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A review by readsforlove
A Rover's Story by Jasmine Warga
4.5
This is book 1 in my book study series I'm doing this summer, where I study NYT bestsellers, and other award winning middle grade novels and analyze what makes them stand out amongst other stories. For this novel, there are quite a few!
To start, this novel plays a lot with point of view. The bulk of the story is told from Res' POV, with frequent insertions from Sophie, the main scientist's daughter. This combination of narrators provides a very unique reading experience, as Sophie, being a human child, knows a lot more than Res about things happening in the world. Meanwhile, Res is a very limited narrator, learning the world as he grows older but still being very limited in what he knows due to his lack of exposure to lots of things. (He doesn't know what a sixth grader is until the end of the book!) This creates a deep level of dramatic irony which adds a LOT of tension to the story, as the reader knows a lot more about many things, and yet a lot less, as he is primed to do a very specific thing: explore Mars.
This experimentation really makes this book stand out, and I think it's a great book to give kids interested in science and space travel. I do wish Sophie's letters actually got to Res, though. Not sure how that would have worked, but it would have been nice.
To start, this novel plays a lot with point of view. The bulk of the story is told from Res' POV, with frequent insertions from Sophie, the main scientist's daughter. This combination of narrators provides a very unique reading experience, as Sophie, being a human child, knows a lot more than Res about things happening in the world. Meanwhile, Res is a very limited narrator, learning the world as he grows older but still being very limited in what he knows due to his lack of exposure to lots of things. (He doesn't know what a sixth grader is until the end of the book!) This creates a deep level of dramatic irony which adds a LOT of tension to the story, as the reader knows a lot more about many things, and yet a lot less, as he is primed to do a very specific thing: explore Mars.
This experimentation really makes this book stand out, and I think it's a great book to give kids interested in science and space travel. I do wish Sophie's letters actually got to Res, though. Not sure how that would have worked, but it would have been nice.