Looking for an extraordinary action book for nine to 12 year olds?Looking for an extraordinary action book for nine to 12 year olds? Tightly written, with superb teenage characters, and a nail-biting plot, The Real Thing is the perfect book to hand your youngsters when you want to wean them off the television.
As in the best action movies, within this story are several stories going on at once: there's the drama of a race against time; there's the intellectual challenge of outwitting the villains; and there are the personal quests.
Peopled with an ensemble cast that would make Stephen Spielberg jealous, the story boasts good guys struggling with personal issues, bad guys and girls with worryingly realistic malice a key character resembling the James Bond actor, Pierce Brosnan, a motley gaggle of Kiwi kids just getting on with things, and best of all, in the lead, a truly memorable odd couple.
The action dashes, in true James Bond fashion, around the globe, with locations in New Zealand, the United States, in the air and on the high seas, so it is very easy for even reluctant readers to visualisein movie terms. There is plenty of action, plenty of intrigue, and plenty of heroism here, but with a twist.
And Fizzer Boyd is the twist. Fizzer Boyd is the only person in the world who can taste the difference when things go wrong with Coca Cola. In fact, Fizzer Boyd is the first to know, because he has Extraordinary Sensory Perception.
With his friend, Tupai, who looks like a bouncer but has a gentle heart, Fizzer sets off to talk to the Coca-Cola Company about the problem he suspects with their recipe.
That's how the two New Zealand friends quickly become involved in a huge high-stakes adventure that takes them to the other side of the world and pits them against some ruthless people in a race to save not only the world's favourite soft drink, but also the lives of the only three people who know the top-secret Coca-Cola formula. Fizzer is the Coca-Cola Company's only hope. And Fizzer won't go if Tupai doesn't.
Fizzer and Tupai, with their friends, live in various kinds of families and situations that will be familiar to many New Zealand children. One lives in a dodgy part of town; another lives with his dad in a caravan beside a tidal inlet; Tupai lives with two parents who trust him, in an okay suburb.
Like all young people, they have things going on in their lives that most kids will recognise and deal with in varying ways, wand with varying degrees of success. In The Real Thing, Fizzer, Tupai, and their friends handle these everyday factors with solidarity and initiative - admirable ways for anyone to deal with life.
I like the quiet way Falkner depicts the relationships between his teenagers, their acceptance of, and sensivity to each other. It's real. It's plainly drawn and appealing, in the most positive sense. And with the characters' humanity and depth settled in reader's minds from the outset, Fizzer and Tupai's adventure becomes real, and all the more thrilling for readers who have already come to identify with and admire the boys.
What particularly appealed to me in this book are Falkner's quirky, believable characters, and his cleverly controlled writing style that boys - and girls - will love. It is the epitome of 'cool'. Fast-paced, tightly written and compulsive, it also manages to seem unhurried.
It is almost laconic in places, but exudes delightfully down-played wit, and an innate enjoyment of words. Plainly, Falkner like writing The Real Thing, and his enjoyment is catching.
If you want to encourage your young readers, buy them this book.
Janette Godfrey, Wanganui Chronicle
June 2004
