The 1,000-year-old Boy

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As you may know, I set up a Facebook Reading Challenge at the start of the year, with a different theme for each month. September was a children’s book and I chose Ross Welford’s The 1,000 Year Old Boy. This was Welford’s third book, published earlier this year. I loved his first novel Time Travelling with a Hamster which I read with a book group I used to run at my youngest daughter’s primary school. The children all loved it too.

The 1,000-year-old Boy by Welford Ross | Goodreads

I really enjoyed this book. It has the perfect blend of history and magic. And I instantly loved Alfie. A sweet, young boy who just wants to be a normal and age like a normal boy. He befriends Adrian and Roxy, two curious kids who offer Alfie what he craves the most - Friendship. Along a similar theme, Book Trust have compiled a list of books about time travel, which you may also find useful! The ending is so well done and so beautiful, that I felt overwhelmed. As I read the last lines of the book, I felt a tear glide down my cheek. It is after a long time I have felt this way about a story and I must thank the author for coming up with such a brilliant story. So impressed am I with his work that I have gone ahead and bought his previous two books as well. Can’t wait to begin them as well. Alfie Monk is like any other nearly teenage boy – except he’s a thousand years old and can remember the last Viking invasion of England. So when everything Alfie knows and loves is destroyed in a fire, and the modern world comes crashing in, Alfie embarks on a mission to find friendship, acceptance and a different way to live… Which means finding a way to make sure he will eventually die.” Stephen has been keeping a secret of unbearable proportions. He can't confide in his foster family, his social worker or his dead-beat father - they wouldn't believe him anyway.This is my book review of The 1000 Year Old Boy by Ross Welford. Book review of The 1000 Year Old Boy Summary The book takes you on a wonderful journey, from self discovery to friendship and loyalty, it has everything in the right dose. Even though the main characters are middle schoolers, I connected with them easily.

The 1,000 Year Old Boy” by Ross Welford Kids book review: “The 1,000 Year Old Boy” by Ross Welford

With both fantasy and history as its undertone, The 1,000-Year-Old Boythen foregrounds its bildungsroman-esque plot as the overarching genre. While we can agree that The 1,000-Year-Old Boyis very much a coming-of-age novel, the protagonist does not rebel against the idea of growing up as protagonists in coming-of-age novels are wont to do — instead, we are taken on a journey of self-acceptance and forgiveness as Alfie’s lust for life demands that he learns to become a child again if he is to grow up and grow old. This involves ridding himself of his mistrust of others and of the cynical worldview he has adopted over a thousand years. I love the way Welford writes; he has a real ear for the language that young people use and there are great comic touches in this book which will appeal to kids’ sense of humour. There are some challenging themes here – I read Matt Haig’s How to Stop Timeearlier this year, where the main protagonist has a condition which means he ages extremely slowly. Rather than being some miracle to be aspired to, Tom Hazard, like Alfie Monk in Welford’s book, finds it lonely and isolating because it prohibits normal human relationships. Alfie says throughout that he just wants to be a normal boy, to go to school. At one point he talks heartbreakingly about the “ Prison of my deathless life.”Whole Class Reading resources and planning for Year 6 in a zip file based on the first six chapters of Ross Welford’s book ‘The 1,000 Year Old Boy’. Overall, I truly enjoyed this book! It had adventure, high stakes, loss, gain, and the overall moral of the story was incredible. I was sad to see this book end, and now I really wish for a sequel lol. Thank you Ross Welford for such a fabulous book, you have lots of talent! This book, like Welford’s others, is set in North Tyneside (where I used to live, so it resonates with me for that reason too), on the coast east of Newcastle. Alfie Monk is over 1,000 years old, having been born at the time of the Danish invasions of Britain. When he was young, his father was custodian of some ‘life pearls’ within which were stored an elixir of eternal life. To access the elixir the life pearls had to be smashed and the liquid consumed. Alfie’s father was involved in a fight with someone who tried to steal the life pearls, and he was killed. Alfie (unfortunately?) smashed two of them accidentally; he and his mother (and their cat!) drank the liquid, meaning they will never age and therefore never die of natural causes. The curse can only be lifted by drinking another dose of liquid, but there is only one life pearl left. This is hidden on a remote island off the Northumberland coast. Nope. He doesn't want to live for a thousand year. He just want to grow up. He regretted taking the magical life pearl that made him a mortal. But, it could be reversed!