11, March, 2009
The Radioactive Boy Scout

The thought of a fifteen year old boy, on average, makes you think of a young zealous individual who likes to play sports or cards with his buddies, but not David. David Hahn is not this average ordinary boy, as the author Ken Silverstien reveals in his semi-satirical description of young David's adventures.

David did not like sports; he didn't like playing cards; he loved science though. Everything about it tended to fascinate him, and this is plainly portrayed and said in the book itself. The author also goes heavily into detail about David's home life, and how his dad was always too enthralled in his work to really pay attention to what his son was doing. This caused David some severe trouble. With nobody to monitor his activities he could freely make whatever he wanted. It started out small, firecrackers, bottle rockets, small amounts of highly poisonous radioactive material, you know, the usual.

Not only is this book highly entertaining, mostly due to the satire in some situations proposed by the author, but it is also highly intuitive, and offers a lot of information on the subject at hand. This boy the book is about is a truly amazing person. These stories of him blowing himself up, making mustard gas, and the one the most fuss, the MODEL nuclear reactor. The funny thing about that is, it wasn't even functional, but it still posed an issue due to the fact that he did happen to have radioactive materials.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that happens to have the slightest interest in science, or weird adventures involving radioactive materials, or firecrackers. It can also give new insights as to how that person, or people like him at your school might think. It helps remind you to keep an open mind and always try and keep science moving forward.