The Amanda Project, Invisible I by Melissa Kantor
Harper Collins, 2009.ISBN 978000
7327270.
Set
in the United States
this book is about a girl named Amanda Valentino who disappeared from
Endeavor
High about 6 months after enrolling. The
narrator Callie Leary is part of the popular I-Girls clique but
secretly helped
with Amanda's introduction to her new school. This wasn't easy as
Amanda was a bit of a social outcast who
didn't seem
to seek friends and wasn't worried what others thought.
Then
Amanda
disappears and Callie is summonsed to the Vice-principal's office where
she
finds that Nia Rivera, a definite weirdo and the arty but good looking
Hal
Bennett are also there. Evidently Amanda
had also befriended these two, which was pretty hard to understand.
Vice Principal Thornhill gives them all
detention for not telling where Amanda is but they are just as
mystified as
him. However Amanda has left the trio
different clues and this disparate group eventually decide to work
together to
find out more about Amanda and where she is.They even have the
brainwave of setting up a website to try to
find
other people that knew Amanda so they can discover more about whom she
was and
why she disappeared. However unraveling
the truth isn't simple and the mystery just gets more and more
complicated
raising more questions and giving no answers.
And then the book ends! Looking inside the cover I find that Invisible
I is the first
of a
series. I wish they would advertise such important detail prominently
on the
outside! Delving a little deeper I find
that The Amanda Project is an
interactive, collaborative fictional mystery aimed at teenage girls,
told across a variety of different media including the 8-book series, a
website that features games, writing, art and social networking, and
a
related series of blogs, satellite sites, music, and merchandise. Its
on
MySpace, Face book, and Twitter! Readers can be interactive at the website where
they
can help Callie, Nia and Hal find Amanda and do other fun stuff.
The
numerous drawings and doodles throughout the book give it a unique and
friendly
feel which would certainly appeal to the targeted readers. Fourth
Story owns
all rights for the property, is producing the
content for The Amanda Project with a creative team.
HarperCollins has
the
publishing rights to the eight book series and is also an investor in
the
property. The
book content is good and suitable for 12
years plus. Given the techno age in
which we now live there is probably a market for embedding books into
websites. A brave move that will be keenly
monitored.
Kay Haarsma