Midnight for Charlie Bone

By Jenny Nimmo

What’s happening to Charlie Bone? Chalie doesn’t want to believe it when he discovers that he can hear the thoughts of people in photographs. But his horrible aunts are delighted—it means he is one of the chosen and must attend the Bloor’s Academy for gifted children. Once there, Charlie realizes that some of his classmates have equally mysterious powers, and soon Charlie is involved in uncovering the mysterious past of one of them.

This is a Harry Potter-esque book, I think pointed toward a younger audience than Harry. But like Ms. Rowling's phenominal series, this is about Charlie Bone (of course) who finds out one day that he is one of the 'endowed' and must go to a special school called Bloor's Academy. With his best friend Benjamin, Charlie is thrown into a mystery surrounding a student that may be attending his new school and has promised to find out what ever happened to a little girl that was traded for a case that is now in Charlie's posession and which his ill-intending aunts want very badly. This book was a cutesy sort of story, and while you are supposed to be horrified at someone trading a child for a strange black case, it seems rather unbelievable. Especially when all the adults tell Charlie he has to figure things out; what adult flipantly tells an eleven year old kid to do something that important? It's a fun story, and kids will like it, but young adults and adults probably will find it a bit too juvenile for personal enjoyment.