Smart Alex has a secret

Ostrich

Alex Graham is a precociously smart 12-year-old.He analyses his parents’ every move, and deduces that something’s up. Something’s also up with his pet hamster, Jaws 2, who is in ‘a fugue state’. Alex and Chloe, a school friend, set up experiments to find out. Alex’s brain is on overdrive, and he’s very funny, a trait he inherits from his driving-instructor father. We’ll read a lot of metaphors, he says, because he’s practising his composition for a scholarship to a prestigious middle school.

Alex is so busy with this ambition, his feelings for Chloe and their sleuthing, that he barely notices his seizures, which occur inopportunely, such as when he kisses Chloe at a spin-the-bottle party.