The Experiment

By Rebecca Stead

Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

Rebecca Stead is amazing how she breaks new ground with each new book. Her books include When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy, First Light, Goodbye Stranger, The List of Things that Will Not Change, and Bob and The Lost Library with Wendy Mass.  She has been awarded the Newbery Medal, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Fiction and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for her work. The Experiment is a thrilling suspenseful dramatic exploration of friendship, family and what it means to be human. It’s dynamite!

Nathan is a sixth grader who has lived all his life with a huge secret. He’s part of an alien experiment working out how to live and behave like humans. He’s not human he is Kast. When he starts growing a tail things become complicated. He and his family go back to the mother ship where he meets Hester, the person in charge, and also reconnects with Izzy, a Kast friend who disappeared a while ago.  His best friend and neighbour Victor,  an ordinary human, also gets involved. Is the experiment working or failing? Who and what are the Kast? And what is the deal with the tail? (which keeps growing and has a mind of its own).

Rebecca deftly incorporates references to alien stories and to Calvin and Hobbes (whose tail is this?) while immersing us in Nathan’s world in a complex plot that unfolds over eight days. This gradual reveal grips the reader with an unstoppable urge to find out the solution to the mystery. The Experiment is not her first foray into science fiction, there are real aliens here, but it is her humans who are so engrossing, so touchingly fallible and lovable. As in all science fiction the story is not about Them it is about Us.

An exciting and moving coming of age novel, sometimes scary and creepy, often funny, at all times engrossing for readers aged 9+ who enjoy constant surprises.

A recommended Reader’s Cup title

Text Publishing 2025

Rebecca Stead