“Boom!”, by Mark Haddon

Haddon, Mark. Boom!, Or, 70,000 Light Years. [Toronto]: Doubleday Canada, 2009. Print.

This is another book I picked up on a whim from the “new to our library” shelf in the children’s section.  I know Mark Haddon, of course, from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but didn’t realize he’d written a children’s book.  It turns out that he actually published it in 1992, but edited it heavily for a 2009 re-issue.

Two middle-school-aged kids overhear two of their teachers talking in what they think might be some kind of code.  The mystery is too strong to resist, especially for the main character’s best friend, who disappears.  The main characters, Jim, ends up enlisting his sister’s help to try and track down the villains.  Although nominally a thriller, this book had me chuckling at several points.  Scholastic doesn’t list it on their website, but typing the first couple of paragraphs into MS Word suggested a Grade 3 reading level, which sounds about right.