Everything in Ben Tomlin’s world is changing.
He’s turning 13.
He’s moving to a new town.
And he’s getting a baby brother named Zan
… who won’t just change Ben’s world;
he’ll turn it upside-down.
You’ll find out why when we talk about this
week’s Pick.
Zan is no ordinary brother.
He’s a chimpanzee.
And Ben’s scientist parents have adopted
him as part of an experiment.
See, Half Brother is set in the 1970s—at
a time when teaching an animal to communicate
(Ben’s parents want to teach Zan American
Sign Language) was cutting-edge research.
Not surprisingly, Ben has pretty mixed feelings
about Zan—especially at first.
He deals with the typical angst that comes
from having to share his parents with another
sibling—not to mention the awkwardness of
having to explain Zan to his friends.
And things are only going to get more complicated
for Ben—which is perhaps the best, and the
most difficult, part of this story.
Because one of the things Half Brother is
fundamentally about is relationships—in
other words, how to relate to other creatures,
both in a scientific sense, and in a human
one.
Half Brother definitely raises some tough
questions about ethics, about how we treat
other living things, and about growing up
in general.
But most of all this is a book about love,
and the lengths we’ll go to save someone
who has unwittingly stolen our heart.
