Review: TESLA'S ATTIC by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman

Good characters, lots of humor, adventure...
... and Science!  

4.01 STARS from 170 GoodReaders

TESLA'S ATTIC is a smart, laugh-out-loud book from Neal Shusterman, Eric Elfman, and Disney-Hyperion. (At least I laughed out loud). 

It's a book that could have been written by Dan Brown, if he had Douglas Adam's sense of humor and ability to create engaging characters who had a wickedly sharp understanding of how the middle-school world churns. 

Back Story
After loosing his mother in a horrible house fire, Nick and his brother and father move from Florida to Colorado Springs where they take up residence in a weird old house.  In the attic there are a bunch of devices which they believe are old junk.  And since they need the money they decide to sell them at a garage sale.

What they don't know is that these are devices created by none other than Nikola Tesla, the famous physicist/inventor. And when Nick turns on a light to brighten the rainy day, events get bizarre very fast.  Crowds rush in, and items are scooped up by people who are apparently overwhelmed with a desire to buy them.  Items which they are destined to own.

As he looked around at this boneyard of uselessness, Nick Slate had a simple idea. An idea that would not only change the direction of his life, but the very course of human existence.

He would hold a garage sale.

~

In some ways this story is familiar.  It's like other middle-grade books were there is a group of young teens that find themselves facing off against an ancient organization of bad guys. But there's also a significant difference between this book and the others. And that is that Shusterman and Elfman do it right.  TESLA'S ATTIC is intelligent and carefully plotted.  They create imperfect characters and give them time to explain and express themselves.

I recommend this book for those that like quirky characters and weirdness.  The humor is geeky and pedantic.

Nick took a deep breath, his resolve setting in.  "We have to destroy it," he said. "We have to destroy them all."

The scorched-earth policy is a time-honored tradition of war.  Villagers about to be overrun by the enemy would burn their own homes and crops to deny the enemy shelter and food.  Armies would destroy their own munitions to prevent their attackers from using their own weapons against them.

The Russians used this strategy very successfully against a very irritated Napoleon, burning everything they had and retreating into Russia.  And since there was no end of Russia to retreat into, Napoleon was pretty much screwed.

Pam~

TESLA'S ATTIC

(The Accelerati Trilogy #1)

by Neal Shusterman (script writer for shows like Goosebumps, and books like UnWind, Everlost, and The Schwa Was Here)
and Eric Elfman (author of The Very Scary Almanac and The Almanac of the Gross, Disgusting & Totally Repulsive, and three X-Files novels)

Reading Information:
Word Count: 67,009
Page Count: 256
Accelerated Reader: 6.0 / points: 11.0
AR quiz: 16404

Thank you to Disney-Hyperion for providing me with an advanced copy of Tesla's Attic!