★★★★★
I've been teaching for fourteen years and I know within the first few pages whether a book will hold a class’s atention. This one held them. We used the reading pack across three weeks and it gave us so much to work with inference questions, vocabulary work, a brilliant debate prompt about trust and identity. The children who usually drift were asking to read ahead. That doesn't happen often.

★★★★★
My son is nine and a committed non-reader. He finished this in four days. Four days. He then explained the whole plot at breakfast, in significant detail, for about 15 minutes. I haven't seen him care about a book like this before. We can’t wait for the next one.

★★★★★
My daughter insisted I read the first chapter to her at bedtime. I ended up reading three chapters. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't curious about what happened next. It's a good story. The kind where you care about the kid.

★★★★★
What got me, and I wasn't expecting this from a children's adventure book, is how lonely Ruben feels at the start. Not in a sad way. Just in a real way. Like he's carrying something he can't quite explain yet. My daughter read it and said 'he just wants someone to understand him.' She's eight. She got it immediately. That's the thing about this book. Underneath all the disguises, it's about a kid trying to figure out who he actually is. That’s true to life, and not just for kids