“Minecraft: The Island” by Max Brooks is the first book in an official Minecraft, multi-author, multi-adventure series aimed at middle-grade readers.
Imagine playing Minecraft in survival mode for the first time. You don’t know how anything works, and, in this scenario, no one is there to help you. No gamer guides. No online communities. Just you. Dropped into the middle of the ocean. Now imagine it’s real. That’s this book.
My son, who’s twelve and an avid reader and player of Minecraft, loved this book. In fact, the moment we finished the audiobook my son went straight for the second book in the series and was twenty to thirty pages deep by bedtime.
As a Minecraft fan myself, I enjoyed the story. It’s well-written and immersive. It did feel a little sparse and heavy-handed at times, but, it was intriguing to image real life in the world of Minecraft. And Jack Black as the audiobook narrator—Oh, Wow!—it’s impossible to imagine a more perfect match for this story.
Young fans of Minecraft fiction will enjoy Max Brook’s “Minecraft: The Island.”
“Minecraft: The Island” is available from Amazon and other book retailers.
Content Guide
Romance (low)
None.
Violence (moderate)
Fighting zombies, spiders, and other dangers. A breakdown moment where chickens are harmed. Emotional, but not graphic.
Language (low)
Name-calling, discussion of bodily functions, and a few instances talking about saying bad words, but not saying the words.
Sensitive Topics (moderate)
Survival situation where the character considers the moral dilemma of eating animals to survive.
About “Minecraft: The Island”
The first official Minecraft novel! The author of World War Z tells the story of a hero—stranded in the world of Minecraft—who must unravel the secrets of a mysterious island in order to survive.
Washed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. Where am I? Who am I? And why is everything made of blocks? But there isn’t much time to soak up the sun. It’s getting dark, and there’s a strange new world to explore!
The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island . . . like the horde of zombies that appears after nightfall. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow.
In this world, the rules don’t always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed.
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About Max Brooks
The New York Times bestselling author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, Max Brooks has been called “the Studs Terkel of zombie journalism.” He lives in New York City but is ready to move to a more remote and defensible location at a moment’s notice.
Max Brooks’s The Zombie Survival Guide formed the core of the world’s civilian survival manuals during the Zombie War. Mr. Brooks subsequently spent years traveling to every part of the globe in order to conduct the face-to-face interviews that have been incorporated into World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
Connect with Max Brooks through his website (maxbrooks.com).
K.A. Cummins 