The 1000 Year Old Boy, by Ross Welford is a realistic middle grade fiction novel telling a heartwarming, poignant tale, in the simplest terms, of a boy who wants to grow up.
I remember it being winter.
I remember reading this book. I remember sitting in my balcony and highlighting so many parts of it.
Ross Welford creates a magical world in this one, along with magical characters that make you fall in love with them.
Would you like to live forever? I am afraid I cannot recommend it. I am used to it now, and I do understand how special it is. Only I want to stop now. I want to grow up like you. This is my story.
My name is Alve Einarsson.
I am a thousand years old. More, actually.
Are we friends? In that case, just call me Alfie. Alfie Monk.
Alfie Monk is an “ancient man in the body of a boy”. He’s a 1000-year-old person, but he’s stuck in the body of an 11-year-old.
Now take a moment to look at life from this perspective.
Forget your present age, whatever it is, however old, however young. What would life look like to you if you could live for a thousand years?
Is it as fascinating as it sounds? Is it just a tad bit scary?
In The 1000 Year Old Boy, Ross Welford takes up this very question.
Blurb of The 1000 Year Old Boy, by Ross Welford
"There are stories about people who want to live forever. This is not one of those stories."
The 1,000-Year-Old Boy by Ross Welford is a heartwarming and thrilling tale about Alfie Monk, a boy who has lived for a millennium but looks like an ordinary 11-year-old. After centuries of hiding his secret, a tragic event forces him to reveal the truth to Aidan and Roxy, two modern-day kids who become his unexpected allies. Together, they embark on a journey to find a way for Alfie to finally grow old. Packed with adventure, humor, and emotion, this captivating story explores friendship, loss, and the true meaning of a life well-lived. Perfect for fans of magical realism!
And the thing about this middle grade book is that it’s not exclusively about middle grade audience at all. Why don’t we, as adults, need to learn this lesson too, probably more than kids do?
Why are we taking this beautiful life for granted when Alfie Monk is out there all alone for a thousand bloody years and is trying to find his way out of this labyrinth?
The 1000 Year Old Boy packs a powerful punch.
Sometimes the book is funny:
‘Never trust anyone with more than two cats,’ he said, which I thought was a bit mean. I kind of like cats.
We had a goat called Amy and some chickens. (We did not give names to the chickens, because we sometimes ate them.)
And sometimes it’s got important life lessons.
Mam used to say that a uniform could make someone a better person or a worse person, but never the same person.
‘It is war, Alve,’ said Mam, shaking her head when he had gone. ‘It does the strangest things to people.’
But even more than the frustration and bitterness of living for so long is the loneliness. You’ve got no one with you except someone else who’s facing the exact same thing. Alfie’s mom was that person for him, but then again, for how long?
Alfie can’t make friends for long, either. He can’t stay with them. At some point everyone grows up, you know. And to see the other person being as young, as kiddish, as boyish as the first time you saw them—even years ago—that just puts in the seed for suspicions to grow.
Before long, Alfie always senses the distrust of the people around him. He’s got to leave again.
But it all gets tiring after some point.
And sometimes, that’s what Alfie Monk looks like, you know, instead of just being the 1000 years old boy, he looks just as exhausted, as spent, as…desperate.
Who wants to live a 1000 years anyway, when every day looks the same, and you can never love a person because it only ends in heartbreak? Who wants to live for so long when after one point it just starts feeling less like a life and more like a cage?
…there is no way that I can do what I have waited hundreds of years to do.
To grow up.
To have a twelfth birthday. A proper one.
To have friends that grow up with me, and then to fall in love, and marry, and have children, and watch them grow up and have children … And to feel that life is valuable, precious. To yearn for each day to be longer, because I do not have an endless number of them … Because I understand, by now, one thing more than anyone else on earth: without death, life is just existence.
Because everyone wants to grow up. Everyone has to grow up. You can’t just sit and stare at one age, one place to be at forever. You can’t call it a life, on top of that.
Make my own way. Make friends. Grow up with them. Be normal.
Except that I could not. Not unless I managed to get to the pearl – before anyone else.
This is what Alfie wants, after all.
And to do it, he has to find this life-pearl again. The pearl that can grant him his freedom from immortality. And the secret to finding the pearl lies closer to home than he might think.
But he’s got to find it, that’s what matters. It’s what’s gonna help him bring his life to something that ordinary and…easier.
And he’s making friends, finally, opening up, trusting people, all while finding the way back to a life that feels like one.
What he wants is very simple.
Hs wants to live again.
(and he probably wants a home too.)
(and also a cat, I guess.)
A children’s home. My home. I am a thousand years old and I live in a children’s home. I miss my mam. I miss Biffa [his cat]. Somehow nothing seems quite so bad when you are stroking a cat.
