The Invisible Hand

Gr 6–10—Sam, a student at a boarding school in England, is having vivid dreams, during which he travels back to Medieval Scotland to inhabit the body of Scotsman Robbie Cauldhame. The dreams distract him during the day as he longs to return to the exciting world he's discovered, not to mention a mysterious, beautiful girl he sees there. But these journeys are more than just dreams, and he's not the only one at his school able to "trav." What he has become involved in is something more sinister than he suspects. With heavy usage of British terms, spelling, slang, and boarding school references, this is for intrepid Anglophiles only. It also assumes a working knowledge of Shakespeare's Macbeth, with no explanation of the plot for unfamiliar readers and brief, infrequent forays into the action of the play. Inconsistent pacing and narratorial shifts paired with a handful of typos and a late introduction of the primary conflict make this read all the more difficult. Most troubling of all is the problematic language used for some characters of color and one with disabilities. An Indonesian student speaks awkward, broken English that reads as derogatory. Another student, Femi, is mentioned briefly as "the Nigerian who said he was a prince." Some imagined, roving night criminals are described as potential "gypsies" and "immigrants" by some students.