Claire+W.

media type="custom" key="7802429" Book Review of //The First Light// What if you could hear dogs talk or see things way beyond a normal persons vision? What if you could be so smart that you could figure out how to seal ice so that it’s like a rock and will never melt however warm it got? That is what the characters in the amazing and mind-boggling book called //First Light// by Rebecca Stead can do. The theme of this book is to tolerate differences. The characters in the book are driven under the ice because people above the ice didn’t tolerate the differences between the people and themselves. They claimed that they were witches and tried to kill them. The characters in this book fled underground so that they could live. The people were only different because of their mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA are what tells mitochondrion’s (the cells engine) how to build itself and what to do for example to be a brain cell, or a heart cell. The mitochondrial DNA are always being reproduced when new cells are made. Sometimes when cells reproduce the mitochondrial DNA changes a little, because nothing is perfect, and when they change the mitochondrial DNA becomes better at what it does. That’s what happened to the character in the book so then they could hear dogs talk and see very far away because their hearing cells and seeing cell’s mitochondrial DNA became better. The author of the //First Light// had a great writing style. The style was smooth and easy to understand even when she kept changing the perspective and the character that was talking. It was never choppy and was full of descriptive words. It was different than other authors because the writing was more descriptive than anything else that I read and it painted a picture in my head of everything that she described. I loved the characters in this book. They were brave and full of adventure. Their names are Peter and Thea. Peter’s dad is a glacier researcher who studies global warming and he lives above the ground on the surface. Peter is smart and thoughtful. Thea lives in the ice with the rest of her city and is an ear adapt (the name in the book for someone whose mitochondrial DNA is improved). She is impulsive and loving. This book is written so that it seems like it is happening right now in 2010. The setting is in Greenland and under Greenland’s ice. Peter is staying in a tent that looks like a giant blue golf ball on the glacier with his dad and mom and his dad’s helper Jonas. Thea lives in the ice with her aunt because her mother died. The city she lives in is all ice and to get around the city the citizens ice skate. There is only artificial light because they are under the ice. This book is about two characters that live very different, yet connected lives. One can see the sun and one can only imagine what he sun would look like. In the book one of the main characters, Peter, goes on a trip with his family to Iceland where his dad is going to research the glacier and look for global warming affects on the ice and snow. Thea lives in the ice. She is working at pursuing her mother’s dream, to extend her city’s boundaries. What she doesn’t know is that her founder is thinking of having her do something even bigger. Peter and Thea find each other under some very strange circumstances and work together to figure out some of Thea’s strange city’s secrets. Read this amazing book to see what they find. I think that everyone should read this book because it makes you wonder what could be out there and what is out there in our world that we don’t know about. Also this book is compelling and had me turning pages until 2 o’clock in the morning. People should read this book because it is full of great messages for all of us and is a very interesting story. I loved this book.