Jayben and the Golden Torch: Book 1

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It all just seemed too over-eager, doing too much, being breathless for unhealthy reasons and not the purely page-turning delights. But my brain injury had stopped me reading and writing and, between my unreliable memory and my seizures, achieving this dream seemed completely impossible. Thomas Leeds creates a sense of the confusion and anxiety that must follow in real life when someone has a seizure.

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Books that acknowledge or explore mental health issues can help to increase awareness, encourage dialogue, reduce stigma and develop real understanding.There is humour, tension, and some strange pathways through the journey to the last page, with the occasional ‘missing moments’. As the shadows of the Blitz hang over London, young Davey finds himself the man of the house when his father leaves to fight in the war. The following suggestions offer a spectrum of different perspectives and are well worth seeking out. You’ll have to make up your own mind in this exciting and tense coming-of-age adventure that has echoes of Jumanji and Peter Pan. He will have to find out what he needs to do quickly because the residents have been waiting for him … a brutal force by the name of Null is wiping everyone’s memories to gain ultimate power.

Jayben and the Golden Torch: Jayben and the Golden Torch

Without knowing where his beginning was, he began adjusting to a future that included navigating the severe epilepsy that resulted from his brain injury. I note many reviewers have found this to be amazing, and loved Ben/Jayben for so much more than the mindwiping seizures part of his character, but already in the early readers are people not to have finished this, and thoughts in agreement with mine about having been rushed through an over-stuffed narrative.You can feel Jayben's worry about the loss of control and his concerns that he may have one that puts him in danger. This is not a Harry Potter story, but it will appeal to some fantasy devotees, aged 10+, if they can cope with the occasional confusions or absences due to memory loss.

Jayben and the An Action-Packed Fantasy: Read Our Review of Jayben and the

In the Elf world, he wakes up with a mysterious golden torch but without any clue who he is - except for the compass he pulls from his pocket, engraved with one name: JAYBEN. They need to see their difficulties faced by strong characters in stories that are not about the fact that they're disabled – books that any of their friends might enjoy just as much. The likely combination of ‘lost periods’ in his fantasy life, and the possibility of epilepsy as a cause of memory-loss are a parallel to this author’s own journey with a brain injury and epilepsy. This threw a lot in – the lad's hidden destiny, the swapping of things from our world to his, collective global amnesia in light of the end of the world, rescue from monsters, farting pets – and then had a humongous info-dump of exposition for the character known there as Jayben to learn what was what. When twelve-year-old Jayben finds himself in a fantastical new world, he wonders what it all means: Jayben has blanks in his memory due to his epileptic seizures as a result of brain injury.But when Jayben finds a curved torch in his pocket, an Elf family reveal he is the GREAT NINTH DREAMER. He soon learns the value of friendship and he proves to himself that in spite of his disability, he can be the hero. If your young reader is a fan of Francesca Gibbons and the Wizards of Once series, then Jayben and the Golden Torch will be right up their alley!