I've only read the first couple of chapters, so I can't really answer who my favorite character is. As for the format, it is original. I haven't read any books like it. It is fun to read something new. I think that this isn't a very productive format. Each chapter has to explain about the character first before explaining more about the story. Frankly, the origins of the characters shouldn't take up half the book. They could use some of that half to explain main characters, but some of it to describe the happenings. I like the activities that we are doing. My favorite is the tomato seed experiment. My group, since all the other groups were doing experiments in soil, chose to do our experiment with hydroponics. Growing plants with hydroponics means that you use just water to grow the plants. Since we didn't have a pump, we had to change out the water every day. We messed up trying to transfer the seeds one day, and we ruined our experiment. We tried again with the same results. After that, we pretty much gave up hydroponics.