Elena de Roo

I can't believe that I am the only person to have read and reviewed this book as it is great for younger readers.
A stand alone novel set in the future where the government (via a Name Bank) chooses your name for you based on 4 interviews about your personality and suitability of the name. Up until the age of 12 everyone is called by the month and day they are born - enter our heroine September Tuesday. Lately however, strange things have happened at the Name Bank - a number of 12 year olds have disappeared and no-one knows why.
When September ( or Temmie as she is called by her father) goes to the Name Bank, she first meets the officious and boring Counselor Garlic who is leaning towards assigning her a boring flower based name. When Temmie leaves however, she finds herself in the office of one strange Counselor who urges her to play a game similar to Snakes and Ladders to find her true name. (There are no snakes, only ladders and riddles at the bottom of each staircase and a tuning fork with a new name on after every turn!) Temmie on her first go is given Melissa which means honey bee, and this causes her to hear voices in the game that plead for help (i.e a bee can hear all others in the hive) and run into August who is playing at the same time and has lost his brother Jules 5 years ago.
Can Temmie and August free the trapped missing children, find their true names and solve the riddles?
A great one for Harry Potter fans - although I worked out the riddles myself and saw the name that Temmie would pick. Loved the helpers in the Honey store who show Temmie how to overcome the bad side effects of some of the names she is given.… (mais)