Operating Codes

Rating:
Summary: A ghost story mingles with real-life challenges
Review: Graham and his sister know that their new home is haunted by soldiers from the past; but the past invades their new lives as their father is put on trial for a security breach and the family must adjust to shame and community judgement. Can lessons from the past affect their future in their new home? A ghost story mingles with real-life challenges, here.

Rating:
Summary: Creative and Entertaining
Review: Graham and his sister Mattie are normal kids. They have a mom, who isn't working, and a dad who works on top secret projects for the national defense association for Britian. But when they move to a spooky old house, everything changes. While trying to fit in at school and make new friends, Graham senses that something strange is going in on the house. At night, Mattie and Graham hear the sounds of soldiers marching, and discover writing on their window in the morning. Their parents believe that the children are just imagining it, but Graham knows they're wrong. He goes on a mission to find out the truth, meeting an older woman who once did research on the house's history. And then, as the pieces fall together, Graham discovers something horrible that happened at his house many years ago: a young soldier, arrested for treason because he leaked information about a poisonous gas being made there. The young soldier was executed, although the gas was a truly horrible death device.

Meanwhile, something of the sort is happening to Graham's father in the present. He is arrested for putting information about a top secret plane (another death device) on the internet. Of course, he never did such a thing, but will Graham and Mattie be able to prove their father's innocence in a court of law? Will they be able to prove that their father was not the one that did it?

Operating codes is a ghost story and a mystery all in one. It is suspenseful and spooky, and a wonderful book. Although it isn't the best that I've ever read, it is very good. I reccomend it to anyone ages 9-13.

Rating:
Summary: Creative and Entertaining
Review: Graham and his sister Mattie are normal kids. They have a mom, who isn't working, and a dad who works on top secret projects for the national defense association for Britian. But when they move to a spooky old house, everything changes. While trying to fit in at school and make new friends, Graham senses that something strange is going in on the house. At night, Mattie and Graham hear the sounds of soldiers marching, and discover writing on their window in the morning. Their parents believe that the children are just imagining it, but Graham knows they're wrong. He goes on a mission to find out the truth, meeting an older woman who once did research on the house's history. And then, as the pieces fall together, Graham discovers something horrible that happened at his house many years ago: a young soldier, arrested for treason because he leaked information about a poisonous gas being made there. The young soldier was executed, although the gas was a truly horrible death device.

Meanwhile, something of the sort is happening to Graham's father in the present. He is arrested for putting information about a top secret plane (another death device) on the internet. Of course, he never did such a thing, but will Graham and Mattie be able to prove their father's innocence in a court of law? Will they be able to prove that their father was not the one that did it?

Operating codes is a ghost story and a mystery all in one. It is suspenseful and spooky, and a wonderful book. Although it isn't the best that I've ever read, it is very good. I reccomend it to anyone ages 9-13.

Rating:
Summary: Operating Codes
Review: Nick Manns mixes a ghost story with a political message in OPERATING CODES, a novel about the moral implications of working to develop weapons of mass destruction. Most of the story is told by Graham Hayton, a teenager in England whose father designs computer software for sophisticated fighter jets. Graham's sister Matty also tells part of the story through interviews with a psychologist. The two children are witnesses to a series of bizarre and troubling events, some of which seem to have been caused by ghosts! Others are the work of live people with conflicting goals.

The trouble starts for Graham and his family when they move into Sentinel House, an old house that was once used by the British military. Their father's work seems to awaken the ghosts of the house's military past. Matty and Graham have several supernatural encounters that cause them to doubt whether their father's job is an ethical one. At the same time, some very real individuals are acting quite suspiciously around the Sentinel House. All of these events come to a head in a sensational trial --- Graham and Matty's father is arrested for treason!

OPERATING CODES challenges readers to think about war and the moral choices it can involve. Manns relies heavily on biblical passages to make his points --- in one key passage, Matty reminds her father that Jesus instructed his followers to love their enemies --- but avoids a preachy tone. A message of peace leaps off the pages, however, and is particularly thought-provoking at the moment, given the events of September 11th and after.

Despite these engaging questions and a plot built around the supernatural and other mysterious happenings, OPERATING CODES is a surprisingly slow-moving book. Graham tells his story in great detail and with a lot of foreshadowing designed to build suspense. But in a story built around moral questions, a more straightforward narrative style might have kept the story moving along better. Between philosophy and foreshadowing, some of the suspense and energy of the story is lost.

Still, OPERATING CODES has a lot to recommend it --- a ghost story, a trial, an adventure on an abandoned military base, a fictionalized history lesson. Readers will find the book challenging in a number of ways and enjoyable in nearly as many.

--- Reviewed by Rob Cline