This was a fun audible original! A very short middle-grade read about an 11-year old boy named Jackson who doesn’t want to grow up, and who makes a wish (but more importantly he later realizes, whose grandfather makes a wish for him) that he would always stay 11. He gets the wish, but (in “It’s a Wonderful Life” fashion), this of course turns out to be a curse, as he repeats 5th grade… for 10 years. Everyone else around him isn’t stuck though, so he has to watch the world move on without him. The explanation for all of this involved astral planes and what-not, but it’s pretty much like waving magic wands.
I actually got more engaged in the story as it went on–each time Jackson thought he’d figured out the key to break the curse and end the cycle, I felt so disheartened for him (more than he seemed to be himself). How he finally did break the curse was (spoiler alert kind of, though you can probably guess it) about learning to put others before himself. This was a little cheesy and didn’t totally fit with the rest of the story, since it wasn’t like Jackson was an especially self-centered kid to begin with. But man, I was glad for him when he got off the merry-go-round!
My rating: ****
Language: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
