Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Erratum-Walter Sorrells

Erratum
Walter Sorrells
Dutton, Oct 2008, $16.99
ISBN: 9780525478324

In Alsberg, Minnesota, seventh grader Jessica Sternberg knows she has always been different as she is taller than all the boys and can jump higher than any of them. However, she prefers reading to basketball to the chagrin of the basketball coach who believes she would make them a state contender. Thus it is not shocking for her to enter Queeg & Rosewood Antiquarian where the owners insist they have her book already paid for at a cost of $3719 to give her. The book is titled “Her Lif”. Jessica looks at the last page and realizes that the owners try to kill her. She escapes by grabbing a paperweight that she drops outside; the building vanishes.

Jessica runs into her best friend Dale McDuffie who got a call from the most famous library in the world insisting he needs to return his borrowed copy of My Lif. Soon the pair is involved in all sorts of adventures caused by the ERRATUM to My Lif. Whereas villain Bob Robbins wants to vacuum a hole in the universe; Jessica is destiny’s child trying to prevent it from happening.

Though the audience is fourth to sixth grade, ERRATUM is a fantastic complex science fiction thriller that uses string theory as the basis of the adventures of a wonderful seventh grader that children and adults of all ages will relish. Jessica is a terrific tweener though at times she seems much more mature as she struggles to add the “e” to Her Lif and eliminate the ERRATUM. With libraries never the same and an incredible final Twilight Zone like twist, fans will root for Jessica as she tries to save the universe.

Harriet Klausner

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