The Day No One Woke Up

Ana is anxious  – a new school day but she doesn’t want to go to school. She and her best friend, Tio, have fallen out. Ana doesn’t know why – and she feels she cannot tell her new friend Layla, though they are almost inseparable. She struggles through two days then Wednesday, another ordinary day; or is it. Why is everyone asleep – except herself and Tio? Can they work together enough to solve the mystery? 

This is an intriguing and imaginative look at friendship. What if we are the subject of research by, yes, aliens looking to study how humans react emotionally to situations and interact with each other? This science fiction premise effectively allows the author to remove all adults from the scene leaving Ana and Tio to work out their relationship with each other – and potentially with another species.  The situation that has caused the rift in the friendship will be one that young readers will recognise, even relate to, and provides believable parameters. Both Ana and Tio are convincing – Ana anxious, looking inwards, Tio, hurt and reacting in a credible manner. The interactions from the ‘aliens’ at first a bit confusing perhaps, will very quickly be accepted by an audience familiar with a computer driven world. Here is an enjoyable narrative that effectively delivers a message without being didactic rather allowing the imagination to engage, the reader to empathise and sympathise.