The Eyes of Kid Midas



The Eyes of Kid Midas is a Young Adult Novel by Neal Shusterman. It stars Kevin Midas, an Ordinary Middle School Student who stumbles upon a pair of Reality Warping sunglasses. At first, it's great--Kevin can have anything he wants. In the mood for an ice cream cone? Bam: there it is. But it doesn't take long before things start to fall apart, as Kevin quickly discovers how dangerous godlike powers can be...


 * : Played with both literally and figuratively (in regards to the mentioning of .)
 * Addictive Magic
 * Black Best Friend: Josh.
 * Bully Hunter: Once Kevin discovers the power of the glasses, he takes it upon himself to humiliate the bullies who picked on him. It goes a bit farther than he would have liked.
 * Clingy MacGuffin: As Kevin uses more and more of the glasses' power, they gradually become a part of his body.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: Lampshaded; Kevin is scolded for what he does to Bertram. "Nobody deserves that."
 * Dragged Off to Hell: Kevin tells Bertram to "Go to Hell." The ground promptly opens up and swallows him.
 * Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Bertram's Berserk Button is when his mother is insulted.
 * Fantastic Drug: Intense highs, crippling addiction and withdrawal--pretty straightforward metaphor.
 * It Got Worse: Reality is warping. The world is going mad. Things look pretty dark for Kevin. That's when . And then . And then . Crap.
 * Keep-Away: Hal and Bertram play Keepaway with Kevin's (ordinary and mundane) glasses in the beginning of the book, breaking them.
 * Love Potion: Kevin attempts to use his powers to get his crush to fall in love with him. It doesn't work because she's already in love with him; all it does is creep her out.
 * My Future Self and Me: At the end of the book, reality is sufficiently warped that it more closely resembles a dream. Fittingly, Kevin encounters a future version of himself who is visiting the past in a dream and exits accompanied by the sound of a ringing alarm clock.
 * Ordinary High School Student: Seventh grade. Close enough.
 * Porn Stash: Josh and Kevin find one of their dads' Playboy magazines and put it back, feeling mildly embarrassed.
 * Power Incontinence
 * Power Limiter: The glasses can do anything... except undo what they've already done.
 * Real After All: Kevin's class is out on a camping field trip with his class, visiting a mountain that's sacred to the local native tribe. His teacher tells a campfire story about how the mountain is supposedly the eye of God, and once a year, the tip of its shadow falls exactly on another sacred spot in the valley below. It's just a story, as the teacher later admits, but when Kevin climbs the mountain, guess what he sees? Kevin was wearing the glasses, so his believing in the story made it come true.
 * Reality Bleed: Towards the end of the book, Kevin's subconscious thoughts start to bleed into reality, inadvertently reshaping the world.
 * Reality Warper
 * Reality Warping Is Not a Toy
 * Rhetorical Request Blunder: See Dragged Off to Hell.
 * Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot: The Sorcerer in this case being God.
 * Time Stands Still: Kevin yells "Stop". And it does.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The first clue that Kevin's power is getting out of control is that people stop noticing the changes he makes, believing that things have always been that way.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
 * Your Mom: "Your mother's a pine cone."
 * Your Mom: "Your mother's a pine cone."