Steel Trapp: the Challenge / Ridley Pearson / 324 pages

Fans of Alex Rider will enjoy this suspenseful story of 14 yr old Steven (aka Steel) Trapp who travels by train with his mom to the National Science Challenge in Washington DC. The geeky science nerd Steel possesses a photographic memory which first embroils him in a gang plot to fix the winner of the national lottery in order to fund terrorist groups and then allows him to outwit the badguys and foil the plot in the nick of time. Steel teams up with fellow kid scientist Kaileigh who has run away from home and travelled to the Challenge in order to discover who stole her invention. In spite of the adults who are either trying to catch them or benefit from Steel's assistance, Steel and Kaileigh use science, logic, and his photographic memory to come to the rescue. Pearson captures the essence of the adolescent who is tired of being treated like a kid, feels they are certainly smarter than most adults, but in the end comes to appreciate that being a kid is not all that bad. Hand this one to that 5th through 7th grade smart kid who needs to know that geeks can be heroes.