Garth Nix's We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord is perfectly crafted, highly believable, middle-grade science fiction in which a boy's 10-year-old sister finds an alien object capable of mind control in "an alternate version" of 1975 Canberra, Australia.
Most evenings, 12-year-old Kim and his best friend, Bennie, along with younger sisters Eila and Madir, ride bikes to the lake. One night, after the sun disappears "for a fraction of a second," Eila wades into the water and pulls out a perfectly round, golden globe covered in mud. Kim tries to wrestle the object away from Eila, but he's zapped by the "horrible sensation that something was entering his brain." Kim resists and breaks free, but Eila, bossy and "super, super smart," pronounces the object to be a friend, and Madir worshipfully agrees it's "perfectly safe." Although Kim can't stop worrying about the globe, Eila assures him Aster--"she is a person, not a 'globe thing' "--will listen to her and "can help." When a "thin, perfectly circular layer of cloud" appears directly above the city, Bennie's parents start getting along, and a sick neighbor is healed, Eila finally admits to Kim that Aster is interfering with minds.
Nix (The Lefthanded Booksellers of London) brings his consummate skill with speculative fiction to this captivating piece of alternate history. The ever-increasing tension should keep readers mesmerized, as they struggle with the question at the heart of this clever book: whether mind control is ever okay, even if it brings about "good" changes. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author