TRUE TALENTS

In the opening pages of this sequel to Hidden Talents (1999), 15-year-old Eddie Thalmayer, aka Trash, awakens in a locked room, groggy from being overmedicated. Bowdler, a sadistic adult who seemingly works for the government, wants to harness Eddie’s ability to mentally move objects and create the perfect weapon. Readers learn that Trash is one of the special power teens from Hidden Talents’s Edgeview Alternative School (Torchie, Cheater, Flinch, Lucky and Martin round out the group). Their powers are definitely cool, but they are demonstrated only occasionally during this work, which reads quite long and requires familiarity with the first title. Escaping from the lab, Trash sends out a telepathic message for his buddies to rendezvous in Philadelphia. Bowdler, like crazed school administrator Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, hunts them down. Middle-school readers might enjoy how the teens turn the tables on a deranged adult, but overall, the humor is forced and the danger is not as immediate as Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters series, which also features teens with psychic talents and packs a greater punch. (Fiction. 10-14)