Gordon Korman. The Hypnotists. New York: Scholastic, 2013. Print.

Hot off the press! Just released this past month! Another book from favorite young adult (YA) author Gordon Korman. Korman is funny while nailing the young adolescent sensibility. At the same time, he tells an exciting tale. The Hypnotists will not disappoint.

Jackson (Jax) Opus occasionally has what he calls visions where he sees himself relating to other people as he tries to solve different problems. He realizes there is power behind these visions one day when he is trying to catch a bus for an important basketball practice as he waits near his home on 14th Street in Manhattan. Two full buses pass him by. A third is rolling by when he sees himself standing in front of the bus. The bus suddenly stops. Though it, too, is full, the driver lets him and his buddy Tommy on.

Jax tells the driver he has to be at practice on 96th Street in less than half an hour. The driver takes the bus directly to 96th Street, barely escaping accidents and only stopping when passengers pull the emergency cord. When they reach 96th, the driver lets Jax off and wishes him good luck.

Through a variety of similar incidents, Jax learns that he has inherited the power to hypnotize people. His hazel-green eyes will turn blue when he is thinking of something to tell someone, and then they will turn purple is the suggestion is especially strong. Tommy is color-blind and appears immune to Jax’s power.

Jax volunteers as part of a research study overseen by a Dr. Mako of the Sentic Institute. All the people being studied are able to hypnotize people to some degree. Besides being involved in various hypnotism experiments, Jax takes a few classes on the history of hypnotism. There Jax learns how frequently hypnotists were involved in significant political and cultural events. A few more trivial examples: The Cubs pitcher in the 1932 World Series was hypnotized to throw a fastball right down the middle of the strike zone when Babe Ruth points his bat to center field. A friend of the Roosevelt family hypnotized Gutzon Borglum to carve Teddy Roosevelt on Mt. Rushmore instead of Alexander Hamilton as Borglum had originally planned.

As Jax continues with the Sentia Institute, he becomes less certain that Dr. Mako and some of the others are using their powers for good. He stumbles across a down-and-out subculture of hypnotists known as the Sandmen. A Sandman meeting is like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where members share the temptations they gave into as well as those they overcame to try to encourage the others not to abuse the power that they have over others.

To say more would be turn this review into a spoiler, but there are some parallels to a certain boy wizard. Boy with unusual inherited abilities joins a specialized educational institution and ends up in a fight for his own mental health, and maybe his life, with a guy who even Jax himself compares to Voldemort.

Still, this tale is original in its scenario, and it is lighthearted fun. Perhaps the second half, because of the seriousness of the crimes, is not as funny as some of Korman’s other stories like Ungifted, but most readers will find The Hypnotists hard to put down.