The Nerdy Dozen by Jeff Miller (review)

Chameleon is the hottest video game, accessible only through an exclusive kids-only gaming website and rumored to actually be a military flight simulator, and thirteen-year-old Neil is one of the best at it. However, when an actual Chameleon, a top-secret plane with invisibility capabilities, is hijacked running a mission over the ocean, the Air Force kidnaps the twelve top scorers of the game—including Neil—as reconnaissance pilots to run a retrieval operation. Clever intelligence work and some bumpy landings reveal that the mastermind is none other than a kid himself, bent on using the top-secret technology to gain a monopoly on the world video-game market. This is an amiable action comedy (a hippie gamer named Biggs is especially wry), but it’s light on momentum; Neil and the crew are likable enough, but beyond providing a mirror for kids more interested in screens than pages and couple of token nods to racial diversity, they don’t offer much depth. This therefore doesn’t reach the height of Johnson’s The Great Greene Heist (BCCB 7/14) for a nerdy ensemble caper. However, with a combination of joysticks and fighter jets, this will likely grab some fans who are willing to wait for the next installments in this proposed series.