The 1,000-Year-Old Boy

Ross Welford's The 1,000-Year-Old Boy is a funny, thoughtful adventure for 11 year olds about a boy who hasn't aged for more than a thousand years, and would very much like to start.

What happens

Alfie Monk was born Alve Einarsson. In AD 1014 he watched raiders burn his village on the Tyne. Hiding in a cave afterwards, he did the one thing his mam had forbidden. He used one of the family's precious life-pearls, and he never grew any older. (His cat Biffa got some too, by accident.)

Now he lives with his mam in a stone cottage hidden in the woods, keeping his head down. He's met Charles Dickens, apparently. Nobody believes a word of it, which is fair enough.

Then there's Aidan. He's just moved to a much smaller house on the edge of those woods. His parents argue about money, and his mates Spatch and Mo have gone off to Italy without him. The girl next door is Roxy Minto. She's tiny, runs a den in a shed under a neon sign that only says AGE, and films everything through a camera hidden in her jacket button. She's convinced there's a witch in the woods.

You can guess where that goes. Roxy's spying goes wrong, she ends up hurt in the witch's yard, and suddenly Aidan has a mystery on his hands.

The chapters swap between Alfie and Aidan, and it's a brilliant mix. Alfie is polite and old-fashioned and never uses a short word when a long one will do. Aidan is funny, a bit of a scaredy-cat and the world's worst liar (Roxy tells him so). You always know exactly whose head you're in.

Just so you know what's in it. The opening raid is real and grim, with neighbours cut down across the river while Alfie and his mam listen to the screams. And to use the life-pearl, Alfie cuts his own arm twice with a heated knife and rubs the liquid into the wounds. It's told plainly rather than gorily, but a sensitive reader might want to know it's coming.

Under all the fun it asks a big question. Would you really choose to live forever? Alfie's answer is no, and he's had a very long time to think about it.

What to read next

For more Ross Welford on the same stretch of North East coast, try Time Travelling with a Hamster. Al lives in Whitley Bay, and on his twelfth birthday he gets a hamster and a letter from his late dad.