Being by Kevin Brooks
Do you know what is inside you? I mean, do you really know? Or do you just accept
that your body is just like those pictures in biology books? Richard Smith never
really thought too much about it-until that day in the hospital.
It was just supposed to be a routine examination to check for an ulcer. An
endoscopy, an out-patient procedure, is very common but what the doctors saw inside
Richard was not normal-not human. Phone calls were made and people showed up.
People in suits with hard faces, cold eyes, and guns. People like Ryan, who kills
without a second thought. Richard was sedated and they cut him open. And while
they had their hands and their cold metal instruments inside his guts he woke up.
With the help of a stolen gun he escaped.
Now Richard is on the run and he has to find out what is inside him. They had to
be wrong. He is human. He eats, he sweats, he goes to bathroom, he gets excited
by the touch of a pretty girl. He's just a normal, teen-aged human, right? But
there it is on the endoscopy video-weird silver, brown, and black things inside
him-- tubes, filaments, and casings that didn't show up on x-rays. And the cut
they made in his stomach is healing fast-inhumanly fast. He can't go home, not
that a foster home is really home. And he doesn't really have any friends. The
only one he can think to turn to is Eddi. He doesn't really know her but he knows
she lives outside the law, making fake IDs. He can't trust Eddi but he has no
other choice. Can Richard and Eddi escape from Ryan and the others? Can they find
out the truth about Richard? Do they really want to know?
Brooks (Martyn Pig, Lucas, Road of the Dead) has crafted a gripping mystery with
his trade-mark other-worldly feel. Lots of action early on will hook readers
quickly and the mystery of who (and what) Richard is will keep them reading to the
end.
Highly recommended for grades 8-12
You can hear a podcast of this and other reviews at the LHS Reading Blog:
http://lhsblog.edublogs.org/
--------------------------------------------------
Tony Doyle, Library Media Teacher
CSLA Northern Section PR Chair
Livingston High School
Livingston, CA
tdoyle@MUHSD.K12.CA.US
Http://www.lhswolves.org/library/index.htm
Http://lhsblog.edublogs.org
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture; you just have to get people to
stop reading them."
Ray Bradbury
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