Futureland: Battle for the Park by H.D. Hunter

Futureland: Battle for the Park by H.D. Hunter is a fabulously unique novel about a seventh grader named Cameron (Cam) Walker. Cam lives with his parents, the founders of the famous flying amusement park, Futureland, during the year 2048. Living there is every kid’s dream, including Cam’s, but, it becomes a nightmare for him during their stop in Atlanta. Kids start disappearing, his parents are replaced with revs, which are remarkably-advanced robots designed by Cam’s parents, and the other revs as well as park attractions are malfunctioning. Cam and his friends must find a way to stop this before everything goes horribly wrong.

Cam first starts noticing his parents acting odd a couple of days after an incident including a malfunctioning gorilla. And even after that, he finds his parents pause after hearing a command, the same way a rev would process information, then, when he says the words to deactivate a rev, his parents seem to stop for a fraction of a second before acting like nothing happened. 

After that, his best friend Dooley, who is also a rev, appears to be speaking weirdly and not following the commands that Cam is giving her. Then Cam and his friends follow Dooley to see where she is going when Cam is at school. Finally, the children think they find what they need to incriminate whoever is behind the crimes, now they just need a way to convince everyone that what they’re saying is true.

I really loved this novel because of the unique way it was written. Just a fraction of the book was written like a graphic novel but it still flowed perfectly throughout the novel. It was really amazing to see a book written like this and it could help the reader notice things that they wouldn’t be able to without it. And, honestly, it’s just super cool to see a graphic novel incorporated into a book this way.