William Sleator (1945–2011)

Dang! Where was this book when I was younger??!? For being a few decades old, it really hasn't aged much! This psychological teen read throws five 16 year old orphans into a weird uninviting alien environment filled only with stairs. None of them know why they are there or how to escape. They wander around and find a weird machine that will give them food, only when they figure out how to meet it's weird demands. It's the 5 of them against this weird environment, what will happen if they show more stop working together? Why are they there? What is the point? It is very reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, just maybe a little more futuristic. A weird, interesting, and compelling read. I dig it. show less

My favorite children's book, my favorite book full stop for years and years (until I was eight). It was all so vivid - the wishing, the hot day and the long hill; the wind coming; the horror of being trapped, of running out of paper (!) by huge, unforgiving figures moving closer and closer.
Suddenly we're in a balloon; suddenly we're on the ground. The rules change.

I cannot imagine what wicked person thought it was a good idea to publish a children's learn-to-read book about an unequal show more friendship and the nature of reality and two children being chased by towering monsters and magic that maybe isn't magic, and an up-in-the-air ending. Thank god they did, cause otherwise where would I be? Re-reading Richard Scarry and rocking back and forth, that's where. show less

Eleven-year-old Tycho does not have an easy life. His three older brothers and sister are all gifted: Ludwig is a music prodigy, Tamara a talented classical dancer, and Leonardo a budding artist and inventor. Tycho, on the other hand, has changing interests and no particular gift for anything, so his parents and siblings are disappointed in him. One day, while digging to plant a vegetable garden, he finds an egg-shaped object in the ground. Accidentally, he discovers that it is a time travel show more device. He begins to use it intentionally to avenge himself of his siblings in the past, but mostly, he is interested in traveling to the future to know what will become of him and his family. However, the futures he travels to become darker and scarier every time, and things have changed in the present every time he gets back. As he comes to know more and more about his grown-up self, he makes the decision to prevent the horrible future he sees from happening. Will he succeed?

This is a well-written and quite thrilling science fiction book. The reader’s mind gets sucked into the different futures that Tycho visits, trying to make sense of it all at the same time as Tycho. Some of the bleak futures he visits send chills down the spine, and I found myself hoping that Tycho would succeed in the mission he set for himself, as if it would actually have an effect on real life. I guess that means Tycho and what he goes through are very believable. This is a definite page-turner with an intriguing and dark quality to it.

I believe that this book, because of some of the darker subjects it tackles, is best for more mature readers. Ages 10 and up. show less

It takes a special book to stick in one's memory for over thirty years. There are some I remember because I read them over and over, but then there are those that I remember because of the sheer ideaness and atmosphere imprinted on my young brain (there's also the category of Awful Things that Happened to Animals genre, which caused a less happy kind of imprinting). I must have read Interstellar Pig shortly after release in 1984, and it has remained one of those books that vividly recall in show more entire sections now and again. Not the title, of course; but strangely enough, put 'young adult/aliens/pig' into Google, and it comes up with this book in a flash, so it was easy for me to track it down for a wander down memory lane.

It is with pleasure that I realized it was still an interesting, engaging read.

Barney is sixteen, and trapped with his parents at a two-week rental college on the coast coast, a beachfront location that does absolutely nothing for his sunburn-prone skin but seems to serve a purpose for his status-hunting parents, but does give him a chance to catch up on his science-fiction reading. The caretaker informs them that the sea captain who built the cottage kept his brother locked in the front room for twenty years. Barney is hoping for more information, perhaps a ghost story or two, when the caretaker has to abandon story-telling to settle in the next-door neighbors who have an obsessive interest in Barney's cottage. Barney's intrigued by their cosmopolitan personalities and by the game they continually reference.

"But they didn't seem to appreciate my wit. Barely moving their heads, their eyes met; three pairs of eyes meeting equally somehow, as though there were only two of them. And I thought of the jagged pits and troughs in the windowsills of my room, and I felt uneasy for the first time. A curtain flapped gently at the window. The others in the room remained as still as reptiles in the sun."

To say much more would enter spoiler territory, as the plot moves quickly and has a couple of interesting twists with an earlier scene providing nice foreshadowing for the climactic event. Slater builds suspense well, and I think that the atmosphere of fear he created might have helped stick this book in my memory. Characterization is perhaps a weaker point, but its more than adequate for the story. I'd say for my 2017 re-read, although Barney's age is supposed to be sixteen, he feels more like twelve or thirteen in modern terms.

The writing is solid, feeling more sophisticated than most of the young adult I've read in recent years. Like many teens, Barney's descriptions of his parents are ruthlessly honest, but there's also a measure of acceptance there, and eventually fondness, that elevates it above the simple sarcastic dismissal. The three people next door have traveled a lot and "seemed exotic, as though English was not their native language." It is cleverly conveyed through their dialogue, though Barney never remarks on it but that once. "Ugh! You let the milk go sour again, Manny,' Zena groaned. 'Can't you learn to recollect the date?'"

At 197 pages, it goes by too quickly. A fun little book with a great finale, and a final flourish of well-earned humor. You just never know who will win the great game.

Four and a half stars. show less