The Green Futures of Tycho, written by William Sleator, is a book about the adventures of an eleven year old boy, Tycho, and a mysterious egg–shaped gadget he found while digging a garden. Tycho’s parents, Bobby and Judy, named each of their four children after a famous person in a particular field, hoping that there children will grow up to join that field. Tycho, 11, was named after the famous Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He is expected to become an astronomer, but he has many other interests he would like to pursue as well. When Tycho was pursuing his interest in gardening and plants by making a garden, he stumbled upon a strange devise that he thought was just a piece of metal, but something inside him told him to take it. His siblings came to him so they could see what he found, but Tycho refused to show it to them and accidentally pressed the top of the devise, causing him to disappear from sight. Tycho had disappeared in the morning and did not show up again until it was dark out. Knowing that this egg-shaped piece of metal was special, Tycho started to examine it to find that it was a time travel device. Tycho used the egg to his advantage by going into the past and changing some events that had haunted him for many years into good memories for himself. Using the egg, Tycho decides to see what he will turn out to be in the future because of his many interests. Each time he goes to the future, he is in a different career, but the one similarity in all of his futures is that he has become a horrible man, not only to his family, but to the world itself. Frightened of his future, Tycho tries to find out how what he can do to fix the mistakes he will make in his life, and in the process he learns that life is all about chance. An example of how chance controls your life is that if you were to stay at a party five minutes later than you wanted to and someone new came in, you could hit it off right there and possibly find the person you will spend the rest of your life with. If you hadn’t stayed at the party, you would never have met that person and your whole life would be different. Knowing this, Tycho decides to go into the future to find out what he can do to save himself from the horrible future he has seen. Soon, Tycho learns that the time travel devise is the cause of the potential horror of his future. Unfortunately, it might be too late to fix his future. Tycho has to be strong, brave, and extremely smart in attempt to find a way to make it so he never saw the egg and to be able to safely return to his time.
The Green Futures of Tycho is an excellent book. I would recommend this book to anyone, even an adult. You may think that the book starts off a little slow, but after the first four pages, you won’t be able to put the book down. One of the many great aspects of the book is how the characters are named after well known people so that they will join the field of whomever they were named after. It is interesting to think of yourself being put in the position of one of the characters. You would have a career chosen for you that you would have to pursue; otherwise you would disappoint your family. My favorite character was Tycho, because you could see the different changes in his personality after each journey through time. Another reason Tycho is my favorite character is because he has many different attitudes in each potential future, and you can figure out what kind of a person he will end up to be in twenty years once his life is back to normal. The ending of the book is my favorite part of the book because of the way the author grabbed your attention by adding unexpected action into the story. If I were asked how this book compares to any other science fiction book that I have read, I would say that The Green Futures of Tycho is definitely one of the top 5 books in the science fiction category. The Green Futures of Tycho is a pretty easy book to read, but it still contains plenty of appropriate vocabulary for many different ages. This book teaches you that life may rely mostly on chance, but you can make the decisions that will lead chance in your favor. William Sleator’s style of writing is what grabs you into the book. The surprises that the author puts in the book are placed and written so perfectly that when they come, you don’t even expect it. No matter how many times you read the book, the surprises still come unexpectedly. There was just enough detail in the book that you could picture the story perfectly, but still be able to add some of your own creativity into the story. When the book was over, you could picture what would happen next because of how well the author described the entire story. The only change I would make in the story is having Tycho go into the past a couple more times to play practical jokes on his friends and family. The Green Futures of Tycho is one of the greatest books ever written. Rating (0 - 10 scale): 10Reviewer Age: 13
Reviewed by: MP
