How To Live Forever

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The illustrations were gorgeous and had lots of little Easter eggs for adult readers such as the names of the books in the library. The moral of the book was very philosophical and reall pushes the reader to think deeply about the nature of life. What is more important to live a full life or a long life? And are there more to the museum with it's treasure trove of secret tunnels and rooms than meets the eye? That study found that children who were randomly assigned mentors showed a 46% difference in drug use, a 50% difference in school truancy, and a 33% difference in violent behaviour. A randomised control trial conducted on Experience Corps, a project set up to mobilise older people to help low-income chldren with literacy skills, similarly discovered that students who worked with older volunteers scored 60 percent better on both reading comprehension and the sounding out of new words. Kids will enjoy the simple story and the big picture illustrations. Older, more well read readers, children, teens, and adults, will “get” all the illustrations, which are time consuming to read. That said, sometimes Thompson books are carried entirely by the drawings, with just a minimal storyline to tie them together. Sometimes the point of the story is hard to decipher. Not so here. This book has a strong narrative - our hero is searching for the one book that teaches a person how to live forever, and, when he finds it, our hero has to decide whether to read it. The knowledge it contains has serious and life altering consequences. This is heady stuff, but it is handled gently and in a thought provoking manner.

To live forever is to not live at all." so says the Ancient Child to Peter. Peter walked through the garden taking in the Ancient Child's words, of his sorrow and while sitting on the bank of the river Peter had finally made up his mind. He wouldn't read the book.Strole has been an evangelist of human immortality since he was a child, when his grandmother died, and he felt “a pain you can’t even describe, it’s so deep in your gut.” He was 11, still new to the world, and he came to think of death, like most of us do at some point or another, as deeply unfair. What good is all of this? The current life-extensionist strategy is twofold. First, achieve a “wellness foundation,” Strole says. Second, stay alive until the coming gerontological breakthrough. All that is required is to “live long enough for the next innovation,” and presuming you do, “You can buy another 20 years.” Twenty years here, 20 years there, it all adds up, and suddenly you’re 300. This is a common view. Last year the British billionaire Jim Mellon, who has written a book on longevity, titled Juvenescence, said: “If you can stay alive for another 10 to 20 years, if you aren’t yet over 75 and if you remain in reasonable health for your age, you have an excellent chance of living to more than 110.” To most, 110 seems a modest target. Why not forever? “It’s not some big quantum leap,” Strole says, by way of explanation. He invokes the analogy of a ladder: “step by step by step” to unlimited life. In 2009 the American futurist Ray Kurzweil, another supplement enthusiast, coined a similar metaphor, referring instead to “bridges to immortality”.

As with many books, however, the book's main message is revealed in its sub-title: "The enduring power of connecting the generations."The author, Marc Freedman, CEO of Encore.org, wants us to understand that we live in an age-segregated society, one where housing, labour markets, education and pensions policy combine to separate the old from the young. This "age apartheid" is not only out of step with current demographic trends, he argues, but down-right counter-productive: It impedes the happiness of individuals, who benefit enormously from these cross-generational relationships, and it limits progress on a host of social ills. In any case, it is likely that one single longevity strategy alone won’t help us much. Life extensionists enjoy a metaphor: humans are complicated machines, they say, like cars, but mushy. And what happens to a machine if you don’t look after it? It rusts. It splutters and spurts, until it reaches its inevitable conclusion. De Grey considers ageing a “multifaceted problem”. Humans incur many different types of damage. We don’t just rust. We scratch. We dent. Rubbish accumulates in our footwells and grime develops in our engines. We require multiple strategies of repair – constant fine-tuning. What’s the point in removing those senescent cells if that molecular junk continues to build up? Certainly was not disappointed by this picture book. This book is about a young boy called Peter who goes in search of a book called 'How to live forever' so he could live forever; this reminded me of Peter Pan because he is a boy that does not want to grow up - children may also make links to Peter Pan. Aidan Chambers (Tell Me, Children, Reading And Talk With The Reading Environment By Aidan Chambers, 2011) notes that children should have opportunities to discuss likes, dislikes, patterns and puzzles in books - linking the book to Peter Pan may be a pattern that many children are familiar with. The boy Peter who lives in the library has been looking for a book called "How to liv forever" to ensure that his cat and him would not grow up. His adventure of "book hunting" was quite fun and was expressed fabulous by the images in the book. Even though Peter find the book at the end but he decided to hide the book and not using the "magic power" of this book.At first blush, I didn't think a book entitled How to Live Foreverwas for me. I was expecting a hard sell on a new killer vitamin that would add years to my life... gene therapy that could prevent chronic disease...botox for the brain. That sort of thing. I keep saying that I had everything but all I had was endless tomorrows. To live forever is not to live at all.” All that being said it's a kids book that I read in like 24 hours so it definitely works for what it is. I probably wouldn't read it again, maybe in another ten years.