Shelf Awareness--We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

YA Review: We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix (Scholastic Press, 240p., ages 9-12, 9781339012209, October 15, 2024)

Garth Nix's We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord is highly believable, edge-of-your-seat science fiction, perfectly crafted for a middle-grade audience, in which one boy's too-smart-for-her-own-good 10-year-old sister finds an alien object capable of mind control in "an alternate version" of 1975 Canberra, Australia.

Most evenings, 12-year-old Kim Basalt and his best friend, Bennie Chance, along with their younger sisters Eila and Madir, ride bikes to a nearby lake. One night, after the sun disappears "for a fraction of a second," Eila wades into the water and pulls out a perfectly round, golden globe covered in mud. Kim tries to wrestle the object away from Eila, but he's zapped by the "horrible sensation that somethingwas entering his brain," at the same time a voice in his head insists "let me in." Kim resists ("heck no!") and breaks free, but Eila, bossy and "super, super smart," pronounces the object to be a friend, and Madir worshipfully agrees it's "perfectly safe." Kim knows the globe is dangerous and threatens to tell their parents, but the globe disguises itself as a "harmless and ordinary" basketball by the time the kids get home.

Kim can't stop worrying about the globe, but Eila assures him Aster--"she is a person, not a 'globe thing' "--will listen to her and "can help." Eila sneaks out of the house one night and Kim follows to find Eila illuminating a massive ant nest with the globe; the next morning, the ants that had been touched by the light are dead. Later, Kim notices a "thin, perfectly circular layer of cloud directly above them, covering the city." When Bennie's parents start getting along, a sick neighbor is suddenly healed, and Kim's parents buy the color TV they never wanted, Eila finally admits to Kim that Aster is interfering with minds.

Nix (The Old Kingdom Series; The Lefthanded Booksellers of London) brings his consummate skill with speculative fiction to this captivating piece of alternate history. His introduction of a seemingly innocuous object with the potential to throw the known world into chaos is a familiar device, but in Nix's hands it's particularly effective. The ever-increasing tension should keep readers mesmerized, as they struggle with the question at the heart of this clever book: whether mind control is ever okay, even if it brings about "good" changes. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author. Originally printed in Shelf Awareness Pro.