Am I real?!

Beyond Belief

By @RealAlexWoolfe. Illustrated by @jasminefloyd_

Published by @LittleTigerUK

£14.99 ISBN: 978 1 83891 401 1

Published: 3rd March 2022

First Line: We are living in truly exciting times…

Genre: Non-fiction, science and technology.

Age: Year 4 upwards (8+)

Thanks to @lr4schools for the copy!

What’s it all about?

Well, that’s a little hard to narrow down into a blog post, because it’s about things which might happen in the future or might not and these things might just make your head explode if you try to think about them too much! Having said that, the book covers such topics as: time travel, human cloning, nuclear fusion, teleportation, mind uploading and super humans. If you haven’t read, ‘The Astonishing Future of Alex Nobody’ (time travel), Morgana Mage in the Robotic Age (robots), Chester Pardons is not a Gorilla (mind swapping) and Swarm Rising (mind uploading) then these ideas are dealt with in these fiction stories, whereas this takes the ideas as if they are true (based on current scientific facts) or at least will be soon! Even though the illustrations are brilliant, as there are no diagrams or photographs, it means there is a lot of reading and therefore I have said that this is best for 8+. Additionally, I initially found the topics quite hard to follow as I didn’t find the title of each section clear enough. Also, some of the topics last 3 pages not 2 or 4, so in some cases there are two different topics on a double page spread, which I haven’t seen before in a non-fiction book.

Why should you read it?

It leaves you feeling excited for the future, even if there are some scary ideas (would an exact copy of you have it’s own legal rights or would it supercede your right?!!). If you’ve never read ‘The Copy’ by Paul Jennings, firstly, you really should, and secondly, this story imagines an idea which might not be scientific fact, if not now, then in the future. I think there is just the right amount of information on the page and each section deals with some complicated information in a succinct but informative manner.