The Super Life of Ben Braver

 The Super Life of Ben Braver by Marcus Emerson is a story about an 11 year old, Ben, who discovers he may have superpowers during a summer vacation. The story begins with Ben, a normal lonely 11 year old boy just chilling and playing video games. On his way to grab a snack from the nearby gas station, he sees someone, Dexter Dunn, bullying another kid. He decides to stand up to Dexter, which turns out to be a bad mistake; he gets sent to the hospital because of a concussion Dexter gave him, after had used some sort of power to shoot ice crystals at him. When he wakes up, everything is explained to him by the headmaster of a school, Donald Kepler. He soon finds out that Kepler isn’t the headmaster of a normal school; he’s the head of a school for children who have superpowers, and Kepler believes Ben has one. At first, he was unsure whether to believe him, but after the headmaster showed his own ability to Ben, he got really excited; this was his dream come true! He agrees to go to the school.

On his first day of his new school, he realizes things are the same as his old school, but also very different. He has almost the exact same classes as his old school, same teachers, and even about the same start-of-the-year talk. The main difference is that the kids there; many of them can perform “superpowers”, such as his roommate, who can burp out fireballs. Ben feels a little out of place, as he doesn’t yet have a superpower, but he is then informed that over half the school doesn’t have their powers yet, so he is not the only one

The story starts to progress during early to mid October; Ben is worried about his power, as he is the only person in the school who hasn’t discovered theirs yet, and if he doesn’t discover it by Christmas, he will be kicked out of the school. At the same time, Ben starts to notice something off about the kids in his school; many of them are walking around like zombies and smelling of worms.

Ben decides to look into this more into this, and realizes these kids go into the forest in the middle of the night. He follows one, and finds a secret cave in the ground, in which he finds hundreds of kids in small red eggs. Ben is terrified, and one of his friends, Penny, goes up to get the school’s head of security, Abigail. It turns out that Abigail, was actually the one who captured all these children in “eggs” she had grown using her power. She had been making plant-like copies of the kids she had trapped, in order to take over the school. 

Ben tries to escape, but finds himself surrounded by plant-clones of almost everyone in the school (including himself)! Abigail then uses a special red disc to make Ben’s clone gigantic; she hops on his back and comes out of the forest to start destroying the school. Other non-captured children tried using their powers to stop her, but it was no use; Ben’s clone was too strong. Ben realizes that it is up to him to save the school, and climbs to the highest point he can reach and jumps down onto his massive clone. Abigail at first laughs, thinking there’s no way he will be able to deactivate the disc, but with his last ounce of strength he manages to do it; the school is saved!

In conclusion, The Super Life of Ben Braver is a really immersive fiction book about a boy who gets sent to a school for people with superpowers. Although he doesn’t end up discovering his power, he still has to uncover a mystery and beat a villain. Marcus Emerson wrote an entire series based on this book, and I’m planning to check them out. I would highly recommend this book (and the sequels most likely once I have read it)!

- Alex Caesar