the brain works in a funny, wacky story.  The main character Bernard is great.  He grows a lot as a character as he learns about how his dad’s brain works.  It is kind of fun to think about little creatures living in your brain and helping it think.  It was also fun to think about how using only one side of your brain too much, could hurt it in the long run. The illustrations in the ARC were not great, but I could tell that they were going to add to the story and help the reader imagine what some of the brain creatures looks like.  All in all a great science fiction story for Tweens!