I found it really cool that even though Alfie was only 11 (well 1,011) he had the mindset of an adult.

The 1,000-Year-Old Boy (Audio Download): Ross Welford, Chris

Alfie is trying to be a normal 11 year old except he's 1000 years old and can remember all the kings, queens and the last Viking invasion in England .If you're lucky you'll see your grandchildren enter this world and have some time to reflect on your life and do a few the things you always told yourself you'd do but life got in the way. Alfie, our title character, isn't terribly interesting or crafty, either, and acts strangely naive for a guy who has seen 10 centuries. After his poor mother's death from the fire, Alfred made sincere friends whom he could actually trust and accept support from, he found the pearl and reached his dream with their help. Like Alfie wanted to find the one last life pearl right after the fire, I think the life pearls meant hope for him. While most fantasy novels use fantastical elements to accentuate the novel’s own uniqueness — to wow and hook readers, propelling them into escapist comfort — Welford effectively subverts that notion by presenting the life-pearl, one of the few fantastical elements in the novel, as the central source of distress for the protagonist.

The 1,000-year-old Boy - ReadingZone The 1,000-year-old Boy - ReadingZone

Alve not only has to cope with modern life and elude civil authorities, but also to evade a brutal adversary who’s been after the antidote for centuries. Also because they generally lack the teenage romances that are in most teen and YA fantasy books – which I try to avoid). He yearns to grow up like a normal boy and feel the preciousness of life that you only get with a normal human lifespan, lived in the shadow of the horror of old age.The 1,000-Year-Old Boyby Ross Welford is an upper middle-grade fantasy with a historical undertone, spanning a millennia’s worth of English history. Alfie has been living with his mother (who has the same gift) for the past thousand years in various parts of Britain and has seen it all – the Viking invasions, the French revolution, the World Wars and much more. Being one of the legendary “Neverdead” thanks to a magic potion, Alve (aka “Alfie”) has spent the past millennium or so with his equally immortal mom and cat, just getting by and keeping out of sight.