Impossible Things

By Robin Stevenson

Cassidy Silver is not having a good year. Her engineer father is in the Middle East, her artist mother is too busy to listen to the painful details of her daughter's grade seven life, her genius younger brother is being bullied, and her best friend Chiaki has abandoned her to hang out with the meanest girls in school. Then Cassidy meets Victoria, who is telekinetic -- she can move objects with her mind. Cassidy, desperate to not be the only ordinary person in her family, thinks learning telekinesis could be the answer to all her problems. But is Victoria telling the truth? And is telekinesis really the solution?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Apr 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781551437385

Robin Stevenson

Robin Stevenson is an award-winning author of books for kids and teens. Her writing has been translated into several languages and published in more than ten countries. She lives with her family on the west coast of Canada.

Reviews for Impossible Things

[jrlibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The main characters are two grade seven girls; Cassidy Silver and Victoria Morris. Cassidy has a habit of lisping when she is stressed and therefore is bullied because of this habit. She has a little brother, Ben, who is a genius, and a successful artist for a mother. Her dad, who doesn't get much mention, is in Iraq working, but that isn't significant to the story, except that Cassidy's mom worries about him. Victoria is new to Cassidy's hometown, and ends up in Cassidy's class. After a scene with their math teacher, Mr. McMaran, where he inexplicably flips out and scribbles what seems like math gibberish on the blackboard and has his chair break when he sits on it, Victoria confesses to Cassidy about her ability to use telekinesis. She also explains that she is not to use it anymore, for any reason because it got her in a lot of trouble in the past. The remainder of the story is Cassidy and Victoria trying to deal with a mean girl at school, Amber, and trying to help Ben deal with a bully, Amber's brother, Tyler. Cassidy spends a lot of time trying to learn how to use telekinesis. When the book ends, Victoria swears that she really was able to use telekinesis when she was little, but the skill is gone now. The kids have all found acceptable ways to deal with the bullies in their lives, and the book ends reasonably happily. There are a couple quotes I really liked:"It's impossible to make friends unless you're exactly like all the other kids." and "It was a lot harder to hate people when you knew more about them."The book really didn't have much of a chance with me because I'm super tired of reading books about bullies and bullying. I don't mind if a book has a bully in it, but I'm looking for so much more than just that. This book disappointed me because the title was so intriguing, and I thought the telekinesis part would play a much bigger role in the story than it did.