Book Review: The Last Book in the Universe
Author: Rodman Philbrick
Highly recommended for: Boys and girls, middle school and up.
Genre: Sci-fi/cyberpunk/futuristic dystopia
If you liked: The Giver, Riddley Walker, The City of Ember, Fahrenheit 451, Feed
What's not to like about this story? It has all my favorite elements going for it: the setting is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the protagonist is a disabled yet plucky misfit who must go on a quest to save the only person who has ever shown him any love (his adoptive sister), and one of the central tensions of the story is whether or not the last book in the universe will be destroyed.
Spaz, our boy hero, lives in a nightmarish future after the so-called "shake," a planetwide natural disaster that turns the world into a post apocalyptic wasteland. He encounters the idiosyncratic Ryter, an old dude who just so happens to be the last person in existence who knows how to write books. Ryter wants to complete his life story (in book form) before he dies. As the story progresses, the two must embark on a mutual quest that takes them to Eden, an enclave of priveleged supergenetically engineered humans.
This book is fun to read, and I believe it will be enjoyed equally by boys or girls.
Check out the more detailed summary on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Book_in_the_Universe
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