Jamie's 6th grade class is currently "learning about alien worlds, interstellar travel, and nanotechnology." His teacher, Mrs. Solomon assigns the class a project to "invent an alien".After school Jamie is picked up by his grandfather, an aging has-been rocker with a pony tail. Jamie's granddad Neil used to be the lead singer of a rock group called Death Panda.
Jamie and his family live at Grandad Neil's home in Bramsfield. His family has moved around over the years due to his father's career as a Royal Air Force pilot. While waiting for dinner, Jamie decides to hike up to Beacon Hill where it is quiet and he can't hear his granddad's guitar. During a phone call from his dad, Jamie learns that there used to be an observatory on Beacon Hill. Afterwards, Jamie cliimbs to the top of Beacon Hill where he finds "half hidden behind a bank of trees, a squat redbrick building topped with a white dome-shaped roof." Near the derelict observatory Jamie sees a strange robotic mechanism.
At this point he is confronted by a older woman who forces him into the observatory. The woman is suspicious of Jamie but when he reveals that his father is Commander Dan Drake the woman recognizes him. She reveals that she is Professor Forster, an astronomer who happens to be searching for alien life in the universe. Unofficially, she is searching for a signal from the entire universe. Professor Forster explains Drake's Equation which is used to estimate how many intelligent alien civilizations might exist in the Milky Way, to Jamie. She also tells Jamie that we have been using radio telescopes to scan for alien transmissions since the 1960s. Now she is using the observatory as a secret location for the "mobile Laser Optical Ground Station that is hooked up to the Hubble Space Telescope." which she hacked into when it was in line to be retired.
While Professor Forster goes outside to do a quick check on the ground station, Jamie decides to recharge his phone by connecting it to a USB cable coming from her laptop. Suddenly Jamie realizes that his phone is receiving the incoming transmission from Hubble. Frantic he rushes to disconnect the phone, spilling tea over the laptop, just as Professor Forster returns.
Later that night, Jamie hears a strange buzzing sound from his phone and when he turns it on he sees a new icon in the shape of a golden spiral. The icon spins in time with the phone's buzzing sound. When he taps the icon, his finger suddenly glows. The next day during a math test, Jamie's phone begins buzzing again, and he taps the spinning icon which is now taking up half the phone's screen. The familiar tingle in his finger returns. But when he tries to use the phone's calculate, it begins spitting out numbers that don't seem to make sense. Things become even more bizarre when Jamie finds he suddenly knows the answer to the math problem. Even stranger is that his answer to a question to create his own equation results in a strange equation that he doesn't understand as well as pages and pages filled with unknown symbols and letters.
The unusual behaviour continues in art class when Jamie creates a stunning picture of a landscape "twin suns shine in a bright purple sky above a vast forest of giant plants and ferns. Black flowers bloom in every direction, and rising above these, huge golden spirals shimmer like trapped sunlight. The shape of these unearthly skyscrapers is the same as the spiral icon on my phone,...each golden spiral is actually a sprawling alien city winding into the sky."
But when Jamie's phone begins sending messages that seem to come from an alien needing help, he knows this is bigger than he realized. While his dad doesn't believe him, Dr. Forster does agree that it seems like some sort of extraterrestrial signal has been downloaded into his phone. However, it soon becomes apparent to Jamie that he is able to communicate with an alien whom he names Buzz. When Jamie's father is in danger of losing his life, both Jamie and the alien work together to help each other.
Discussion
The Jamie Drake Equation is a delightful story that mixes science with fiction. It's a sweet mashup that is reminiscent of the movie E.T. in which a boy befriends an alien in trouble and helps him out, all the while dealing with his own struggles in growing up. Although the novel incorporates plenty of science, ultimately this is a story about a young boy discovering what really matters and realizing that his parents are not perfect.
Jamie's father is a world famous astronaut who is on a mission on the International Space Station. The day his father is to launch important probes to seek out intelligent life in a distant system, happens also to be Jamie's birthday. Jamie not only has to share his father with the world, but he also has to share his birthday with an important event as well. His father's busy and demanding career means that Jamie doesn't get much time with him. When he tries to talk to his father about what's happening on his phone, his father doesn't believe him and thinks he's making it up to get his attention. When Jamie needs his father the most to help him solve a problem in HIS life his father isn't there for him. "Dad has always said I can tell him anything - any problem I've got, any worry I have, and he'll help me to sort it out....All I need is for Dad to believe me and then he'll be able to tell me what to do."
Adding to Jamie's worries about the strange messages and his father up in space is the shocking revelation that his parents are divorcing. While divorce is a reality for many children today, this was such a lovely, fresh story up to this point, that bringing the issue of divorce into the story was disappointing. It would be nice for children to be able to read some stories where parents succeed in their marriages - as many do. The divorce subplot is used to drive the story. Jamie's anger and frustration at his dad for leaving the family, his fear for his dad in space all reach a climax during an assembly at Austen Park Primary school.
During the assembly Jamie finds himself becoming increasingly angry, especially since his father and mother are divorcing. "Is this what life is going to be like now? Sharing my dad with a roomful of strangers and getting my birthday presents secondhand? Having everyone think that Dad's some kind of superhero, when really he's tearing our family apart?" His angry outburst at the assembly is an expression of the sadness and sense of loss he is experiencing over his parents' divorce.
Although Edge moves well into science fiction to resolve the disaster facing Jamie's dad in space, the conclusion is both heartwarming and satisfying. Jamie's relationship with an alien being he names Buzz is reminsicent of E.T. It turns out Buzz is an alien life form that calls itself the Hi'ive. They had to choose between their bodies and their minds, moving beyond the physical world, becoming energy. In this form Buzz can both help Jamie and be helped by Jamie.
Overall, the Jamie Drake Equation is a well written short novel, ideal for younger readers who might be interested in science, aliens and space travel. Edge includes lots of science tidbits for young readers to chew on and includes short chapter called The Science of The Jamie Drake Equation where he examines some of the science in the novel.
Book Details:
The Jamie Drake Equation by Christopher Edge
New York: Delacourte Press 2017
185 pp.
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