YOU WISH (THE MISADVENTURES OF BENJAMIN BARTHOLOMEW PIFF, #1) -- Jason Lethcoe

Grosset & Dunlap -- tpb
New York -- © 2007 -- 215pp
ISBN: 0448448351

Orphaned Benjamin closed his eyes, blew out the candle and wished with all his might. Soon after, sirens wailed all over the Wishwork Factory- Ben had followed every rule of birthday wishing to a T and hand made the most dangerous wish of all... a wish for UNLIMITED wishes.

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There were moments in this book that I found clever and even fun, but overall this book was tepid, uninspired.

I bought this book because the premise seemed real interesting -- a young boy makes the granddaddy of all wishes -- that he have an infinite number of wishes -- and because he did everything just right in the making of the wish, the wish came true, and of course, when a wish like that comes true, it wreaks havoc on those granting the wishes.

So, a good idea...what went wrong?

First, there's the story-telling itself. A lot of telling rather than showing. It came across as a lack of focus as to the age group that this was written for. On one hand, it seemed aimed at the youngest readers -- eight years old or so, but on the other hand, it had some themes that seemed targeted to the early middle-schoolers.

Although I rolled my eyes a little at the idea of the 'hated orphan' aspect, it didn't bother me terribly. Again, the basic idea seemed pretty good, but once we got into the war between the wish-fullfillers and the nightmare handlers, I couldn't wait to be done with the book.

The great war came from nowhere, but even more so was the idea that our hero was better at a weapon like a boomerang than any of the fairy folk who trained with the weapon. There was no lead up to this, no hint, no forshadowing (couldn't he have been playing with a boomerang in the fron yard of the orphanage when he first got yelled at?). And the attempt at creating a friendly rival not only came from nowhere, the rivalry fizzled out early and was a waste of time.

I had hoped to find a book that would keep my kids interested, but I think this one would intsult their intelligence.