The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party (Compact Disc)
Winter 2009 Kids' List
“This historical novel transports the reader to the early days of America's revolution. The future is open, everything is up in the air, and the hardest choice is one of loyalty: Should Octavian fight for the rebels who want to keep him a slave, or should he follow hope and side with the royalists who promise him personal freedom? Anderson's sequel to his award-winning The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a provocative story that continues to enlarge the young adult novel in thoughtful, glorious ways.”
— Mark David Bradshaw, Watermark Books, Wichita, KS
He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the best of classical educations. Raised by a mysterious group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother–a princess in exile from a faraway land–are the only people in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments–and his own chilling role in them.