The Gardener

Gr 7 Up—S. A. Bodeen's science-fiction thriller (Fiewell & Friends, 2010) is based on an intriguing premise. Mason incidentally discovers that the company his mother works for is covertly experimenting on teenagers, attempting to turn them into autotrophs—organisms that can live without outside nourishment. Initially looking to this experiment as a solution for world hunger, a faction of the company now wants to sell the teens as soldiers to the highest bidding military. While the concept of genetically engineered forms of life that don't need food or water to survive makes for a potentially fascinating and action-packed story, Bodeen doesn't quite deliver as Mason does not always seem to understand what is going on around him, allowing himself to be led by others' discoveries to come to obvious conclusions. Luke Daniel's narration sounds fuzzy, almost muffled throughout the majority of the production. There's even a section where his voice sounds almost completely different from sentence to sentence.—Jessica Miller, New Britain Public Library, CT