I am Number Four is the fictional story of a young boy, ”John Smith”, from another planet who find himself lost on Earth with only his non-biological father and his will to live. Even though “I am Number Four” is fictional and John Smith is an alien there is still a lot from the book in which teenagers can relate to. The story follows John and his “father” Henri as they run around earth trying to escape from their captors, never staying in one place for more than a few months until one day they decide to try and settle down properly in Paradise, Ohio.

John Smith was a character I found very interesting because he changed a lot over the course of the book. At the start of the book he was a young teenager who had never lived in one place for more than a few months. Due to his excessive moving he never established proper relationships with anyone other than Henri. This meant that John had underdeveloped social skills and was often subject to bullying. Every new Move meant a new school which meant he was always the new kid. This meant that he was often picked on and his lack of social skills meant that he couldn’t handle himself well. As Quoted by John “I had never been invited to any of the parties at my school before. I had always kept to myself knowing that we could leave any minute.” This quote shows that it was John stopping himself from making friends because he knew that when he left it would be harder for him and also very hard for his friends. I can relate to this slightly because I moved around a little bit when I was a kid but not quite on the same extent as John. I went to three different Primary Schools but however spent enough time at each to establish proper relationships with people which meant when I had to move It was that much harder. I always remember moving to a new school and not having many friends for a couple of weeks, I found this very tough as a young kid so I can only imagine how tough it would have been for John to do this every few months. Later on in the book John and Henri Move to Paradise Ohio. At this stage John is 16 and wants to start making friends and move less often. At Paradise John falls in love with a girl named Sarah and establishes a really good friendship with a guy named sam. This makes John grow as a character because he starts to experience more things and he develops into an entirely new person. John creating proper relationships with people turns out to be good and bad for him. It makes him grow and learn but it also makes it very very hard to leave Paradise when the time comes. “She looks radiant again today with her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing a skirt and a grey sweater.” Due to John liking Sarah so much he puts himself and Henri at risk by staying in Paradise to long. Johns character had changed so much over the course of the book as he was once a shy boy and was now and outgoing teenager. I thought this change was great for the overall book because it gave Pittacus Lore a lot of things to write about and made the story very unpredictable.

A message I took from this text is that sometimes when you love someone or something you have to try and not get to attached to them if you know that you will have to leave them. In instances similar to John’s where you know that you are going to have to leave then it is often harsh on yourself and others if you become attached to someone because when you have to leave then it will be that much harder for you and the other person. I took this message from the text because it is a problem that John had to face multiple times when leaving Sarah and Sam behind etc. This problem relates to a lot of modern day teenagers because people these days people become attached to a lot of things in which they shouldn’t like non human objects such as clothes and other items of possession. Often kids get overly attached to things like this which make it very hard for them to get rid of these items and they end up hoarding things.

The Title for this text “I am number four” is both good and bad for many reasons. The title doesn’t really mean anything to me or anyone until you have read the book which makes it not very good because if someone was to read the name of the book they wouldn’t have a clue what it meant and might just flick past it without a second thought. However, once you start to read the book then you will realise that the title has great relevance to the text and the main character. The title also relates to the other books of the series very well because all the kids have numbers so by calling this book “I am number four” then it made Pittacus Lore be able to title the other books after other characters/numbers from the book.

In conclusion I think “I am Number Four” is a great book for kids my age as it has a lot of relevance with our lives and also contains a lot of things that people like me are interested in so it hooks us in very well. I would recommend this book to modern day teenagers because it incorporates a lot of things that we do day to day. Even though it is an alien book it still has a lot of relevance to us with things such as being risk takers or adrenaline junkies. I think this is a book in which every teenage boy should read and would highly recommend it to everyone.