A review by amandabock
Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children by Conn Iggulden

3.0

This was enjoyable up until the last few chapters. In fact, I was seriously considering reading it to my 2nd graders. It's just subversive enough, without being too much so. The writing is adequate, although over-simplified. There are whole scenes missing, and many of the jokes remind me of movie dialog. Nevertheless, I like the world of the Tollins. It's a kind of Borrowers meets wunderkind-saves-the-world. The ending, though, totally ruined it for me. It became a moralist treatise on the importance of science leading the future and the stupid people who would try to stop it.

Ultimately, I think it's the kind of children's book that is created by and for adults who really don't know anything about children's books, and will therefore think it's either cute or subversive.