How to use this Page

Winter is sucking the happy out of all us with either too much snow in the Midwest and New England, too little rain in California or too much heat in Alaska. Everything is crazy outside, so why not disappear awhile in a rip-roaring adventure? Sometimes, escapist reading truly is the best kind of reading there is.

George Mann's intrepid steampunk "supernatural specialists" Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes return in a quite diabolical serial killer investigation with The Executioner's Heart. The Newbury and Hobbes mysteries have always done a great job of showcasing both of its protagonists without leaving Hobbes in a subservient literary position, but this go-round is especially well done. Things get complicated quickly and all sorts of supporting characters step up to help unsort the web of clues and political intrigue the detectives uncover. At the center is still a killer who must be stopped and that, as usual, is where Newbury and Hobbes truly shine.

Newbury has some Holmesian issues to deal with and struggles with addiction that might strike a Baker Street chord. However, he also wrestles with the supernatural and is risking his life battling a spiritual entity on behalf of Hobbes' sister. The paranormal is to be expected of course, as this is an England where Queen Victoria is kept alive through machinery of a most unnatural kind, and don't even get me started on what our heroes find on display at the Crystal Palace exhibition.

But around all the wonderful world building is still murder and greed and lies. Bloody death is popping up all over the drawing rooms of London and the victims appear to be connected in only the most tenuous of ways. As Newbury and Hobbes get on the case, they find themselves considering some most unexpected suspects, and while the killer must be stopped, soon enough the killer is the least terrifying part of the plot. Readers in search of a modern take on classic adventure and Holmesian hijinks that move at a rapid pace will find The Executioner's Heart to be right up their alley. I don't know which one of these characters I love more, only that I heartily look forward to what happens with them next.

For a somewhat creepier detective novel, look no further than The Aylesford Skull by James P. Blaylock. Langdon St. Ives has anchored several Blaylock novellas, but this is his first full-length title. Now semi-retired and enjoying life in the country, in this go-round the intrepid detective is joined by his stalwart companions Tubby Frobisher and Jack Owlesby, a doctor from Edinburgh named Arthur Doyle, and a young former circus aerialist, Finn Conrad. The villain is, as usual, the nefarious Dr. Ignacio Narbondo although others scatter about. Most dangerously, there is the "Aylesford Skull," the ghost that comes with it and the paranormal nightmare that it is capable of unleashing.

I'd like to think that true Victorian England never looked so grim, except the grave robbing and serial murders that Blaylock describes are right out of late nineteenth-century London. Narbondo himself is so unsettling perhaps because his evil is so common and with his backstory fleshed out here (courtesy his mother), he becomes a villain that readers can understand although certainly never sympathize. (Which actually makes him a lot worse.)

In The Aylesford Skull, St. Ives faces down an attack on his family, the return of a "dead" friend, foes willing to shed the blood of anyone in order to increase their personal power and an increasingly insane Narbondo. There is also some fishing, bird watching, talk of elephants, a flying machine and pirates. Blaylock does his usual talented blend of fantastic and science-possible and the interplay between the supporting cast makes for a fast-paced plot. It's a dark tale that manages to be a fun read and happily, gives the author to space to indulge all of his literary whims with this always enjoyable character.

Charles de Lint's Jack in the Green, out this month from Subterranean Press, is a contemporary tale that transports Robin Hood and his Merry Men into the modern gang culture of the American southwest. Fans of de Lint will have some idea of what to expect here: teenagers trapped in grim circumstances who encounter elements of myth and folklore and embrace them to effect great personal change. This time the stakes are incredibly high but the legend is no slouch either and what happens to Maria when she spies old friend Luz breaking into a house with a new "gang" of her own is something magical.

Maria and Luz hoped to find some magic when they were young, and miraculously, it looks like it might have happened. Jack Green and his friends may not understand how things work in Santo del Vado Viejo, where the 66 Banda gang rules the streets and the cops are more concerned about protecting the gated communities, but standing up for the downtrodden is written into their DNA. Class consciousness is always part of de Lint's titles and it is front and center here as Green robs from the rich to help the poor. When Maria finds herself falling hard for the mysterious hero while getting caught in the middle of a turf war, de Lint raises the stakes and forces his characters into an impossible situation. Then he pulls it all out with the kind of ending readers have learned to expect. With such engaging young characters, a theme that will resonate with any teen reader and Robin Hood to boot, Jack in the Green (with illustrations by Charles Vess), is an excellent YA choice.

Unexpectedly, I found a thread of Nikola Tesla running through a couple of the books I read for this column. Tesla is enjoying a renaissance these days and finding him in books for middle-grade and teen readers is an excellent way to build curiosity about this brilliant inventor.

Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab by "Science Bob" Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith is a throwback to classic 1950s style adventure stories (The Mad Scientists Club, anyone?). Siblings Nick and Tesla Holt have been sent for the summer to stay with their unorthodox Uncle Newt in Half Moon Bay while their scientist parents look into soybean growth in Uzbekistan. In short order they discover he is the very definition of eccentric, and while soaking in all the scientific awesomeness of his home lab (not to mention his home, period), the kids put together a fun rocket experiment and accidentally end up launching Tesla's necklace into the yard of the forbidding, sort-of-abandoned mansion down the street. The necklace must be retrieved, very big guard dogs thwarted, mysterious girl in the upstairs window rescued and lots of bad guys stopped. To accomplish all this, the brother and sister enlist the help of some bicycling neighborhood kids and more than a few things from Uncle Newt's basement. In the end a nefarious plot is stopped and the good guys win with lots of clues laid out for future adventures including figuring out just what Nick and Tesla's parents are really doing.

What elevates Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab above standard MG hijinks is the unique book design, which incorporates not only blueprints and schematics on every page but also illustrations throughout. On top of that, the authors include step-by-step instructions for every experiment that Nick and Tesla conduct so readers can give them a go as well. The directions are basic and easy to follow, the components accessible from your own home or local hardware store and the results a lot of fun -- rockets! "robo-cat dog distractor"! electromagnet! The narrative provides a standard page-turner but the experiments are an extra kick that shows the sort of fun that can be had when science leaves the lab. The second book in the series, Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage, is out now and a third, Nick and Tesla's Secret Agent Gadget Battle, is due shortly.

Tesla's Attic by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elman is billed as a middle-grade title, but I think it actually works best for teens. The only thing it is missing from standard YA fare is romance and frankly, sometimes teen readers don't want romance in their mystery-adventures. For those interested in what strange things could be lurking in an inherited house and how they tie into a potential "Men In Black" conspiracy, then, Tesla's Attic fits the bill. Make the heroes a smart and fearless group of Super 8 level teens who are not superpowered, not magical and not on the cusp of finding some mystical object that will make them superpowered or magical, and you have a great start to what is billed as the Accelerati Trilogy.

Fourteen-year-old Nick, his younger brother and father have moved into his great aunt's house large rambling Victorian house, which was left to them in her will. Still reeling from the recent death of his mother in a fire, Nick is struggling to hold his family together as they make their way in a new town, new school, and new family reality. Cleaning out the attic for a garage sale seems like a good idea, as Aunt Greta was knee-deep in a lot of who looks like junk. Unfortunately there are some bizarre side effects to the seemingly innocuous toasters, vacuums, tape recorders, and other items that make their way into the community at the surprisingly successful sale. After some strange occurrences at home, Nick realizes he has to get all the stuff back and enlists the help of some classmates who have been freaked out by their purchases. In the meantime, the group tries to figure out just how these things got to be so powerful and who might have built them.

Tesla fans will already know that there are plenty of connections between the inventor and Colorado, so the idea that he might have stashed a few things in an old friend's house for safekeeping is not beyond the realm of possibility. Just what the inventor was up to with all this stuff is another thing however, and when a group of deadly physicists appears who really wants the stuff, (and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it), then the stakes increase exponentially. It's one thing to save a neighbor from a wild toaster but quite another to face down folks who are as likely to kill you as negotiate. Nick has to get a grip on what he has unwittingly loosed on the town and also be mindful of his family, who don't know what's going on and are facing their own demons as well.

The chemistry between Nick and his friends, Mitch, Caitlin, and Vincent, is really fantastic. They are a complicated group, not all necessarily likable, and hiding their own secrets as most of us do. They come together first because of circumstance -- each has one of the attic objects -- but slowly, as they work on solving the mystery, they become friends. It's a lot of fun to see them form a team and the way Shusterman and Elfman have written them, as teenage "everymen," readers will easily be able to project themselves into the story. Tesla's Attic was a very fun read for me, one of the more engaging and surprising titles for teens I've come across in a while.

If these novels sound appealing then consider Elizabeth Rusch's picture book biography of Tesla, Electrical Wizard: How Nikola Tesla Lit Up the World. There is a wealth of information in here about Tesla's childhood, his emigration to the U.S. and his infamous problematic relationship with Thomas Edison. Rusch shows how he was thwarted more than once by people who doubted his ideas and eccentric thinking but never backed down. It's a very inspiring story, and Oliver Dominguez's full color illustrations bring to life the inventor and the times he lived in. While Electrical Wizard: How Nikola Tesla Lit Up the World was clearly published for elementary school-aged children, I would not hesitate to recommend it for older readers. This is a great literary dip into the waters of Tesla's life and not to be overlooked simply because it is a picture book. I relished every page.

COOL READ: While I have become quite accustomed to the Scientists in the Field series taking me to unexpected places in the company of interesting people, The Tapir Scientist: Saving South America's Largest Mammal by Sy Montgomery is a trip way off the tracks. Likely few readers will have ever come across a tapir, even in the local zoo, and books about them are few and far between. But Montgomery excels at trips into the unexpected corners of the wild and she succeeds brilliantly here, in the company of field scientist Pati Medici and her associates. Along with photographer Nic Bishop (familiar to readers of the series), Montgomery went into Brazil's wetland territory to find the tapir. In the midst of some serious insect attacks and heat that makes a Florida summer seem downright Arctic in comparison, Montgomery and Bishop were witness to the work of this dedicated group who are trying to save the tapirs and the forests that depend on them.

There are some fascinating facts here, such as that tapirs are most directly related to horses and rhinos and have changed little in the last 12 million years. The pictures are, as usual for the series, clear, compelling and dynamic. The Scientists in the Field books never get old and with its unique subject, The Tapir Scientist is one of my all-time favorite entries.

This is the final installment of the Bookslut in Training column. I hope you have enjoyed reading it every month as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I am still writing, still reviewing, and can be always found online at my website, chasingray.com, and via Twitter (@chasingray).

The biggest literary surprise for me last year was what I found between the covers of Kate Lebo's A Commonplace Book of Pie. I expected a small but quirky cookbook, which makes sense because Lebo is a pie maker. And while there are certainly several delicious sounding recipes (starting with basic pie crust and then including everything from Mumbleberry to Peach Ginger Pie), Lebo has a lot more to share here about pie than how one puts it together. Accompanied by Jessica Bonin's evocative paintings, Lebo writes about the essence of what makes each flavor of pie so memorable. I can't do justice to her prose; just read her description of Key Lime Pie:

When Annie Dillard writes, "Any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger," she means key lime pie. Which is dust, which is bone, which (according to Dillard) smells like pie. With which finger does the sacred wipe? Don't ask the key lime pie-lover. He works fast so he might deserve rest, reads hard so he might invent stories, beats his own time in one-man pie eating contests so citrus will make the gutters of his mouth sing. The finger that wipes his lips is his.

Now take a sigh and let all of those lovely words about pie float into your heart. What Lebo does is not only write about the virtues of using cold butter (repeated more than once); she also elevates her subject to the stuff of poetry. She gives us words that fit the wonderfulness we feel when the perfect piece of pumpkin or apple or raspberry pie graces our palates. And even more surprising, you will find not only Annie Dillard but also William Burroughs, Emerson, Muhammad Ali, and Isadora Duncan in the pages of this book about pie. It's a wonderful trick that Lebo has accomplished, creating a valuable cookbook that is a marvel to read. I don't care how old (or young) you are, lines like this cannot be resisted: "If you love peanut butter pie, you are either Dolly Parton or someone who loves her." Home economics would still be in every high school in America if the reading list included titles like A Commonplace Book of Pie, and we would all be much better for it.

Jeff VanderMeer takes the traditional writing guide and turns it on its head with Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. This full-color, slightly oversized title takes readers through topics of inspiration and creativity into more toolbox-oriented discussions of character development, plotting, and world-building. He also uses the development of his own work to explicitly show how stories change from draft to final copy while also looking at the structure of other stories, such as Ian Banks's "Use of Weapons" and Angela Carter's "The Fall River Axe Murders."

Wonderbook really sings when it comes to the design. The information is solid and engaging but the many, many illustrations, which include everything from original artwork (courtesy of artist Jeremy Zerfoss) to maps to photographs are stunning. The book is a feast for the eyes and with its glossy paper and variety of fonts, sidebars, and informative graphics, it draws readers in with every turn of the page.

The author wisely includes the thoughts of other writers here, from Neil Gaiman's essay on "The Beginning of American Gods" to personal pieces from Nnedi Okorafor, Catherynne Valente, Karen Joy Fowler, Charles Yu, Joe Abercrombie, and more. The variety of his contributors, both in their works, gender and ethnicities, is refreshing. There is something here for everyone, and many young writers will likely find authors to emulate and read up on within the book's pages. (George R. R. Martin fans should take note of an exceptionally long and interesting interview between him and VanderMeer on the "craft of writing.")

VanderMeer, Zerfoss, and designer John Coulthart have created something very appealing with this presentation and because of that Wonderbook should have high teen appeal, and be a go-to title for both high school and college classrooms; homeschoolers also need to take note.

Artist and visual essayist Debbie Millman plays a lot with words and design in her oversized collection Self-Portrait as Your Traitor. This book brought to mind the journalistic compulsions of my youth, when I felt like I had to get down on paper -- in one way or another -- all the feelings that threatened to otherwise overwhelm me. Millman is much more sophisticated than I was at sixteen, but the raw emotion is the same; these are the poems, stories, and thoughts she must share with the world. For readers, it's a chance to peek into a unique mind, and be alternately amused and shocked by what we find there.

So what do you read about in Self-Portrait as Your Traitor? How about a young girl's appreciation for a trinket as she battles a monster; a recollection of a first job out of college that encapsulates everything from the first brush of professional giddiness to an almost inevitable soul-destroying lack of self-confidence. There's even a peek at the lives of adults from the perspective of the child who hears everything and remembers it well into her own adulthood. (Is it a cautionary tale to know that we all end up sounding like our mothers at some point?)

Self-Portrait as Your Traitor is for older teens, for those with a jaundiced eye fixed on the world around them, for those who are sometimes angry and don't know why but feel that way just the same. Millman uses large fonts, varied backgrounds, and a lot of other techniques to make the book as intriguing to gaze at as to read. It won't fit in a backpack but will demand attention on the shelf and likely prompt a few journal entries in response to the author's passionate prose.

While reading all of these books, the appeal of good graphic design will become obvious and that is when teens will want to take a look at Chip Kidd's Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design. Kidd, whose book covers are instantly recognizable (see his Book One: Work: 1986-2006), has put together a basic study of the subject and provides readers with not only examples of how design can be improved (covers with more or less color, etc.) but also a series of "assignments" to spur creativity. There are chapters on typography, content and form, considerations of pattern, light, and image cropping, and a nice introduction to concept. Essentially, Kidd is inviting kids to think beyond design as something to look at and instead think about how it comes to exist in the first place.

Go is an obvious choice for classrooms involved in yearbook or campus newspaper and website design, but it will be of great use to anyone over twelve interested in a creative field. Kudos to the author (and publisher) for bringing this adult subject to a younger audience that will find much to learn from the bright and inviting layout.

Finally, photo collector Josh Sapan shares some very cool, and often unexpected, oversized panoramic group photographs in The Big Picture. This black-and-white collection has a bit for everyone: the Army-Navy game from 1916, the Miss America Pageant in 1926, and a beautiful double-page spread of the Yale crew team from 1910. The National American Women Suffrage Association in St. Louis is suitably serious in 1919 and the crowd welcoming Henry Flagler on the first train to Key West in 1912 is appropriately huge. But what really stays with you as you browse the pages (and read very brief essays by the likes of Anna Quindlen, Mark Halperin, and Yogi Berra) is how much of our country's history is captured in these group shots. Far less stiff than posed studio portraits, these are Americans at work and play, dressed in the clothes they were most themselves in, engaged in the activities that dominated their waking hours. Here is our American history, endlessly fascinating and so worthy of our attention.

COOL READ: Enchanted Lion Books has published another charmer from French illustrator Blexbolex that carries a deep and unexpected story. Ballad is designed as one of those short, "chunky" hardcover books (not unlike a board book in size) that initially tells a short story about walking home from school. In spare words on each page, the reader makes the journey from school to home, but with each succeeding chapter (only a few pages long), the journey becomes more perilous and intense. Bandits, magic spells, a witch, a curse, soldiers, war! Your standard walk home becomes a trip that sees the whole nation in peril and if the stranger does not save the day (a cavern! a dragon! a duel!), then all will be lost.

Ballad is exactly what the title suggests -- a classic storytelling saga that builds on simple components to construct a stirring tale. The artwork is colorful and expressive, the lettering precise and elegant and the entire adventure both a witty delight for children and teens. Would-be graphic designers will also find something to enjoy here, as Ballad's design is truly exceptional.

Every year I keep an eye out for special books that I believe will make excellent unexpected gifts for holidays. Readers love a good novel or story collection but there is something to be said for the appeal of innovative nonfiction, especially when it is heavily illustrated. I think the coffee table book is one of the better inventions of the publishing industry and I'm still annoyed that all books, regardless of audience, do not come with pictures. Consider these titles the best of both worlds: visually captivating to the very young while engaging and informative to readers of any age.

I first saw the pop-up book America's National Parks across the room at a booksellers' tradeshow and had to pick it up. With paper engineering by Bruce Foster, illustrations by Dave Ember and text and concept by Don Compton, this collaboration is not only a stunner to page through but extremely informative as well. The pop-ups are insane. Six of the national parks are highlighted, and within each massive double-page spread are smaller pop-ups highlighting specific aspects of each destination like the "red jammer" touring buses in Glacier and the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite.

Unlike many pop-ups, which serve as glorious art objects but are light on text, Compton has done a first-rate job of informing readers about the specific parks (including photographs of each destination in small accompanying foldouts). He breaks up the pop-ups with spreads introducing each region and discussing other significant parks that can be found there, such as Shenandoah, Acadia, Cuyahoga Valley and Mammoth Cave in the eastern U.S. These spreads include full-color reproductions of historic posters created by the WPA in the 1930s. That style is duplicated in Ember's many illustrations, which celebrate each destination in a way that is both evocative of the past and thoroughly modern.

Young budding cartographers who would like to look beyond America's borders will find a lot to love in the oversized Maps by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński. With fifty-two full-color maps of continents and countries, there is a lot to love in this fanciful yet accurate journey around the world. The maps, on matte paper with muted colors, include everything from landmarks to animals to popular foods. Every country has a boy and girl representative with names common to their homelands and famous people from history (Cleopatra! Da Vinci! Confucius!) are depicted as well.

Maps reminded me a bit of the Walt Disney "Small World" ride (this is a compliment) and brought the same sort of wonder to mind. There is so much to look at in these big spreads that children can easily pour over the pictures for hours. I loved how many different things are included, from sports to art to geology, and that each page also includes information such as capitals, population, and primary languages. Maps is a colorful way to learn geography that is not cartoony or simple; this is in fact one of the more elegant titles on the subject for the very young that I have seen. It's truly delightful.

For older readers with an interest in the evolution of cartography, two recent titles take a look at how sea monsters played a part in mapmaking for centuries. Joseph Nigg's Sea Monsters: A Voyage Around the World's Most Beguiling Map is an in-depth look at a 1539 Nordic map, the Carta Marina, which was designed by Olaus Magnus. This map was influential in the work of many mapmakers and historians for centuries who used Magnus' depictions of creatures such as "Pristers" (aka whales), the "Polypus" (lobster), and the legendary Kraken in their own work. The dust jacket unfolds to reveal the full map, which is a treat unto itself.

Chet Van Duzer takes a broader geographic look in Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, where he considers how creatures evolved in their appearance over a variety of European maps between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Referring to all sorts of texts, including Ptolemy and Magnus, Van Duzer shows how creatures have changed as our understanding of them grew. The eight illustrations of the evolving walrus are both bizarre and amazing.

Most of these maps, and indeed the time periods they cover, will be foreign to teen readers, but the idea of "Here There Be Monsters" written across a map is something any fan of fantasy literature or science fiction will recognize. Nigg and Van Duzer explore places and times where such monsters were very much alive to most of the world's population. The glossy illustrations are attractive and the texts compelling. To know what people thought -- what they believed -- so long ago provides a valuable window into the past. The fact that these two books come wrapped up in maps and monsters makes the history that much more impossible to resist.

For readers interested in getting their hands a bit dirty, Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe (aka "the Coke and Mentos Guys") have a new book of science projects out: How to Build a Hovercraft. The experiments run through three levels of difficulty from the more basic (such as the "yanking tablecloths and other near disasters," which they caution needs lots of practice), to a "Coke-and-Mentos-powered rocket car" which does pretty much what you want such a contraption to do. There is indeed some adult supervision required on this stuff (and safety goggles) and certainly a likelihood of getting in trouble with the powers-that-be if you do any of it near a school, but How to Build a Hovercraft is well designed, full of easy-to-follow instructions and proof positive of the fun that can be found in science. It's got gold mine potential written all over it for kids who are bored with memorizing the periodic table of the elements and desecrating the bodies of dead frogs. Yes, there is some inherent danger in experiments like the Fire Wire, but the authors have all the necessary warnings and walk you through step-by-step. Get outside, get some tools and dive into this book; it will shake up your ideas about science in more ways than one.

A bit less intense but still hands-on, Philippe Petit (author of Man on Wire), has crafted a lovely exploration of sixty different types of "beautiful, lifesaving, and secure knots!" with his title Why Knot?

This compact hardcover (which comes with its own small piece of rope for practice) includes not only easy-to-follow instructions for knot making, but illustrations to help along the way and also -- the best part, I think -- Petit's own high-wire memories and photos from his walks. He also provides general advice on knots throughout the book including such things as how to protect the "extremities."

What elevates Why Knot? above the younger Klutz publication fare is not only the thoroughness of the subject matter, but also Petit's wise thoughtfulness. The introduction considers "knot science" and the seriousness of the craft and takes readers through all sorts of topics such as function, tradition and history associated with knots. This is serious stuff he's writing about, and a subtle way of reminding readers that they should know about something like knot-tying in order to accomplish many other wondrous things (like walk between very tall buildings). Consider Why Knot? a return to craftsmanship, another remedy for our diminished ability to fix stuff. If you're shopping for a certain middle-grade reader, I'd pair Petit's work with Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky; fans of the knot-tying character Lincoln are going to love following in his footsteps.

For the contrarian who is just tired of all the ostrich behavior going on in society today, Darryl Cunningham's graphic novel How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Climate Denial is exactly the tonic they are waiting for. (I'm tempted to say we should all chip in and send this to every high-school kid in Texas to save them from their textbooks, but I figure if we talk it up enough online, they will find it anyway.)

Cunningham is fed up with everyone who says the moon landing did not happen. Other targets include "The MMR Vaccination Scandal," "Evolution," and "Climate Change." Very carefully, he leads readers through the reasons why the primary arguments against the science on such subjects are incorrect. For example, he explains why no stars are present in the famous shot of the earth from the moon (this leads to a discussion of glare in photography) and uses not only his own drawings but actual photographs of astronauts and the moon to make his point. He also namedrops the Mythbusters and their experiments on the subject, which ups the book's coolness factor by about a million.

For all its sly humor, Cunningham is doing something very serious with Moon Landing: he is asking his readers not to be afraid to challenge the adults in their midst when they toss about dubious claims or make assertions that fly in the face of reason. The vaccination chapter in particular is a brilliant example of this, as Cunningham showcases the determined journalistic inquiry that revealed the opportunism and cold hard cash that fueled the now discredited study claiming the MMR vaccination led to autism. Reading this chapter will likely fuel the indignation of a thousand future Frontline investigative reporters.

Follow the truth, says Cunningham throughout his book, and more importantly, embrace the truth. Then go and tell anyone who challenges the moon landings that really, there's no freaking way.

Finally, one of the bigger surprises of the past couple of months is the amount of pleasure I have found in paging through a book on collective nouns. I should have known better than to underestimate the fine folks at Woop Studios, for their delightful A Compendium of Collective Nouns is miles from traditional etymological resources. While the words might be in the expected alphabetical order, their presentations never fail to surprise. Consider the history behind a Draught of Butlers, which is begging to be an answer to a bar trivia contest:

Prior to the advent of glass bottles, wine was stored in wooden casks, or butts, which were stored in the buttery. From the buttery arose the title butler, with one of his duties being to draw a draught of wine before he served it to his masters. The butler, of course, had many other duties, but perhaps none so pleasant as sampling the draughts, which brings us this term with a wink and a smile.

The authors have a lot of fun with the words they chose to include in their collection with everything from "a fright of ghosts" to "a circus of puffins" to "a rage of teeth." They acknowledge a wide variety of references with everything from a 1909 issue of Field and Stream to the Bible, note what are likely errors in transcription over the years -- the Middle Ages use of "sloweth of bears" somehow became "sleuth of bears" -- and include a variety of graphics, many of them full color, to liven up the pages. For the budding wordsmith, this title cannot be beaten.

For young readers, there are many solid collective noun alphabet books (A Crossing of Zebras also by Woop Studios, is one to check out) but I have a particular soft spot for the colorful and cheery Have You Ever Seen a Smack of Jellyfish? by Sarah Asper-Smith. The hook here is as much the artwork as the text. Asper-Smith uses silhouettes for the words and animals on each page while bright colors provide the backgrounds. A "murder of crows" perch on a blue tree while a "string of ponies" frolic within a yellow corral. A "pod of whales" swim in a deep green sea while a "parliament of owls" keep watch from a burnt orange barn. The title creatures, a "smack of jellyfish" are home in a purple ocean with green seaweed.

Asper-Smith has made something beautiful here, giving preschoolers a collection of thoughtful terms and animals to learn about and graphic arts fans something to appreciate. Have You Seen a Smack of Jellyfish? is the book that readers of A Compendium of Collective Nouns will learn their first big words from. Both are crisp and witty walks on the wild side of the English language, and along with all the other titles discussed here, they prompt the question: "Who knew learning could be so cool?"

Earlier this year, a friend and I discussed the viability of a drinking game involving HGTV, where every mention of the words "granite countertops" or "double sinks" or "perfect for entertaining," would result in a shot. We figured it would only take a single thirty-minute episode of House Hunters to intoxicate the average person; if it was a showing of Property Virgins, the person wouldn't get through the first house. (As my friend put it, "No one ever talks about a room that's perfect for eating ice cream alone in front of the TV.")

Howard Mansfield has written several books that discuss different facets of history, architecture, and preservation, often with an eye toward his New England roots, including The Same Ax Twice, and Bones of the Earth. His most recent title, Dwelling in Possibility, is an exploration of the nature of home and more specifically, how we have distanced ourselves from the concept of dwelling. "We have shelter from the rain and snow and sun," he writes, "but our houses aren't sheltering our souls."

For a population of rabid HGTV watchers, Mansfield's conclusions about clutter, space, and useful design will be both familiar and reassuring (and often quite funny as well). But there is much more to this title then wryly noting our national designer addictions. Dwelling in Possibility exhorts readers to consider why building houses, as opposed to building homes, has become a national past time.

In three separate sections Mansfield considers "Dwelling in the Ordinary," "Dwelling in Destruction," and "Dwelling in Possibility." In the early chapters his witty sense of humor is on full display, most especially when considering the power of clutter to control our daily lives. It's hard not to laugh (and agree) when reading a rant like this one:

We have poured our concerns about clutter into almost every shape we know: self-help, recovery support groups (Messies Anonymous, Clutter Diet), meet-up groups, Let Go of Clutter Retreats, Feng Shui, vague Zen aspirations ("Do More With Less in Your Zen Bathroom"), decluttering online in the Second Life world, and television shows where you can watch people throw out junk. There's Clutter Awareness Week (the third week in March), a Clutter Hoarding Scale, newspaper stories ready to pronounce a national epidemic ("Stuff Robbed Dee Wallace of Love"), and a tsunami of books soon to be at a flea market near you. "I own several organizing books and this is my favorite," said one reader at Amazon. Another woman, who had surrendered to a professional organizer, confessed to squirreling away boxes of her favorite "decluttering" magazine articles.

Fair enough. Mansfield has us on our endless desire to remove stuff from our lives and our acute inability to apparently accomplish that without buying more stuff to "do it right." What the author does that is unexpected, however, is take all this humor about modern living and pivot in a wholly different direction in the book's stark second section. In these chapters, he writes of the twentieth-century cities, towns, and villages that have suffered "de-housing" through the tactics of war, and shows how our inherent yearning for home has all too often been used as way to destroy civilian populations.

Sadly, there are all too many examples of military destruction that Mansfield can point to, but as he takes readers on this grim historical tour he cannot resist teasing out the many complicated stories that linger behind the factual records. While recalling the infamous initial report of U.S. Marines torching huts in Vietnam as a way to punish the populace, he shares the powerful threats brought against reporter Morley Safer for revealing the dark side of the American occupation to the public.

In Vietnam, like everywhere else in Asia, property, a home, is everything. A man lives with his family on ancestral land. His parents are buried nearby. These spirits are part of his holdings," says Safer.

The images of the Zippo lighters setting fire to a grass roof while families huddled nearby was deemed so damaging to the war effort that the Pentagon tried to ruin Safer's reputation; President Johnson was certain Safer had bribed a Marine to set a fire.

"Burning down a house is a transgression," writes Mansfield, "It's an obvious sin..."

Through the bombings of London, Tokyo, and Hamburg, the author pores over the words of the men who ordered the attacks and those who dutifully followed through, while also considering their ultimate failure. The houses were destroyed, but the people, without exception, remained determined to rebuild, and no one surrendered because a city was lost. In the end he notes how house destruction became a policy that stubbornly held on in the face of all evidence, suggesting it was not a worthwhile use of money or men. "These things develop their own momentum," he writes. We bombed cities day in and day out simply because we kept getting better at hitting them.

It seems impossible that a title could include discussions of the significance of useful footpaths to a community, the allure of California Closets to cure what ails us, and also the profound despair left in the wake of Tokyo's burning. Yet Mansfield's light touch, whether engaged in humor or sympathy, never wavers from his intent to fully understand his overall subject. He is fascinated by what we need from a home and how confusing our relationship with that concept has become. As he always does, Mansfield quotes from all manner of writers, architects, and historians throughout the text, but mostly it is his own voice that shines through. As he writes of house hunting with his wife in the earliest pages, you can imagine him walking through countless doors, his curiosity endlessly piqued as he surveys the rooms around him. He can't stop looking; he can't stop noticing:

Houses that smell of feet, or vaguely like diapers, even though the children are in high school.

Houses that are worn and comfortable, like an old fielder's mitt, like the sweatshirt and jeans the commuting executive wears on Saturdays.

Houses that are walled in with photos of children, grandchildren, nieces, and grandnieces. The walls of diplomas like battle ribbons.

Houses in which nothing has happened, and that seems terrible...where boredom sticks to the walls, yellows the walls like grease from ten thousand meals.

Howard Mansfield has seen it all, stood there, collected his thoughts, and now shares his conclusions. In elegant, careful prose he ushers readers far beyond the peeks we are accustomed to having through our television shows and shelter magazines. This is an author who is endlessly patient while pursuing his subjects, and delightfully capable of sharing his journeys with the rest of us. As a cultural historian, there can be few more determined to understand the modern human condition. Dwelling in Possibility is thus quite extraordinary in its quiet message about how we live, and certainly a triumph for this brilliant author.

Dwelling in Possibility by Howard Mansfield
Bauhan
ISBN: 978-0872331679
240 pages

With winter break looming large, it's time to get a stack of books together for a nice long afternoon of escapist fiction. Go ahead and indulge yourself with these adventures -- I'm sure you deserve them!

Gwenda Bond provides readers with a rousing drama that is firmly grounded in a classic coming-of-age story with her mash-up of myths and secret societies, The Woken Gods. Washington, D.C. is now home to embassies housing the physical manifestations of legends from around the world and throughout history, including the Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians, American Southwest and even New Orleans. Just as global politics has always involved uneasy detentes between nations, the gods and man are gripped in a peace forged in death that is maintained by the mysterious Society of the Sun. Society members keep the gods from killing mankind through brute strength and hundreds of "relics" that have been gathered and guarded through the ages and now are the only effective weapons against immortal power. That Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse is very real, only it involves the relic-gathering skills of a ton of Indy-like archaeologists and is in a way cooler location.

Kyra Locke knows all about the Society and the gods because her father works there and her mother lost her mind when the gods were "awakened." Now an angry high school student, she spends a lot of time failing to get her father's attention and hanging out with ex-boyfriend Tam and best friend Bree. Then Kyra's dad giver her a vague "if I don't come home you must run away" lecture and a god tries to kill her in the middle of the street. The Society saves her butt and hauls her and her friends away to tell them what has really been going on. Except they don't really and the teens must figure it out on their own. But the fun here is all the twists and turns and lies and revelations, and careful world building and nonstop action (with bonus romance) that make anyone looking for a bunch of smart tough characters to hang out with very, very happy.

What Bond gives readers here is a whole bunch of adults who have not done the right thing in ways big and small. She also gives us adults who can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that teenagers are not stupid or silly and thus can actually be trusted with the truth. There is some research à la Giles, some breaking and entering (more than once) and some running for your life that is not always successful. Also a few serious ceremonies, the frustration of secret justice, the "I didn't know you liked me but I'm so glad I know now" kind of conversation and the requirement of putting your hand into an open wound to stop a deadly infection. Clearly, the squeamish need not apply to save the world in this case.

The Woken Gods is a fast-paced tonic for curious readers who seek multi-layered mysteries and a salute to smart under-appreciated kids everywhere. The cool part is when it all comes together at the end and some very delightful parents do step up to the plate because they trust their kids. Bond has her characters growing up in a strange new world, in a bold brave way. The Woken Gods is one mighty fun read, and thus a perfect respite from holiday madness. Smart equals good in any adventure, and this is a very good read.

Jasper Fforde follows up The Last Dragonslayer with the second book in his "Chronicles of Kazam" series: The Song of the Quarkbeast. These books (and they really should be read in order) are set in a funny world where magic is used for fixing construction projects, large-scale landscaping and speedy delivery via flying carpet. There are also pointless foreign policy squabbles, foolish bureaucrats, a despotic king and all number of recognizable societal silliness. Our heroine, sixteen-year old Jennifer Strange, lives in the Kingdom of Snodd where she runs the show for a bunch of "underemployed magicians" at Kazam Mystical Arts Management and nothing ever seems to go the way she wants it to.

In The Song of the Quarkbeast, Jennifer has a lot on her plate. Kazam's founder is still missing in an enchantment that went wrong (although reappearing unannounced in various points in the kingdom on occasion), her most powerful magicians have fallen victim to a spell, Kazam is under attack from a power-mad professional rival and there are trolls. She is also missing her late lamented pet quarkbeast very much, which becomes that much more difficult when she meets a rather demented quarkbeast hunter. All in all, Jennifer's life is as complicated as ever and keeping a cool head is especially critical if she wants to save the kingdom again.

Fforde knows exactly what he is doing with these books, and while they are a bit lightweight, they are also a lot of fun. Jennifer possesses a wry sense of humor that serves her well and her friends and coworkers continue to balance quirkiness and kindness in equal parts. Fforde fits all of their idiosyncrasies into this tightly crafted plot with ease and the addition of a hint of romance this time around is welcome but not a distraction from the continued unfolding of life around Kazam. There is also more than one mystery but every last bit is solved, sorted, and dealt with by the final paragraphs. There is no villain in these books, Fforde prefers to give his readers the sort of political messiness we are all too familiar with in the twenty-first century. The politics are so funny, teen readers will enjoy their addition to the plot. The Song of the Quarkbeast is pure fantasy comfort food: an excellent choice for decompressing in the midst of your own family political upheavals this month.

The adventure in The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence hits much closer to home but also involves leaps of faith and a strong heart for the title character. As the story opens, seventeen-year-old Alex is stopped at a border crossing and herded off by the police on drug charges. He is apparently the center of a national news story and facing multiple personal crisis. Plus his closest friend is dead, and he's the only one who can explain what happened. That's the setup, and the chapters that follow bring readers back several years to explain how Alex got there.

First and foremost, he is the boy who got hit by a meteorite and lived. The one-in-a-million accident made him famous and left him with a unique perspective that has colored every choice he makes in life. Raised by a mother who runs a wiccan-type shop and gives tarot card readings, he is used to being an easy target for bullies. Now with a wicked scar on the side of his head, a crazy story and avid interests in astronomy and neurology (for obvious reasons), keeping himself from being a target is nearly a full time job. It is while on the run one day that he meets a reclusive neighbor, the gruff widower Mr. Peterson, and finds the friend who changes his life.

Alex is a complex and endearing character, intrigued by science and literature and especially, through his friendship with Peterson, drawn to the works of Kurt Vonnegut. Extence makes sure to explain these interests, allowing Alex to have deep considerations of writing and astronomy that carefully add layers of meaning to the story. Most importantly he is a very likable kid whose curiosity will appeal to many readers. Consider this revealing passage:

I think if I could just spend the whole six hours of the school day solving algebra problems, then I'd be extremely happy. But, of course, that's not exactly normal. That's the part everybody hates. Most of the other boys can't wait for the break so they can go outside and play football. And to me, that really is baffling. It seems like such a waste of time and energy. It doesn't tell you anything about the world. It doesn't add or change anything. I don't get the appeal.

Extence takes Alex far beyond the point of traditional bullying and places him in an adult situation that calls for problem solving and sincerity of the highest order. He must make decisions that rattle not only his family but also ultimately spark a national dialogue, and he does it all for the most basic of reasons: it's the right thing to do. Light years from the traditional "problem of the week" novel and a brilliant look at the creative mind of an intelligent teen who willfully challenges the adults around him, The Universe Versus Alex Woods is thought provoking and intense. Fans of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian or Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes should especially give this one a look.

Joanna Nadin's Paradise combines family drama and secrets in the best gothic tradition, while still firmly set in contemporary England with nary a moor in sight. Sixteen-year-old Billie should be happy, the grandmother she never knew has left her a house in her will, and as Billie and her mother and little brother are barely hanging onto their crappy London apartment, this refuge sounds like a godsend. The problem is that her mother, who has always exhibited unpredictable behavior, is determined to leave without telling her boyfriend and Billie isn't too excited about being in a place she doesn't know with a mother who is starting to unravel again. She is sorely tempted to just walk away from it all, but her brother needs her and she loves her mother and the house does offer a possibility of... something else. In the grand scheme of things, that is enough to tip the scales and so off the little family goes to Cornwall where, of course, everything comes apart.

As you would expect, there is a big house where everything is mysteriously undisturbed, as if it has been waiting for the new occupants. Billie's uncle died years before in an accident as a teenager and his room is just as he left it, whereas her mother's childhood room bears no hint that she ever lived there. The town seems to know more about the family then Billie does and while a small group of teens seems welcoming, Billie's mother becomes more and more unhinged making it difficult to pay bills, let alone invite friends over. All too soon everything goes to hell in a hand basket in the most spectacular fashion but not before Billie learns just enough about her mother's past to demand more answers, which entails visiting a graveyard, nearly drowning in a dangerous sea, and finally figuring out who her father was and why he left her before she was born. The secrets are revealed so quickly in the end that your head spins a bit, but as someone who hung on every word of Victoria Holt when I was fourteen, I think the rhythm is just fine and readers will be delighted. Consider this one a modern twist on a classic narrative and a true page-turner.

For those seeking a bit more of a cautionary tale for their vacation reading à la Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda's roommate-from-hell classic Single White Female, I recommend Jenny Davidson's subtle novel, The Magic Circle. The story starts out with one of those uniquely cerebral bar discussions favored by grad students, albeit on an unexpected topic. The plot centers around the groundwork that goes into developing a game to be played on the street level that realistically incorporates the architecture and history of the environment around it. For Columbia University students Ruth and Lucy, this means figuring out what to include in their game about the Victorian era in New York City, "Trapped in the Asylum."

The game is set in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, and is based on the real history of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. Using the game's app as a guide, players move through the streets portraying someone voluntarily committed to the asylum à la Nellie Bly. They will also gain experiences and answer questions that uncover clues about the asylum's creepy past. The goal is to make an educational game interactive and fun, part of what Ruth is researching in school, and it all seems quite interesting but relatively innocuous. The inclusion of neighbor Anna, a visiting scholar from Denmark, turns Ruth and Lucy's careful game planning on its ear however and brings a level of uncontrollable chaos into their lives.

On the surface, The Magic Circle is very much about game theory and the work that goes into creating a successful manufactured environment. The women work hard at making their games work in a logical way, both Ruth's "Trapped in the Asylum" and Anna's brainchild, "Places of Power", the latter of which incorporates Greek myth, the occult, and architecture into the mix. (Ghostbusters is appropriately name-dropped here, though Anna's vision has a much more adult form.) Through email excerpts and online journal entries, Davidson shows Ruth and Anna working through the details of their separate games while alternately arguing against and supporting each other's visions. Lucy, who is called away for several chapters due to a family crisis, serves to show the readers just how much the games change and overwhelm their creators' original visions when she returns and is shocked to discover how far her friends have moved from their original theories. Lucy cannot resist being drawn into the debauchery presented by Anna's game however, changing her view of what the games are supposed to be about. (So much for education.) Anna shows the appeal of game playing can be more than just leaving reality behind; it is about embracing a fantasy that is as close to real as it gets and presents potential consequences that are unpredictable and thus extremely exciting. It should come as no surprise that all of this takes a serious turn for the worse very quickly.

Anna's brother arrives and romances the reserved Ruth. "Places of Power" rapidly gains in popularity as word spreads through online message boards and forums and groups converge to play the game in a wild weekend that finds all the players engaging in dangerously indulgent behavior in Morningside Park after dark. The intoxication of playing the game infuses every aspects of Ruth and Lucy's lives and pitted against each other by their roles, they find themselves less inclined to question their conduct and suspicious of ulterior motives. Through it all, the Danish siblings weave a web that threatens to overwhelm the other two women, and lures them deeper into a game they never intended to play, let alone expected to threaten their lives.

The Magic Circle is a subtle thriller that effectively introduces the appeal of urban exploration and game playing into the freedom presented by the college environment. The dark turn that the plot takes is a warning call to any older teen who feels the lure of leaving the rules behind. Davidson shows how easy it is to lose your way and come unmoored from the person you thought you were when tempted by others. Teens about to leave for college will find a lot to consider in Ruth and Lucy's adventures and many questions to answer about how they would respond to all the possibilities that these games present. (Some sexual content makes this one a crossover for older teens only.)

Finally, as this is the holiday season, I couldn't resist a couple of unusual ideas that would certainly have appealed to me as a teenager. (And frankly still do.) Beth Kephart's recent title on writing memoir, Handling the Truth, has been receiving accolades all over the place for its thoughtful consideration of the good and bad in the genre, as well as providing examples from many wonderful books. Kephart is a National Book Award finalist who teaches writing; she pulls from her own experience and classroom discussion to illustrate many points. For the teen writer, Handling the Truth offers some valuable insight into many facets of the writing life, especially finding the truth in a story. Packaging Handing the Truth along with a couple of the dozens of memoirs Kephart lists in her detailed bibliography would be a great way to tell the teen in your life that your take his or her writing dreams seriously.

Another idea is to purchase a book subscription for YA lovers that will extend the gift-giving season into their mailboxes all year long. After filling out a questionnaire to help narrow down the gift recipient's interest, Oblong Books and Music in New York State will mail recipients"...a brand-new hardcover YA book specially chosen for them each month, along with swag and info about the books and authors we love, and whatever's hottest in the YA world. We'll help you discover the books that will be your new favorites." The service is available for three, six, or twelve month installments and all information can be found on the store's website.

COOL READ: Oyvin Torseter's The Hole is certainly one of the most simple yet innovative picture books I have come across in ages and an absolute treat for young children. Nicely designed by Enchanted Lion Books with heavy cardboard covers and sturdy pages, Torseter's story is beguiling in its simplicity. An animal-man (who stands upright but looks like a dog) has just moved into a new apartment. As he wordlessly unpacks, he is shocked to discover a hole in the wall. The hole appears and disappears at random as he tracks it around the rooms until finally capturing it in a box. He then goes off into the city (full of all manner of other "people" plus, great buildings and cars), boards a bus, and travels to a large facility where the hole is unpacked and studied until the techs tell him "that's all we can do for now" and packs the hole away for future study. He returns home, goes to bed and, of course, the hole is still there. (Fortunately for our hero's sanity, he doesn't notice.)

This subversive little story is laugh out loud funny, witty as hell, even with its very few words, and, as the hole is physically present through an actual hole in the page, also a very active book for the reader to engage with. The spare use of color and the line drawings give the pages plenty of white space for the hole to stand out, and the diversity of the characters gives the book a broad appeal. The Hole is an ageless read, as it will be enjoyed by everyone who picks it up. (And trust me, everyone will want to pick it up.) This is one of those titles that from conception to final product is just utterly and completely original. It's as good as it gets, and I can't recommend it enough.

Blues singer and musician Robert Johnson is the source of the most powerful and prevailing legend in American music: the Crossroads deal with the Devil. Out of a poor childhood in Mississippi, born in 1911, Johnson grew up to romance many women, play many bars, record only twenty-nine songs, and die at age twenty-seven under mysterious circumstances. Lauded by everyone from Keith Richards to Eric Clapton, who refers to him as the "most important blues singer who ever lived" and recorded a CD called Me and Mr. Johnson, Johnson was elected to the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in its inaugural ballot; his contribution to American music continues to resonate and the power of his legacy (mythic and otherwise) shows no sign of abating.

But this review isn't about any of that.

In Play Pretty Blues, Mississippi native Snowden Wright tells the story of Robert Johnson's life using an unorthodox narrative style that manages to convey the rhythm of the blues in a novel's form. The facts of Johnson's life are here, from the extramarital affair that led to his birth to the tragic death of his first wife in childbirth. But Wright uses a Greek chorus of other women, namely six wives, to lead readers through the book and comment on events as they occur. From Claudette, who serves as the group's archivist, to the despondent and alcoholic Betty, these women observe and endure while revealing Johnson's story, always searching for the truth and mindful of just how much they have been left out of his official biographies. The only way these women could honestly exist is through the forgiveness of fiction. But what Snowden does with them is stunning. Consider this introductory passage to the group, written from the point of view of the unnamed, unknown sixth wife:

Since his death our lives have been guided not merely by our search for the truth but also by our desire for retribution. We have lived in the shadow of a ghost. In the first few years after his demise, some of us migrated north to St. Louis and Chicago, some of us west to Texas and Oklahoma, all in trace of the path taken by his posthumous musical influence. Claudette collected a dossier of evidence of his life and death, including fingerprints, oral accounts, facial sketches, Mason jars of sampled soil, photographs and lithographs and phonographs, vials, beakers, bottles, locks of hair hermetically sealed in Tupperware and Glad-Lock. Mary-Sue, the oldest of us, seduced every headliner she heard cover a Robert Johnson song. Tabitha, the youngest, spent years harassing his murderer's family with coins glued to their porch's floorboards, caps twisted loose on their salt shakers, and staples removed from their Swingline. Betty sought solace in the bottle. Helena, who never forgave herself for not bearing our mutual husband an heir, eventually married a writer of crossword puzzles and gave birth to three boys name anagrams of "Robert Johnson."

The wives become real through such paragraphs, each of them unique individuals bonded solely through their love and devotion to a man none can forget nor ever really knew. They embrace their mutual loss through years of trying to understand him and seek not the limelight but rather a collective easing of unbearable pain. Wright's careful crafting of each "widow" brings Johnson the man to life in an unexpected and deeply human way. The cumulative effect is a broad and emotional epic that possesses the imagination. There is nothing casual or "pop" about this novel and it serves to show just how evocative our cultural touchstones can be.

Clearly, Wright respects Johnson very much, but just as importantly he respects the blues, and he has written a novel that embraces both, something few authors have managed to do. (One notable exception is Michael Ondaatje's gorgeous rendering of jazz great Buddy Bolton's life in Coming Through Slaughter.)

Throughout Play Pretty Blues, Wright weaves together fact and fiction, referencing and quoting from noted books on his subject while slyly shifting names and introducing invented episodes into Johnson's biography. The wives themselves are an unknown quantity but Johnson's reputation of romantic entanglements is not. It is easy to believe this man had six wives, none of which knew about the others. Wright has thus sifted through the scant facts and read between the lines to give readers what might have been. The book is clearly fiction, but it is also steeped in history and all of it -- every last word -- brings readers deeper into the world of the blues that Johnson, and his devil, created.

Play Pretty Blues by Snowden Wright
Engine Books
ISBN 978-1938126109
200 pages

Two gorgeous and informative titles about the Civil War have been released recently and should be considered immediate go-to books for teens studying this period of American history. The Civil War in 50 Objects by Harold Holzer and the New York Historical Society provides readers with a peek into the society's collections, and Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection does likewise for the Smithsonian. Both are full of color illustrations with short chapters addressing every aspect of the war from uniforms to personal correspondence to flags to some amazing finds such as a military footlocker with belongings that was used by one Union officer and preserved by his family. (This artifact in the New York Historical Society made me want to immediately fill my father's footlocker, which I have, with a vast array of unusual tools and diaries, so I could also posses a similar spread of awesomeness in my own home. I do not apologize for my history nerdiness.)

The Civil War in 50 Objects comprises fifty short chapters that take readers through the length of the war, starting with a series of slavery-related objects ("Slave Shackles Intended for a Child," ca. 1800) and ending with the manuscript, signed by President Lincoln, of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, rendering slavery illegal. The text notes that while Georgia became the twenty-seventh state to ratify the amendment, thus making it law in 1865, Kentucky did not do so until 1976 and, most appallingly, Mississippi did not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1995. Old resentments die hard, indeed.

More heavily illustrated and in an oversized design, Smithsonian Civil War provides an overview of 150 objects from its collections in one-page chapters with accompanying photographs. The selection is just as varied as the New York collection: here are pieces such as Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart's pistol, General Ulysses S. Grant's nickname-making "Unconditional Surrender" letter, and a bloodstained map taken from the body of David Starr Hoyt. Hoyt, a relative footnote to history, was killed by pro-slavery forces in Kansas in the summer of 1856, during the period that came to be known as "Bleeding Kansas" in the run-up to the war.

Edited by Neil Kagan, the text of Smithsonian Civil War focuses less on the specific pieces than on the events that surrounded them. Thus a photograph of the dead at Spotsylvania punctuates a discussion of the battle itself, illustrating themes broader than the photographer or specific victims or how the photo came into the Smithsonian's possession. The Civil War in 50 Objects is more in-depth on its specific items, but the Smithsonian book offers a wide look at the war and its impact. Combined, these two beautiful books are history at its finest and outstanding ways for teens to learn about the war and all the ways in which it affected American life. I can't recommend them enough.

Smithsonian Books has also released Lines in Long Array, a collection of poetry and photography commemorating the Civil War and edited by David Ward and Frank Goodyear III. It pairs contemporary poetry from numerous contributors and photos from Sally Mann with the wartime pictures of Alexander Graham and historic poems from Julia Ward Howe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and more. The compilation not only imparts deep emotion for the war period, but also shows how views of the conflict have evolved.

While most of the poems address the horrors of war, the contemporary verses include a much wider variety of styles and formats. Several of them also use the exact words of those from the conflict, such as Jorie Graham's Union soldiers writing home presented in columns to echo their ranks in "Message From the Fourth Tour" and Tracy K. Smith's heart-wrenching excerpts from the letters of African-American soldiers in "I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It." Several of the poets write from the perspectives of others, giving readers the fictional thoughts of Matthew Brady, Abraham Lincoln, or Walt Whitman. This technique is largely absent from the historical entries, which emphasize both loss and victory from a more omniscient point of view.

Poetry is often a hard sell with teens, but the differences between the past and present viewpoint when writing on such a huge event in American history should make this an interesting title for use in classroom discussion. The photos (also past and present) would prompt thoughtful exchanges about memorials and changing space around battlefields, a worthy topic for a multitude of reasons. Aside from all these academic reasons, however, Lines in Long Array is effective for a far greater reason: these poems and pictures make you care about the war all over again. They are thoughtful and stirring and passionate and in such a quiet, understated presentation, they speak loudly for why poetry matters. I took many classes on the Civil War in high school and college and those instructors would do well to consider these lines from Geoffrey Brock's "Staring Back at Us: A Gallery":

Facing a thousand tomes on the Civil War
in our local bookshop, my son asks: Why so many
books on a single subject? A long story,
I say. And if there's an end, it's just beginning.

On a lighter note, curator William Bird, Jr. describes a series of eccentric and often head-shakingly weird (famous people's hair!) objects from the Smithsonian's Division of Political History in Souvenir Nation. In a witty introduction, Bird provides an insightful, thorough overview of early curators and the sometimes odd origins of the collections at the National Museum of American History before delving into the book's true purpose: interesting "souvenirs" from our nation's past housed in the museum. With full-color photos on one page and the objects' histories -- funny, strange, surprising, or even stirring -- opposite, Bird takes readers on a crazy turn through our nation's past with many people readers have never heard of but will enjoy nonetheless.

There is a "jailed for freedom" suffragette pin that I covet (donated by a suffragette who was jailed for several days in 1917), a letter opener made from a shovel used to build the Grand Coulee Dam, a towel used as a flag of truce at Appomattox, two framed collections of hair (one of famous people and one of presidents), and the chairs from the infamous Kennedy-Nixon first televised debate. There is no real rhyme or reason to the items included, although Bird does organize them into loose categories such as "Diplomacy and War" and "The Cause of Freedom." Mostly this is what the title suggests: a look at the souvenir collection at our national museum. It makes as much sense as anyone's souvenir collection (how many of us want to justify our spoons, salt-and-pepper shakers, or shot glasses from national parks?). But in bringing them together in such a lovely presentation, Bird provides a unique look at American history, always welcome to this fan of the subject.

Karen Bush Gibson turns her attention to a group of women that are excellent historical subjects for teens with Women Aviators. This twenty-six-chapter collection includes a wealth of information on a multicultural group of female pilots who have been overlooked by history. Amelia Earhart is here, but so are Bessie Coleman, Katherine Cheung, Beryl Markham, Willa Brown, Jackie Cochran, Patty Wagstaff, and Jerrie Cobb, among many others. Gibson provides succinct overviews of their accomplishments, sidebars on more notable moments (Cochran was the first woman to break the sound barrier, for example), and book lists to learn more. In every way possible this handsome volume is exactly the sort of biographical introduction that works for those both interested in the subject and eager to learn more and those in search of unusual subject matter for deeper research. The short, fast-paced chapters make it is a solid fit for middle- or high-school students, and Gibson's inclusion of women from several countries and ethnic groups is inspiring.

Though renowned for his wartime graphic novels such as Safe Area Gorazde and Palestine, Joe Sacco has long been fascinated by the First World War. His new "illustrated panorama," The Great War, focuses on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (July 16, 1914), and designed in a twenty-four-foot-long accordion style, this is a wordless look (included separately is a sixteen-page booklet with an essay on the first day of the battle by Adam Hochschild) at a war where, as Sacco has explained: "armies clubbed each other for year after year over small bits of ground." The lack of words on the drawing itself was important to the illustrator. In material from the publisher he writes:

Making The Great War wordless made it impossible to indict the high command or laud the sacrifice of the soldiers. It was a relief not to do these things. All I could do was show what happened between the general and the grave, and hope that even after a hundred years the bad taste has not been washed from our mouths.

World War I is the source of many of our modern conflicts, and Sacco's treatment of it should be welcomed not only by his fans but also from anyone with an interest in appreciating the conflict's true devastation.

COOL READ: The marvelous Scientists in the Field series had a very exciting entry recently with Eruption! by Elizabeth Rusch. Rusch, who formerly wrote about the Mars rovers for the series, covers several geologic hotspots including Columbia and the Philippines as she covers the dangers of volcanic eruption. Readers will find all the hallmarks of the series here -- clear, full-color photos by Tom Uhlman, a text that conveys big scientific concepts and information in language comfortable for the layman (or elementary aged child), and a topic that both informs and entertains. Rusch gives readers a hardy band of scientists who are determined to save lives by getting better at predicting volcanic activity and then vividly shows just how significant that prediction can be to a population that lives near an active volcano. She also explains why people would choose to occupy such dangerous real estate.

Vulcanologists are an enormously compelling bunch, and though Rusch's subjects would likely not consider themselves superheroes, they certainly come across that way. Through painstaking research and the careful deployment of sensitive instruments (which is an adventure unto itself), these men and women take risks to save lives in a careful and quiet manner that is deserving of a lot more attention then they receive. Eruption! puts readers right there in the path of danger with them and goes a long way toward demystifying volcanic eruptions. It's exciting, interesting, and quite engaging to read. Another hit for the folks who spearhead the series and further proof of just how wicked cool science can be.

Oh, Emily Dickinson. Canonized as a literary saint, she is one of the first American poets we learn about in school. With a personal life shrouded in mystery, Dickinson is endlessly interesting in the way of so many other famous women writers, but without the horrifying end of, say, a Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf. When I was young, the story of Dickinson in her quiet room in Amherst raised dozens of questions; she was always described as ill in that vaguely puzzling nineteenth-century sort of way that seemed perfectly acceptable but explained nothing. Of course Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns has pretty much dismantled most of those old interpretations of her life, but for me she it's the saintly image that stuck.

Two recent books for teens tackle Dickinson's legacy in new and fresh ways. Kathryn Burak's Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things and Nobody's Secret by Michaela MacColl make the poet come alive to readers, something I believe is quite important and transfers well to what is learned in the classroom. These are two good books, enjoyable books, but they also build curiosity about Dickinson and will hopefully bring more readers to her work.

Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things is set in the present day with high school senior Claire, who is dealing with some intense personal issues. Her mother was successful in her third suicide attempt the previous year, and not too long after, Claire's best friend disappeared. Her father, who loves her dearly but has no idea how to help her, has moved them from Providence to Amherst in the hopes that with a clean slate Claire can get past her tragic past. Of course life is never as easy as getting a new zip code, and much of the book is about Claire figuring out how to do live with the way things are. Her affinity with Dickinson's story is made clear, and the many poetry excerpts included in the text, which Claire considers as she does her school assignments and works on her own writing, only bring Dickinson more alive. Considering what has happened to Claire, you can't read these lines and not feel a chill:

The last Night that She Lived
It was a Common Night
Except the Dying --

Later, while reading through some of her mother's old books, Claire writes a poem of her own which includes these lines:

And the way her notes in the margins, like stitches,
show you all the places where she felt
the insistent and jagged
little cuts of each new day.

In Amherst, Claire's papers receive the concerned attention of her English teacher and a college intern, Tate, who is assigned to her classroom. Her friendship with Tate becomes more and more tangled as the novel progresses, culminating in a wild confluence of circumstances that finds the two of them stealing Emily Dickinson's dress from the museum. After that they are bound together by a circumstance that requires careful fixing and it all gets more complicated when the cold missing person case involving Claire's old friend suddenly warms up.

Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things is eloquent and elegantly written. There is so much care placed in every single word, so much weight to this language while still managing to read as effortless. This is quietly beautiful about friendship and romance, about grief and family, about how you repair yourself when touched by tragedy. Claire is no freakishly smart pixie girl, she is angry and confused. But for as much as she needs saving, the brilliance of Kathryn Burak is to let this character actively take part in her own rescue. I loved this kid, and Tate, and her father and her new best friend and everyone else who takes part in this story. It's a thing of wonder Burak has created here; a story of how Emily Dickinson's words can reach across time and space and still inspire and still save.

Dickinson herself moves into the position of protagonist in Michaela MacColl's middle-grade historical mystery Nobody's Secret. A suspicious death plays a significant role in the novel, but this is still an exceedingly gentle story reminiscent of another time when the romantic plot is nothing more than a teenage girl's momentary crush and nefarious acts are hinted at rather than presented in blood-drenched pages.

As the book opens, fifteen-year-old Emily is a dreamy nineteenth-century girl detective, who sets off in search of clues when a good-looking stranger is found floating in her family's pond. She and the unnamed "Nobody" had enjoyed an innocent flirtation during a brief meeting a few days earlier and she feels compelled to uncover his secrets now, even though everyone else seems happy to regard the death as an accident. Aided by her sister "Vinnie" (stalwart Mary to her precocious Laura Ingalls), Emily is determined to establish the young man's identity and discover who in sedate Amherst would want him dead. Step by step, they follow clues that lead to a society scandal while trying to keep their mother in the dark and maintaining their own positions in society as "good girls."

MacColl is in comfortable territory here; she has written previously about young Queen Victoria and aviatrix Beryl Markham, and she infuses Nobody's Secret with many period details. In particular, the author places into sharp focus the sheer amount of physical work daily domestic life required of young women in 1846. These aspects of the story bring Nobody's Secret into Wilder and Alcott territory as Emily and Vinnie constantly find themselves stymied in their investigation by the drudgery of chores and their mother's watchful eye. Their discoveries are all the more impressive for the tricky path they must navigate to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Again, this is not a seat-of-your-pants adventure, and even with the moments of excitement the shocks are small and the threats light. (Emily, of course, will not die.) But MacColl's goal here is twofold: not only to give eight-to-twelve-year-olds a mystery but also to show the everyday life of this very famous poet when she was young. On that score in particular she succeeds quite well, giving us a curious Emily forever taking notes and always asking questions; clearly a writer in the making.

If ever there was a poet designed for teen girl appeal, Plath is the one. In Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953, author Elizabeth Winder focuses on the period of Plath's life most applicable to the YA audience. Detailing the experiences of Plath and her fellow interns as they spent one month at Mademoiselle ("the intellectual fashion magazine"), Pain, Parties, Work shows the writer first exhibiting her trademark determination and vulnerability. Mademoiselle was where she caught a long look at the writer's life as well as the dazzle of literary society. There was dating drama, dashed expectations, and professional and personal accomplishments and disappointments. As Winder illustrates through many interviews with those with her that summer and Plath's own journal excerpts, the Mademoiselle experience held as many negatives as positives, and the summer culminated in her much-documented suicide attempt once she returned home.

Winder is well aware of how much has been written about Plath, but by narrowing her focus so tightly she provides keen insight into the effect of this summer on Plath's life. June 1953 found Sylvia Plath taking a chance on the career she dreamed of and embracing the hopes of its success. The pressures put upon her and the other interns were not something she was prepared for, however, and the entire internship, like a mashup of The Devil Wears Prada and The Donna Reed Show, would prove to be extremely difficult for many of them. Coupled with all of this, of course, was the cultural clash between past and future that all young women were facing in the 1950s, as these interview excerpts from fellow interns show:

Neva Nelson: One of the last assignments that we competing girls had to complete was a survey on "our ideal man." It was assumed then that most girls went to college to husband-hunt, and Mademoiselle wanted to join in on the assumption that although we were all looking for careers, we still expected to find the right man and get married.

Gloria Kirshner: In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, Kirsten Dunst flings open the door to show her friends the new laundry room -- with her own new washer and dryer. It's hard to believe as a woman of these days -- but that was the tenor of the times.

Carole Levarn: I was told I would have won the Ernie Pyle Award -- but they'd never give it to a woman. I didn't even think twice about that statement or question it. Later I won the award in the 1970s. I've always loved reading the Sweetbriar alumni magazine. "Peaches Lilliard's husband Biff has just been promoted..." But what about Peaches?

Exhilarated. Can't stop thinking I am just beginning. In ten years I will be 30 and not ancient and maybe good. Hope. Prospects. Work though and I love it... I will work. All the boys, all the longing, then this perfection. Perfect love, whole living.

We are all so often on the edge of something more at twenty-one; a peek at the early route Plath and her friends took is a reminder of how tough it was simply to be an ambitious girl, and how easily such girls, still, can become lost.

Oh, holy hell -- Abraham Lincoln, Joshua Chamberlain, Winfield Hancock, Robert E. Lee and everyone -- every-fucking-one who was at Gettysburg. Happy sesquicentennial and have we revisited your actions those days in July 1863 enough? Can we revisit them enough? (The answers are "No" and "No.") If ever there was a group of men needing the alt-history treatment it is you, and thank the gods that Jack Campbell has been the one to do it.

The Last Full Measure is a novella of the war that didn't happen but is so dangerously close to our own Civil War that it serves to illuminate all the many ways in which we as a nation have come, time and again, perilously close to losing our way. Campbell has written a warning and wrapped it up in a new look at the bloodiest battle in American history. The men are all, heartbreakingly, just who they were. The only difference is what they are fighting for, and which side each of them have chosen.

Just picture it -- Lee is on the government side and Lincoln is the hope of revolutionaries determined to free the country from military control. Chamberlain has been sentenced to prison for daring to reveal the truth about George Washington -- that he "became president as a result of open, fair and free elections." Those are fighting words in this 1863, and soon enough Chamberlain, the college professor who really was a hero on the battlefield, finds himself confronting Lee as the "rebels" break Lincoln out of a military stockade. Consider this passage between Lee and Chamberlain to help sort things out:

Lee's face reddened. "I took an oath, sir. An oath to obey all lawful orders. Every action being ordered of me is in compliance with laws passed by the Congress, signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court. Can you say the same?"

"The congress is owned, the president installed by the army and the Supreme Court packed with those who would agree to any expansion of the power of the few at the expense of the many."

"They are the laws of this land," Lee insisted.

Chamberlain shook his head. "This republic was founded by men who argued that unjust laws must be opposed."

If you know your Civil War history, then you know who lives and dies at Gettysburg, and Campbell presents no surprises on that front. (Poor Winfield Hancock!) But the reasons behind the fighting, the deep conflicts each man must face are all turned inside out just enough to make readers reconsider what we fought for then and also, one hopes, what we stand for today. I love a good alternate history and The Last Full Measure is an excellent one, but more importantly, it's exciting and provocative and more than once deeply profound. Teenagers bored with American History class will find new inspiration here -- it's not to be missed.

Finally, I have been sorely conflicted over Steven Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen's graphic novel Genius. The story itself is fascinating -- intense, unusual, and certainly thoughtful. But at its heart it is the story of a man trying to figure out how to be a better husband, better father and most importantly, a better man. Even though it was published for young adults (by the always impressive First Second), I just wasn't sold on how well it really fits that audience. I'm still not sure, but if Ted's story makes anyone think about being the best sort of person he or she can be, then it succeeds, and that's all really matters.

In the opening pages, with Kristiansen's spare, moody art to guide us (an excellent match for the book), we learn that Ted was a boy genius, became a physicist, and is now married with two children and holding onto his position at Pasadena Technical Institute by his fingertips. Ted has not been brilliant for a while, and he is surrounded by geniuses who are kicking it far better than he. Ted needs a break or he's going to lose his job, and because this is all he has ever done -- hired while still a student himself -- there's not much on the horizon for him to do with his life if he loses his career.

At home, his thirteen-year-old son is thinking way too much about sex and possibly drifting away from him, though Ted is a pretty good dad and doing his best to keep the boy at his side. Their relationship is really quite lovely. His daughter might just be the same kind of brilliant as he was, which is both wonderful and terrifying, his wife is sick and getting sicker, and his father-in-law, who lives with them, apparently has a secret given to him decades before by Albert Einstein. As Einstein is "god" to Ted, the revelation that this secret, which may or may not exist, is locked in the older man's slightly demented head, rapidly becomes Ted's obsession. The secret could be the thing to make him brilliant again, it could save his job, and if he has his job than that might save everything. Now if only his father-in-law could remember and if only he would tell Ted and if only his wife's run-of-the-mill illness wasn't rapidly becoming far more terrifying than everything else.

Slowly, with Einstein filling his thoughts and becoming the sounding board Ted needs to navigate his increasingly turbulent days, real life forces changes that cannot be ignored. This is when Ted must decide what matters most both in his life and the lives of the people he cares about. He must decide the best way to live as a genius.

Genius is very quietly about very serious things, and what has stood out for me more than anything after turning the last pages is just how quiet the story is. For all that many powerful things occur in the plot, the tone is subtle, the language understated, and the characters wary of sudden moves. There is not a lot of screaming, which is a relief, because in most parts of life, screaming doesn't happen much. Genius is simply a peek at how complicated adulthood can be, even if you're smarter than the rest. It's going to be a significant read for some teens, and I hope they find it and embrace the humanity of Albert Einstein, and all the wonder that his secrets likely possess.

COOL READ: Jill Corcoran has edited a new poetry collection for children that is a nice introduction to several largely unknown great people (with a few famous ones tossed in). Dare to Dream... Change the World, with illustrations by J. Beth Jepson, includes poems from such well-known children's and teen book authors as Jane Yolen, Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Stephanie Hempill, Ellen Hopkins, and Curtis Crisler. Using a multitude of poetic forms, the contributors write about adults and children who made a difference while also illuminating those acts with other nonspecific poems that build off the acts of their subjects.

Standouts include Curtis Crisler on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jacqui Robbins on playing ball (even when you aren't good), and Alan Katz on Steven Spielberg. Brief biographies of the subjects accompany each two-page spread, providing just enough information to answer obvious questions and spur further research for the very curious. With big, colorful illustrations that jump off the page, Dare to Dream... Change the World is a nice addition to any child's nightstand.

Matt Kindt shows that the graphic novel is a primo format for unorthodox mysteries with his utterly beguiling Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes. Framed around the career of a famous police detective named Gould, Red Handed gives readers several seemingly random mysteries about all sorts of crimes ranging from art theft to chair theft to pickpocketing to illegal fur trading to the taking of unseemly photos of unknowing women (legs and feet, occasional arms, but nothing R-rated). Gould unravels every crime, tracks the perpetrators and carts them off to jail except there seems to be a pattern forming in all these random acts of criminality and Gould smells a plot. Just who is behind it and why is a mystery he cannot ignore, and as the story continues, it becomes clear that solving that larger mystery is a case of life and death.

This is a carefully plotted novel, the sort of plotting that belongs in a class on how to do it. Kindt does not waste a word or picture. He knows what he is doing and why every step of the way, and the care he takes to pull every one of these threads together is masterful. But as elegant as the plot is, it's the larger mystery that keeps the pages turning. Readers will not be able to stop asking questions, stop trying to figure out why certain characters do certain things and how, even though they don't know each other, they're being manipulated by someone else. (The artist who writes her novel with stolen words is a personal favorite of mine.) Interspersed throughout the novel are black and white text-only scenes in which future Gould and the mastermind exchange barbs in an interrogation setting. Clearly he solves the mystery, but the why of it all is left to the final pages, and it packs a wallop.

First Second Books is consistently one of the finest imprints out there for teens, and I cannot recommend their graphic novels enough. Red Handed is another first-class example of a wonderfully written story with beautiful, unique illustrations that perfectly complement the unusual mood of the narrative. Published for teens, adults would be fools to pass this one up; it's about as good as it gets and a mystery not to be missed.

Soho Press inaugurated a new YA imprint this spring, and I am delighted to say that this venerable mystery press is giving us exactly what I have wanted for so very long: straight-up mysteries for teens! There are girl detectives, conspiracies, family secrets, school hallways fraught with serious drama, and some hard-core thrillers. Basically, every kind of mystery a teenager could want and nary a vampire in sight.

The first Soho title I cracked open was Helen FitzGerald's Deviant. The author quickly introduces Scottish street kid Abigail, whose long-lost mother has died and unexpectedly left a small package for her daughter. Notified by the counselors at the teen group home where she lives, Abigail discovers her inheritance includes a cryptic letter, a revelation about her previously unknown father, a plane ticket to California, and a pile of cash. Because she is no fool, she gets a passport pronto and blows out of Edinburgh without a backward glance. What she doesn't know is the trouble that awaits her in the Golden State.

In L.A. the changes come fast and furious: her father is wealthy, she has a perfect, if somewhat Stepfordish, stepmother, and her older sister (who never knew their mother) alternates between being an undercover rabble rouser and a stoner rich kid. Before she has a chance to get her bearings, Abigail is caught up in her sister's illegal escapades, and then there is a death -- a serious, very upsetting death. Abigail uncovers a most nefarious plot and ends up running for her life and then -- and then -- well, bad things happen, and you think it's all over (but it's not of course).

In many ways Deviant fits solidly in classic contemporary thriller territory, and with older characters, some sex, and more graphic violence, it would easily read as an adult title. The pacing is great, the plot flows right along and even though the author knows she is doing a bit of a homage to a classic, it is one we never get tired of, and there are plenty of original bits added in to make Deviant stand on its own. What truly makes the novel shine, though, is Abigail. She's tough and smart but more than once acknowledges her position in L.A. as a fish out of water and acts pretty much as any teen in her position would. She's no dumb bunny, but she's not a superpowered Buffy either. Abigail is canny and bold and determined, a lost girl who has to fight if she wants to get out of this mess alive. I loved this kid and hope -- as the final pages suggest -- that there will be more from her in the future.

Margaux Froley's contribution to the Soho Teen line, Escape Theory, is a complex murder mystery set at a boarding school. Filled with some of what you expect (prescription drug abuse, town versus school tension, class issues, teen pregnancy), this psychological thriller manages to keep increasing the tension. The short take: Jason "Hutch" Hutchins, one of the most charismatic students on campus, is dead of an apparently intentional overdose. Classmate Devon, a scholarship student, had a unique friendship with Hutch and is having a lot of trouble believing he would kill himself.

As part of a new peer-counseling program, Devon is supposed to talk to Hutch's closest friends and provide them with some student-student therapy. (I'm not sure how believable this scenario is, but as plot devices go it's okay.) Everyone has an idea about what really happened, and bit by bit Devon figures out that not only is there something suspect about Hutch's death, but a whole lot of other nefarious activity is happening on campus too. They might be rich and look pretty, but, of course, there's a seamy underbelly. Devon makes alliances, uncovers clues, gets a boyfriend (maybe), bonds with an unlikely gal pal, and solves the crime.

There are many things that work well with Escape Theory, starting with Devon and the Keaton School setting. Our protagonist is the typical bookish-introspective-outsider teen heroine, but she's also pretty mouthy and spunky in all the right ways. Very Veronica Mars. As her classmates shuffle through her "office," she asks the questions she wants answered, and she doesn't let go as they push back against the intrusion. She's not afraid to stand up for herself with the administration, but she's also a bit flawed and that's nice to see. The only truly false note is her over-the-top conversations with friend Presley, which read more as an adult's idea of how teen girls interact then how they actually, um, interact. Absent that easily ignored misstep, Escape Theory is a nice little page-turner that opens up all sorts of future possibilities set at Keaton School. There are a wealth of personalities and scenarios introduced here the beg for future exploration; here's hoping Ms. Froley will dive back into the ugly side of high school again and take us another adventure with Devon and her band of merry pranksters.

Sarah Rees Brennan introduces some paranormal elements (no vampires! no werewolves!) in her enormously fun spin on the girl detective, Unspoken, the first book of The Lynburn Legacy. (The second book, Untold, is due in September.) Teen Kami Glass has lived in a very sleepy British town, Sorry-in-the-Vale, her whole life. As editor of the school newspaper, she is eager to get into all of the town's secrets, most notably those surrounding one of the founding families, the Lynburns, who have recently returned. Her life is a bit complicated by the one thing she cannot control, the existence of Jared, an imaginary/invisible friend who has communicated telepathically with her since childhood. They don't know how they do it or why they do it, only that they are bound together and always, always, a part of each other's lives.

It is pretty much impossible to discuss the plot of Unspoken without dropping a dozen different spoilers, so I'm going to stay purposely general in this review. While lots of readers are going to enjoy the paranormal elements, it was actually the characters that made this one succeed hugely for me. Kami is Nancy Drew in all of her nosy best, and also channels some Rory Gilmore circa the "Life and Death Brigade" episodes as she stays hot on the trail of the Lynburns. Brennan wisely gives her several friends to solve crime with and all of the teens are well rounded, funny, and smart. (My only complaint would be that they are also gorgeous -- there is so much gorgeousness in Sorry-in-the-Vale that one wonders if average-looking teens are allowed to live there.)

Along with the Scooby gang bits, there is also Kami's family, a delightfully normal and nice supporting cast, which is actually a solid component to the narrative. As for the Lynburns, they are the great big soap opera mess that the plot deserves and oh, how I wish I could say more but I swear, I can't. I'll just add that cute emotionally-tortured boys are always a good thing, and although I'm not fond of love triangles, I'll take this one because it's all tied up in the fight at the end.

Brennan has done a great job here of writing a cracker-jack mystery that doesn't insult the intelligence of its readers. Kami and her friends are enormously likable and watching them navigate the secrets that permeate their town (and turn deadly) makes for a real page-turner. I found Unspoken to be the best sort of diversionary read, and while the tweets have flown fast and furious over the cliffhanger ending, I was quite pleased with Brennan's choice there. She is making her characters work for their story, and as she has crafted so many wonderful personalities here, their drama (and trauma) is not something to overly worry about. Kami is no dumb bunny; she's going to figure things out and with her pals will be saving the day, I just know it. Of course I have to get Untold to figure out how that will happen, but I'm confident Brennan won't let me down. This is an author at the top of her game, and Unspoken is the start of a series that I have fallen hard for.

Finally, Doyce Testerman has crafted a noir urban fantasy that while published for adults is an affecting crossovers for teen readers. It has monsters of an insidious Sam Spade-ish kind, sinister and creepy and deviously intelligent, and it has a sorely conflicted and appealing heroine who is a private detective/former singer and lover of rock and roll (which has plot relevance). But mostly, surprisingly, the root of Hidden Things is all about family and how you can never ever, no matter how hard you might want to, get away from that place you call home. You carry it with you, even in the midst of a trip through an alternate world on the trail of a murderer and in the hopes of finding one of your dearest friends.

Hidden Things opens with a bang as Calliope Jenkins receives a late-night phone call from friend and business partner Josh, who is away investigating a case. The call is strange, but it's nothing compared to the shock of discovering the next morning that Josh is dead and that he died before the phone call was placed. The police are investigating, Josh's wife is freaking out, and a very peculiar guy who appears to be homeless keeps trying to insert himself into Calliope's life. He seems to know a lot about her and Josh, and he won't go away. In rapid succession, Calliope realizes that all is not as it seems, that she needs to follow Josh's trail if she wants to get any answers and that guy just might have the answers she needs, if he doesn't drive her crazy first. Also, there appear to be people out to kill her, so none of this is going to be easy.

What we end with here is a great road novel, a solid mystery, a trip into a parallel world, a glutton, a reason never to trust men in suits, and a dragon -- a really really cool dragon. Here is Testerman's lovely statement on dragons, which pretty much are words to live by:

Dragons are true. It doesn't matter if they fly and breathe fire and can eat a town full of people, if they're messengers for god or a symbol of everything lost that you wish you still had. They might be any of those things or all of 'em, and it still doesn't matter how they are. They are.

It is on the road that the book's coming-of-age plot breaks through, as Calliope finds herself returning to Iowa, where Josh apparently died and, nearly as devastating, where Calliope grew up. The route to answers about her lost friend lie through her home, through her past, through the reckoning about who she was and who she is. It is where everything comes together and is the scene of a confrontation between Calliope and her sister about leaving home and staying and why some of us make one choice and some make the other. And that is where Testerman really sells Hidden Things as a book about growing up. Yes, this is a mystery, and it has a wonderful noir sensibility. But also, as Calliope accepts all that Iowa means for her and Josh and all that it can never be again for either of them, Hidden Things is about leaving home. That's what makes it a killer YA novel, even though it wasn't written for teens. Excellent.

COOL READ: DK's excellent new entry in the "Big Ideas Simply Explained" series is The Politics Book, and it is really something special. With the publisher's classic design style (liberal use of color and sidebars, multiple fonts, dynamic presentation), this is a book that is both highly informative and pleasing to page through. The multiple contributors provide chronological history that dates back to "Ancient Political Thought" beginning in 800 BCE and moves forward through medieval times, the Enlightenment, "Revolutionary Thoughts," and "The Rise of the Masses" and more contemporary discussions. A ton of famous names are packed in here and I loved how the title moves around the world and in and out of big and small ideas. It is as comprehensive as it gets, but more importantly very readable. There is not a dull page here and the examples make the most complex issues clear and easy to understand. (And some of the quotations are really amazing, like Mao Zedong's "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.")

I get great nonfiction to review all the time, and I work hard to bring the best, most unusual, most useful, and interesting of those titles to this column. The Politics Book stands out as one of the most important I've read in a long time. I wish I could put it in the hands of every teenager and adult I know. Pair this with the graphic novel Economix by Michael Goodwin and you could radically transform the population into a smarter, savvier group of individuals. Learning is good, folks -- don't be afraid to read these books and find out more on such worthy subjects.

Every time I think I've read it all an author comes along and wham, I get reminded that yes, indeed, you can take an old story and make it new all over again. Dear readers, I give you Six-Gun Snow White, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a Western spin on the fairy tale classic. Catherynne Valente spins it in such a way that somehow you end up with visions in your head of Clint Eastwood, William Randolph Hearst, Coyote, the horrible mines where all those poor kids were enslaved in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Annie Oakley times seven. But the idea alone, even with all these elements, is not enough. What makes Six-Gun Snow White such an unforgettable read is the voice of the main character and the narrative that Valente drops her into.

First, be aware this is old-school Snow White, full of all kinds of pain and torment and born of a forced union between her Native American mother and wildly wealthy and powerful father, the arrogant "Mr. H." (This is where all of my Hearst suspicions kicked in.) After her mother's death in childbirth, our heroine leads a largely ignored childhood with a few highlights like shooting targets with the jewel-laden, silver-handled revolver her father gave her. Things take a sudden turn however with the dreaded arrival of the stepmother. This is when Snow White gets her name, for as the new Mrs. H. makes clear with her mixed-blood heritage, white is "the one thing I was not and could never be." Thus begins the torturing of Snow White and the nightmare that is life with an evil stepmother.

Eventually, Snow White runs away on the back of a horse named Charming, out for Indian Territory, for the story she has created of her mother's people, for a better life out there somewhere. A hired Pinkerton detective hunts her relentlessly, following the legend she leaves in her wake. Snow White gets harder on her own, she gets tough, she gets angry, she gets brutal. She survives. When she faces down the detective, she finds a place with seven friends and when her stepmother knocks on her door, well, Snow White follows the tale that has been written for her. I'll only say that the ending manages to be both unexpected and perfect, it's a gift of an ending, and for this reader, who grew up on Red River, The Searchers, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, this was the Snow White I have waited my whole damn life to find. With a gorgeous cover by Charles Vess, Six-Gun Snow White is the kind of literary shock that requires an immense talent.

Paul Crilley's The Lazarus Machine takes place in an alternate steampunk 1895 where Tesla-powered computers are everywhere and Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace are heroes of the day. Sebastian Tweed and his father make a living as spiritualists -- or rather his father pretends to talk to the dead while Sebastian uses technology to answer. In the opening chapters, Barnaby Tweed is kidnapped by the malevolent Professor Moriarty and his gang, and Sebastian sets off on a race to find his father and discover why Moriarty, back from apparent death on Reichenbach Falls, would want him in the first place. To get these answers he must work with budding journalist Octavia Nightingale, who is on her own search for a missing parent and shares Sebastian's interest in foiling Moriarty's (certainly nefarious) plans.

There is plenty of running around London for both Sebastian and Olivia as they call on friends to help pursue the Moriarty mystery to the highest levels of British government. Crilley does a grand job of ratcheting up the tension, especially when Sebastian has to break into a prison. What's especially appealing is the many strong supporting characters (particularly female) he has created, including not only Olivia but also young computer mastermind "Stepp Reckoner" and family friends Jenny and Carter (who present an excellent picture of marital bliss, albeit mixed with occasional larceny). The biggest win here, however, is found in the plot twists and turns, all of which are played out with witty elegance. Crilley really thought this one out, and his care with the plot should be deeply appreciated by the readers. There's comedy, a tiny hint of romance and smart banter. I think Crilley just might have done the near impossible here and accomplished a steampunk adventure that has equal appeal to teens of both genders. Now if Sebastian and Olivia can just stay alive as they continue their adventures into the dark underbelly of British politics, this could be a series with serious staying power.

Cherie Priest happily returns to her damaged "rotter" and gas-filled Seattle with her latest Clockwork Century title, The Inexplicables. I know it's hard to cheer the return of zombie-like cannibals, but I love this version of Seattle and the tough non-cannibal occupants who live there. Her protagonist, teen Rector Sherman, is an orphan who has aged out of charity care and is being shown the door as the story opens. Addicted to the area's drug of choice, sap, and haunted by his complicity in sending a friend into the dangerous walled city, he goes into Seattle seeking evidence of what happened to Zeke. He is fairly quickly nearly killed in an altercation with a hella-big monster and starts going through some serious detox.

Rescued by Zeke's friends and family, Rector finds himself, shockingly, making friends. They discover a plot to takeover Seattle, find the monster and his girlfriend, and also bump into a rotter or two. Through it all Rector struggles to stay clean and more importantly not just die from the effects of his years of drug abuse. While the action comes hard and fast, Priest still lays out a lot potential for future stories, not only with Rector and Zeke (not dead, as it turns out), but the former Confederate nurse Mercy Lynch who is missing a few friends of her own. In the Clockwork Century anything is possible and all of it, in one way or another, ties into the rest.

Like the previous entries in this series, The Inexplicables is fast-paced and populated with smart, capable characters who don't spend much time dithering when there is a job to do. Although monsters appear, these are not horror stories, and the blood and gore is kept to a minimum that complements rather than overwhelms the story. Teenage boys in particular should enjoy The Inexplicables, as Rector, Zeke, and their friend Houjin have the sort of high action adventures with some very real threats that will keep them on the edge of their seats. Rector is no prince, but he's very compelling, and following him as he struggles each and every moment to stay straight is the most powerful part of this exciting story.

My first thought after finishing Timothy Bradley's Infestation was that I had just experienced a Holes mash-up with every single B monster movie that came out of the 1950s. I grew up watching those movies on Sunday mornings, so that is high praise, and for Bradley's target audience of young teen (or tween) boys, it should be all the persuasion they need to hear. Toss in a sympathetic protagonist in a miserable situation who bonds with a bunch of likable if slightly dangerous freaks and then must face down mutant killer bugs. This is everything your typical reluctant reader could want and it comes wrapped up in a plot that zips along convincingly and never forgets that character is what matters most.

Our hero Andy ends up at the Reclamation School for Boys in the New Mexico desert after a miserable foster care experience. The school is a for-profit institution and it makes money by keeping the boys there as long as possible, which isn't too tough as they are out in the middle of nowhere. With harsh rules and continuous punishment plus the prerequisite bullies, Andy is pretty sure he is in hell. Things only get weirder when his roommate takes him up through the ceiling tiles in their room to an abandoned portion of the compound, which dates back to its previous military ownership days. Barrels of chemicals fill the room, hinting at all sorts of nefarious purposes. Very quickly the plot blows up when Andy and seven other students are locked up alone in the isolated Block 6 as punishment. An earthquake-type event occurs and when the boys bust out they find a bloody mess. Plus mutant bugs.

The boys get their act together and don't waste a lot of time wondering about the necessary action of survival. Through the assistance of an adult they learn some of the science behind what the mutants, and Bradley smoothly fits in a little background about the environment and chemicals. Mostly though, this is just a big action-packed novel about killing the big uglies before they kill (and eat) you first. Very, very fun.

COOL READ: Chronicle Books is known for the excellent design that goes into their titles but they've really outdone themselves with The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science. Set up as a encyclopedia for the scientifically curious (teenage Einstein wannabes who live in bedrooms that look like Henry Jones, Jr.'s office will need it badly), each "question" is addressed in a double-page spread that includes a brief essay written a professor, librarian, engineer, or doctor alongside a full-page highly original illustration. The questions are eclectic, including "Can Evolution Outpace Climate Change?" "Why Do Placebos Work?" "Do Rogue Waves Exist?" and "Why Do Whales Sing?" and the color illustrations range from realistic to comedic to sometimes really, really strange. You will learn a lot, but mostly, this one is just damn cool to look at. I still want my bedroom to look like Henry Jones, Jr.'s office; the book fits right in with my plan.

I was lucky enough to have a copy of The Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone pressed into my hands a few months ago at ALA Midwinter. This collection of global voices is truly a unique title, a book on war that manages to include multiple ages, perspectives, and conflicts. Editor J.L. Powers has done an amazing job of collecting an array of individual narratives to dive into. Some will resonate more than others, but collectively they provide a powerful example of the lingering impact of war on the lives of children and teenagers. What so impressed me is that the children come from such diverse backgrounds; they are soldiers and civilians, from families who fled war or the children of those who fought in it. In ways big and small, subtle and obvious, their lives have been touched by combat and the message they share is serious stuff: you don't get over this, not completely, not ever. You just learn to live with what you know and somehow not let it destroy you.

In That Mad Game, we meet Phillip Cole Manor, who writes of fighting in Vietnam at the age of eighteen; Qais Akbar Omar, who grew up under the Taliban in Aghanistan; and Alia Yunis, who spent many of her childhood years in Beirut during the civil war. There is also Xiaomei Lucas, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution; Innocent Bisanabo, who fled wars across sub-Saharan Africa; and Rebecca Henderson, who recounts the lives of four teenagers forced to flee Burma. There are essays on Iraq, Iran, South Africa, Cambodia, El Salvador, and Bosnia. Every page is another history lesson, every paragraph another stark reminder of the price we pay for losing peace. "In the Middle East, the advent of war is as unpredictable as the rain," writes Yunis. "Each year the rain is needed desperately, but often it doesn't come. However there is never a drought when it comes to war. Every generation has its war or -- quite often -- wars."

It's easy to recommend That Mad Game to classrooms, but I read this book more to understand and empathize than to learn facts. Jerry Mathes writes of growing up with his father, who was away at Vietnam when he was just a baby, and shows how war can permeate a household and taint those who never know its pain firsthand. "...I realized that I lived among war's flotsam: fatigues, dress blues, rank and unit patches, ribbons, brass insignia, medals that hung on a plaque... Some sacred relics I showed my friends and pretended to know the meaning of what stories these things told." For all that he is mired in his father's war, however, Mathes cannot understand it and he cannot understand what became of his father there. "I have often wondered who the young man was in the photo on the beach or the groom in his uniform before he learned the language of war," he writes. And the reader is drawn into that wondering, into questioning who this man might have been if he had not become "intimate with suffering."

There are more than a dozen biographies in That Mad Game, memories shared, emotional scrapbooks revealed and, as in David Griffith's closing essay "Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945"), questions are asked that can never be answered. If we are lucky, we will never know what the contributors to Powers's collection have revealed. We will only have their record to better know what it was like; we will only have their sorrow to help us understand. Highly recommended.

One of the more surprising biographies to come my way recently is Frank Young and David Lasky's graphic novel The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song. Weighing in at just under 200 pages and including a CD of Carter Family recordings from a radio show in 1939, this full color history takes readers from A.P. Carter's childhood to his marriage to Sarah, the development of a trio with her cousin Maybelle (who later married A.P.'s brother) and the group's hard rise to country music fame in the late 1930s. We're talking hardcore, powerful, overlooked American history here, and it is in such a lovely package and so compelling to read, that I think it has the potential to be a real treasure to those lucky enough to find it. (In other words, this is the perfect gift for any music lover or American history geek.)

The Carters collected their songs largely from their Appalachian neighbors, as A.P. traveled the highways and byways looking for anyone who had a tune to share. Later accompanied by friend Lesley Riddle, A.P. would transcribe lyrics while Riddle, who could learn melodies by ear after only one listen, would memorize the tunes. With work by Sarah and Maybelle, whose unique guitar style had a lasting effect on American music, the old songs received new life with many later becoming famous. ("Will the Circle Be Unbroken" is likely the most recognized today.) Young and Lasky detail this process, especially the conflict A.P. felt over receiving full credit as writer of so many songs acquired from others, and the many times in which others, especially Riddle were ignored.

The full color illustrations are realistic and touching, with a great deal of attention paid to facial expressions that often tell the story without a single word. The authors handle all of the personal elements of the Carter story -- especially the breakup of A.P. and Sarah's marriage while the group continued to perform and record -- with a deft touch and the final pages are bittersweet in their intensity. The Carter Family is part of our national story, but it is rare that their significance is fully appreciated outside the most ardent of country music circles. Young and Lasky have done a wonderful job of making the family's contribution appealing to a wider audience and The Carter Family is a unique tribute that just might make this American treasure relevant in a new way to the twenty-first century.

Count me as one of those people who thought she knew plenty about Yoko Ono. While I'm beyond blaming her for The Beatles' breakup, I saw Yoko as offbeat artist, John Lennon's muse-lover-wife-loyal widow and... well, that was pretty much it. My total lack of knowledge about her life has made the revelations in Nell Beram and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky's biography Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies all that much more engrossing, and I invite people who think they know her story to dive into this one ASAP.

Ono grew up during World War II in Japan. She had parents who were alternately authoritarian and disconnected (sometimes both at the same time), and she insisted on making an artistic life for herself with absolutely no idea how to do it. She just jumped into the world she wanted to live in. Along the way, she married three times, had a child who was later abducted and hidden by her ex-husband, thus removed from her life for decades, and she fell madly in love with one of the most dynamic men of the twentieth century. Simply put, Yoko Ono was one of the most unorthodox anti-Disney princesses ever who made her own happily-ever-after happen. The tragic ending to her great love affair is the stuff of pop culture legend, and an international sorrow. But she is far more than just the wife of a Beatle, as Beram and Boriss-Krimsky prove; Yoko Ono is really something special.

The authors take readers through Ono's life in chronological order, giving teens a firm view of how her worldview was shaped by the events of her chaotic (and almost unbelievable) childhood. They provide dozens of outstanding photographs, including many of her artwork and performance art pieces. There are also excerpts of her written work, discussions of her influences, and, of course, an in depth look at her relationship with Lennon. Budding artists are going to find much to admire about her commitment to creating art -- the art that mattered to her and defied all expectation and convention -- but readers who dream about something more for themselves than they have been raised to expect will identify with Ono's journey. The authors have done an outstanding job of making their subject highly relatable; Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies is really a title to check out for assignment or pleasure.

Catherine Reef follows her impressive biography of Jane Austen (Jane Austen: A Life Revealed) with what has to be one of the saddest family stories ever recorded, The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. I'll start by saying there were actually two other Bronte older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. The fact that no one has ever heard of them or their books, is because they died in short succession from tuberculosis when they were only ten and eleven years old. The girls became ill while attending the sort of boarding school that is right out of Dickens (or Jane Eyre). Both Emily and Charlotte, who also attended the school became ill as well, although once their sisters died, their widowed father decided that getting them home sooner rather than later was a good idea. Too bad it only took two dead daughters to realize how horrible the place was.

In the years after their return home, the Bronte sisters, with younger sister Anne and brother Branwell, who succumbed to alcoholism, drug addiction, and tuberculosis when he was thirty-one, spent an enormous amount of time creating poems, stories, and, in Branwell's case, paintings. At one time or another, they all continued to receive formal education and worked, primarily as tutors or governesses. Reef shows how they left home to make money, and yet always returned, usually because they could not stand their employers (who all sound abominable). The Brontes loved the moorland where they grew up and pined for it in letters; home for these siblings was certainly where their hearts were.

As she writes about the writing lives of the three surviving sisters, Reef shows the sources of their novels, all of which were based firmly in their living and teaching experiences. The heavily romantic aspects seem to have hinted at their secret dreams, longings they harbored that were never fulfilled. Reef also does an excellent job of showing how difficult it was for the Bronte sisters to be taken seriously once their feminine identities were revealed; clearly they were right to use male pseudonyms to publish their books.

They had very difficult lives. Anne and Emily died young as well, and poor Charlotte, who finally married a kind and decent, albeit unexciting, man, died before the death of her first child. So while they live forever in their books, it's pretty hard for me to not to see their biography as anything other than a first class tragedy. I remember struggling through Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre as a teenager (I never finished the latter, I'm afraid), but never once giving the authors a second thought. Reef yet again shows that a deeper appreciation for the authors will only deepen appreciation for the works themselves. I know it will be hard for me to think of either book without remember how much the authors suffered to make their art.

Kay Frydenborg brings a timely contribution to the always wonderful Scientists in the Field series with Wild Horse Scientists. Focused on the Assateague Island National Seashore and the horses made famous in the Marguerite Henry's classic Misty of Chincoteague, the text takes a long look at the efforts to save the horses there (and also in Montana) from the burden of overpopulation. In careful, precise language and the series' trademark stellar photographs, Wild Horse Scientists follows the work of Ron Keiper and Jay Kirkpatrick, whose entire careers have been devoted to working with wild horses. This is nothing less than an effort to keep wild animals wild and safe; something that humans we struggle with more and more as the twenty-first century redraws the map of human and animal interaction.

The Assateague Island National Seashore is split between Maryland and Virginia and suffers from aggressive weather that includes everything from bitter winters to summer bugs right out of a horror movie. The horses on the Virginia side are famous for their annual fundraiser swim across the channel to the mainland known as the "pony penning." The horses receive biannual veterinary care, and then older foals are auctioned off. Frydenborg focuses on the Maryland horses and the innovative contraception program in practice there that has been ninety-five-percent effective at keeping birth rates down and allowing the horses to remain wild. Keiper and Kirkpatrick have spent decades monitoring the Assateague horses and developing the perfect chemical cocktail that could be "shot" into the females via dart gun. As of 2011, the same method is being used with the Pryor Mountain wild horses in Montana. In fact, it was a promise to help those horses that drew Kirkpatrick to the isolated population in Assateague, which allowed him to work out a successful method of contraception with little interference from outside influences.

What I love about the Scientists in the Field series is that each of these books teaches me about people doing things I never imagined, pursuing careers in the field that are exciting, important, and immensely satisfying. Kirkpatrick and Keiper have done valuable critical work that will likely be responsible for changing the manner in which we deal with the wild horse population in America. This is something that needs to be handled sooner rather than later, and Frydenborg shows how the dedication of a group of tenacious scientists really can make a huge difference. Be sure to keep your eyes out for reports on the wild horse population and the effectiveness of contraception on the long-term health of the herds.

COOL READ: While I have come across several good cookbooks for teens, the new sports nutrition title Feeding the Young Athlete by Cynthia Lair and Scott Murdoch is an unexpected twist on the "what to eat" genre. In a muted palette with a faded design that evokes lockers and denim, Feeding the Young Athlete is inviting without being overbearing -- no glossy magazine pages or vapid advice columns here. Don't confuse the serious approach with dull, however; the authors know their audience is busy and don't bother piling on the text. There are recipes, meal plans, discussions about hydration, snacking, and sugar ("The calories in highly sugared products are empty, or naked"), and a ton of solid advice on what to eat, when to eat it, and why.

At only 140 pages, it's pretty impressive how much information is packed in here and all of it is relevant. Lair and Murdoch have managed to put together a guide that treats athletes like the serious teens they are and is intent upon making them stronger, smarter, and better at what they want to do. Coaches should use it, parents should read it, and teenage athletes should keep it in their backpacks, on their passenger seats, and beside their beds. There are a ton of magazines out there that will tell you how to get in shape but Feeding The Young Athlete is the only guide I've seen that understand the uniqueness of the teenaged body. This is important, and it's well done. Kudos all around.

In Elizabeth Laban's The Tragedy Paper, readers will discover a coming-of-age story set in a traditional location (boarding school) with a familiar setup (love triangle) that turns everything you think you know about this sort of book on its ear. Laban might be giving readers a familiar setting and situations but her characters are so thoughtful and the plot just twisty enough that she manages a page-turner out of the quietest of stories. The conceit is straightforward: Tim met Vanessa while stuck at the airport on his way to his new school. After sharing the sort of fun (and mostly chaste) boy-meets-girl story everyone dreams of, they continue on their separate ways, and he discovers she is not only a fellow student but dating the school's most popular boy. They become good friends as Tim also slowly becomes enmeshed in the school's senior class tradition. It is on one fateful night involving the seniors that he connects with Duncan, the underclassman whose story is really at the heart of the novel.

Laban introduces Duncan in the very beginning as the one who figures it all out. He knows how Tim's school story ended the previous year, but not how it began, and along with the reader, he learns all the sordid history via a series of CDs that Tim has left behind for him in his dorm room as part of a departing senior gift, another school tradition. Duncan has a small but powerful connection to Tim that has left him unsure about his own future, and so hearing Tim's voice, finding out why everything happened the previous year, is critical to his own wellbeing. In the middle of all of this looms the big senior assignment: the "tragedy" paper. Talk of tragedy permeates the senior English class, literary examples are tossed about throughout the text, and Duncan, in particular, is overwhelmed with a desire to get the paper right. Laban makes clear though that tragedy is in the eye of the beholder, and also that while it might reach epic literary proportions for some students, for others the tragic is all too real and in danger of eclipsing every other facet of their lives.

It's important to note that nothing huge takes place in The Tragedy Paper. There is a serious accident, and in both Tim and Duncan's narratives, there are students in trouble, but in comparison to a lot of contemporary YA fiction, the events here are subtle and familiar. Much of the book is about aspiring and struggling to find your way to the best sort of self, and the obstacles, both internal and external, that block your way. This novel is the very definition of powerful, and while it does not possess characters spouting the sort of fake witticisms that seem to crop up all over in teen books lately, they are nothing if not real. There are no villains in The Tragedy Paper, just a lot of wishing you can get things right; a lot of trying to do the best you can.

While coming-of-age themes play into a lot of YA novels, it was through reading a series of nonfiction titles that this column really came together. The first was the exquisitely designed An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris by Stephanie LaCava. This undersized hardcover sports a paper-over-board cover, dozens of careful pen and ink illustrations by Matthew Nelson, and diversionary footnotes throughout the text. (The bibliography is also well worth lingering over.) The first sentence is "I was born strange," and an introductory quotation by Mark Rutherford sets the tone for what is a writer seeking nothing less than to find herself on the page. As you look back upon the detritus of your own past and the items that served as your talismans, consider LaCava's choice of Rutherford's words: "But men should not be too curious in analyzing and condemning any means which nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies or fossils."

When she was twelve years old, LaCava's family left America for Paris. From that point forward she felt lost between two cultures -- neither wholly one nor the other. At thirteen, however, is when she "fell apart." An avid collector before she left for France (as so many young people are), her items became significant beyond measure as she struggled to hold herself together against an "active, throbbing depression." What apparently sent her cascading over the edge into despair was her frustration over a lack of control in her life. It is this aspect of her book -- revealed in the earliest pages -- that affected me the most, and I think makes it a key title for teenagers.

In the chapters that follow, LaCava writes about her adventures in Paris, the friends she makes, the places she visits, the ghosts who haunt her (it's an exceedingly haunted city), and the objects she discovers and hoards as treasure. Along the way, although she changes their names, she writes of her parents, neither of whom is quite sure what to do with her, and her younger brother. All of these figures weave into her decidedly intellectual exposition, into a title that namedrops Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dali, ivory carvers, Deyrolle's taxidermy, and butterflies (among many other people, places, and things) but remains true to its nature as a coming-of-age experience. LaCava knows where she is now, she knows where her journey began, but how she got here, how she became someone fascinated by so many things, troubled and aware of her trouble but unable to change it, is something she still feels compelled to consider. So the book is her way to work through her childhood, to fully know the girl she once was. The journey she shares has an epic quality to it, and for all that the narrator was unhappy at times, readers will find still a gorgeous reading experience. Consider it a literary "cabinet of curiosities" and revel in LaCava's success now and her willingness to share so intimately the person whom she was then.

Fans of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (a must read!) will be delighted to know that David Godine has rereleased the second book in the Corfu Trilogy: Fauna and Family. Set again in the World War II period on the same Greek island, Fauna and Family is another of Durrell's droll memoirs about growing up with his crazy family. Written entirely from the author's perspective as the youngest Durrell, these books are perfect light reading for those who enjoy the certain type of quirky British humor that the author excelled at. His widowed mother is loving, acerbic, slightly dizzy and endlessly patient; eldest brother Lawrence, a future novelist, is pompous and self serving; sister Margo is obsessed with her appearance (and cute young men); and Leslie likes to blow things up. A lot. All of these caricatures are made from the distorted perspective of a much younger brother, but readers will likely be laughing too hard to care just accurate they are.

I read my first book by Durrell more than ten years ago, as an adult, but think his perfect audience might actually be teenagers. Much of the Corfu Trilogy is dedicated to his education, which relied heavily upon tutors and an immersion into the island's natural history that is full of a dedication to observation that the most ardent naturalist would envy. Gerald collected everything; a running joke in the family is his ever-changing bevy of pets, but they are not there simply to entertain. Gerald studied the creatures he found, from dogs to birds to fish and lizards, assigning them names, noting their actions, considering their personalities, and reveling in their every odd movement. His future as a zookeeper was written in his childhood love of animals and seeing how he became the man he did is a large part of what makes his books so entertaining. (I also could not help noting a kinship between the young Gerald and young Stephanie LaCava, pining away in Paris and making her own keen observations.) Fauna and Family is enjoyable on multiple levels, but for me it is mostly a celebration of the merits of an unorthodox education, something any classroom-loathing teen will appreciate.

Finally, Lucy Knisley takes readers through her entire life via the restaurants she visited, the meals she helped prepare, and the tons and tons of delicious food she has eaten in her graphic novel Relish. Complete with recipes, this full color memoir is about growing up as a foodie with parents who loved cooking, a mother who became a serious gardener, and a lifetime of thinking about meals as something to enjoy, not just get through. Along the way, there is a tween-aged trip to Mexico with family where she should have gotten into trouble but didn't, some culinary culture shock in Tokyo, many jobs in food-related service industries (ask her about cheese), and ultimately a grand appreciation for the sheer joy of sharing a meal (and recipe) with people she cares about. Relish is not a chef's memoir, and miles from the chaotic competition shows on Food Network. But food is central to this story and shared in a manner that is both fun and informative. Knisley fits perfectly for young readers who have outgrown Raina Telgemeier but aren't ready for Alison Bechdel yet, and is also perfect for foodies of any age.

COOL READ: Every now and again, a book comes my way on a topic that is utterly and completely unexpected. Faythe Levine and Sam Macon's Sign Painters is the sort of artistic celebration that should be commonplace on the shelves and if Levine (author of Handmade Nation and creator of the documentary of the same name) has her way, it will be just one more entry into a curated collection of artisanal American. In this heavily illustrated (with photographs) title, the two authors introduce a dizzying array of painters from a wide range of states who are in love with typography, graphic design, and illustration. These men and women, covering a wide range of ages and backgrounds, revel in developing their own style and embracing life as utter individuals. Although it might be romantic to consider them a dying breed, the broad array of examples shown here makes it clear that sign painting is still a relevant and striking part of American culture. This is graphic design at its best; these signs command attention, enliven the landscape, and bring customers in. Levine and Macon aren't celebrating nostalgia with Sign Painters; they are shining a spotlight on a career that most artistic teens have likely not considered. For those seeking a profession where suits need not apply, Sign Painters offers an appealing glimpse of people at work doing something they love. It's about taking the way you see the world and sharing that view with others. Good stuff, and damned inspiring.

There is something inherently terrifying about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from the casual disregard of lost Alice's fears to the homicidal tendencies of the crazed Red Queen. Many authors have investigated these aspects of the story and yet exploring Lewis Carroll's creation in new ways is something I never tire of doing. The trick is to bring something to the classic that fits and does not upend the narrative simply for shock value. A.G. Howard clearly delights in the creepier aspects of Wonderland, and they infuse her debut novel about Alice Liddell's fictional great-great-great-granddaughter, Splintered.

Alyssa Gardner is convinced she will go insane, just like her mother (an inpatient at the nearby asylum) and the other members of her matriarchal line. She knows she's already halfway there because insects have been talking to her for years, no matter how relentlessly she kills them and pins them into her outrageous three-dimensional art. Whiling away the non-school hours at the skateboard park and working at a vintage clothing store (no Alice would work traditional retail!), Alyssa tries to convince herself that "it's all in her head." Events quickly overwhelm her, however, and a moth appears to haunt her, a poster from an '80s classic comes to life, and a website suggests that the white rabbit was nowhere near as cute and cuddly as Disney led us to believe. Alyssa finds herself with a family mystery that must be solved and a trip to Wonderland that cannot be avoided. The fact that her longtime friend and crush ends up along for the adventure is just an added bonus, because, hey, nothing makes a run for your life through Crazytown better than doing it with the one you secretly love.

All the regulars you expect are here from the queens to the tea party to the garden to the Cheshire Cat, and, most spectacularly, the Caterpillar. It's all twisted, grotesque, and will make you recoil more than once. Howard has done an excellent job of playing with the classic but weaving a contemporary story within it, making sure each step of her narrative is part and parcel of Carroll's narrative. The romance is complicated, the protagonist conflicted, and the heroes are hard to come by. And while Alyssa wavers from bold (jumping down that rabbit hole with aplomb) to confused victim (shades of Bella rearing their ugly head), the only real disappointment for me came near the end when things go predictably in the direction of amnesia and noble sacrifices for love and impossible-but-presented-as-factual declarations from members of the medical field that you can be crazy one moment and perfectly fine the next. This is all a wee bit too pat for the novel's earlier promise, and especially frustrating when it comes to the amnesia parts. It does nothing to diminish all the fangs, fur, and sharp bloody promise (loved the flower garden especially) that came previously, but I'm hoping in Howard's next novel she lets her boldness carry her along to the last delicious page and leaves those convenient plot devices in the dust.

Christopher Barzak has a riveting take on Alice as well in his new short story collection Before and Afterlives. "The Mad Tea Party" is brief and lacerating, a tale that delivers a clear message on the perils of madness. Grown-up Alice returns to her childhood home after the death of her mother. Upon arriving, she takes on a porcelain Cheshire Cat, recalls a flight attendant dressed in white and sporting a pocket watch who hastened her on her way, craves tea, and dreams of playing cards. This Alice is wounded and angry, destructive and broken. She is the girl who will prompt readers to ask why Carroll's Alice felt compelled to follow the white rabbit in the first place, and what she might have been running from. If Howard writes a fantastical version of Alice's mental health legacy, Barzak plumbs even deeper depths and goes full-on reality. I'm still thinking about the eight pages of "The Mad Tea Party."

Elsewhere in Before and Afterlives, Barzak shares the history of the scariest haunted house ever in "What We Know About the Lost Families of -- House," reveals a bitter emotional legacy for the parents of a runaway teenager in "The Drowned Mermaid," and reaches deep into the heart of a living boy who finds solace in the resting place of a dead one in "Dead Boy Found."

Throughout this collection, Barzak effectively writes people contending with their fears and doubts but most especially he writes about loneliness, and it is this writerly radar for alienation that perhaps makes him so perceptive when it comes to his teen characters. The boy in "Dead Boy Found" is like any other, but Barzak teases out his sorrow page by page, paragraph by paragraph, giving readers a peek at teen humanity that will ring all too true for many high schoolers. He achieves similar results with a sister coming to turns with her older brother's sexuality and unorthodox romance in "Map of Seventeen" (this has to include one of the best portrayals of truly great parents I have read in ages), and further with a daughter forced to confront her father over the effect of his paranormal profession in "The Ghost Hunter's Beautiful Daughter." The tour-de-force, however, is "The Language of Moths," in which a brother learns to appreciate his autistic sister and together they weather a challenging summer and come to an unexpected understanding that, really, makes everything all better. Barzak makes it all seem so easy, these gentle glimpses into his characters' lives, and even though these lives might include mermaids or ghostly parents or talking fireflies, the extraordinary aspects are not what make his tales so magical. It's the way he sees plain ordinary people that gives his stories such power; the way he sees us and yet loves us anyway. Bravo.

Margo Lanagan wanders yet again into the territory of dark myth she travels so well with her multi-generational look at seal wives (selkies) and the land men who claim them in The Brides of Rollrock Island. From the young girl with a stark and frightening seal kinship whose unforgiving childhood leads her down a path to cold and cruel witchery to the boy who challenges a lifetime's worth of social mores to save his mother, Rollrock takes readers into the hearts of its island residents and the subtle way in which rape can affect a society.

Generations of disappointment weigh down Rollrock Island, and even those who are bewitched cannot deny their own responsibility in the sorrow of others (or that they sought out the bewitching in the first place). As one seal wife is driven by abject despair to suicide, the families gather to witness her sad end and know that the same possibility haunts each of their homes as well. Real love -- honest love -- is not easy, but at least it is true and fair, something the men of Rollrock have willfully forgotten and the women are lost without. Lanagan is a master at sparing her characters no quarter, at forcing readers to recognize every moment of weakness that propels her narratives. But with Rollrock, she shows how complicated love and longing can be, how emotions can be manipulated and harsh family dynamics can destroy far easier than love can mend. By every measure, this novel is the very definition of tortured romance and the author never lets you forget that.

Margo Lanagan has rightfully received praise for her previous titles and The Brides of Rollrock Island is worthy of equal measure. I was struck while reading it, however, by how adult it is. This is a novel for teens, and many of the characters in the shifting points of view are quite young, but it has an adult sensibility and awareness of the serious choices we make in the world. Margo Lanagan understands teens like few other authors today; she grants her audience a literary respect more often seen in the pages of The New Yorker than the exhaustive paranormal section of the local bookstore. Kidlit, my ass. Read her pages and see yourself as the serious reader Lanagan knows you to be while gaining a newfound respect for the always complicated world of teenagers.

In the grand tradition of fairy tales everywhere, Lily the Silent is the story of a reluctant heroine, feckless prince, and the wickedest of queens. Author Tod Davies turns expectations gently on their ears while writing her imaginary "History of Arcadia." Once within the story, however, readers will quickly recognize the invading city of Megalopolis as a thoroughly modern society that never appeared in the realms of Cinderella and Snow White. Consider the following assertion from the evil queen:

"Our technology is great. Well, it should be, considering all we've had to pay for it." She looked around her tower at the gray, wire-riddled, garbage-strewn city below. "It was easy enough for us to build another moon. Haven't you heard in your little Arcadia?" she said in a haughty voice. "We have become like gods, here in Megalopolis. We do what we will. And we do it because we can."

The industrialized city comes with a rabid celebrity culture, a passion for appearance before substance and a devotion to echo chambers that leaves Lily, the future leader of embattled Arcadia to observe: "I found out later... that they never heard anything they didn't expect to. Never. And this was true all over Megalopolis." Sound familiar, cable news fans?

Don't worry that Davies is writing a heavy-handed-message book, though; for all that Arcadia suffers at the whims of the technologically advanced and monumentally arrogant Megalopolis, this is also a story of a girl who falls in love with a boy too weak to save anyone, a False Moon designed to host parties, mermaids who guard the key to everything, and a monumentally pissed off version of Death. It is clear that events early on take her by surprise, but Lily is more Joan of Arc than Sleeping Beauty, although destined to sacrifice all, still wise enough to wrangle an escape clause. She can't help falling in love with the prince, but quickly figures out that you can't change your lover (especially when his mother has been controlling him since birth and the whole country prefers a star's gleaming good looks over a leader's hard truths). As their daughter later recounts, "...you can never tell anyone anything that they have not first discovered for themselves."

Davies has fun with Lily the Silent, opening with a bard's introductory summary of events and then relaxing into the main narrative as told by the daughter, whose asides about her parents and family friends are light with a wry and sophisticated wit. With Mike Madrid's illustrations throughout (appropriately compared to Arthur Rackham's), this title shows how comfortably fairy tales can encompass the fits and foibles of current times. It reads fast and furious and promotes love and friendship, all while making sure readers never forget to keep a solid head on their shoulders -- something the original princesses would certainly appreciate.

Exterminating Angel Press has another unique title for adventurous fairy tale readers: 3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale by Danbert Nobacon ('90s trivia fanatics will recognize the author as a founding member of Chumbawumba). Set over 100,000 years in the future, this is the most anti-post-apocalyptic novel you can imagine (get those Blade Runner visions out of your head right now). Organized as a fairly traditional fairy tale, our heroine is Stormy, princess of the kingdom of Morainia, which is under threat from their neighbors in the kingdom of Oosaria. In the course of one fateful dinner, Stormy meets the visiting queen of the Oosarians and one of her sons, whom she is apparently supposed to marry. Things do not go well and, as the title suggests, the dastardly prince is soon not so much alive and Stormy is running for her life with the court fool.

What follows are encounters with a wise witch and her hip daughter, legends of a large black cat that plague Stormy's dreams, the drums of war that reverberate everywhere, a near capture in a tavern, and a great raven with a mysterious egg. 3 Dead Princes follows the fairy tale narrative with personal challenges, serious battle preparation, and more brave moments than the movie Brave. But every time you think you have it all figured out, Nobacon throws a curve ball, forcing the reader to rethink what a fairy tale can be (hello, Neanderthals!). From considerations of how a king spends his time (archaeologist and inventor?) to how his queen should act (teaching yoga at one point then donning battle gear in another), the author never wastes an opportunity to let his readers stretch their ideas of the princess-saturated world we all keep living in. By the final pages, with prince number three dead and gone, Nobacon has successfully given us all the adventure and happy ending we could want, while also posing a lot of subtle questions about society, culture, and evolution. Is it an "anarchist's fairy tale"? I'm not sure about that. Mostly it's about Stormy and how she wins and since I loved Stormy, I have to say 3 Dead Princes succeeds just fine, and with Alex Cox's illustrations along to spice things up even more, it's a very enjoyable, and unorthodox, read.

Finally, echoing the presence of mermaids and water creatures found to some degree in all of these other titles, is Mark Siegel's epic graphic novel Sailor Twain: Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson. I'll be honest, I struggled a bit with this historical novel set in the late nineteenth century onboard a Hudson River steamboat. Captain Twain is just trying to do his job, but life is complicated by the ship's ever-present owner who seems intent on seducing as many female passengers as he can while searching for his missing brother. There is also a mysterious author who is hiding more than one secret and, of course, a mermaid that Twain saves and nurses back to health in his cabin and finds himself unable to resist. The sudden arrival of the author proves to be the catalyst for the other players in this drama who are all so busy covering up their own motivations that as events overcome them (which include some standard socio-economic issues below decks), they have no time to explain to each other just what the hell is going on. The story ends, appropriately, with a bang, but only after Twain has found the madness that lies in loving a mermaid and Lafayette learns that he should have been honest with his captain all along.

Siegel's black-and-white illustrations are perfect for the haunted nature of the book, and although some might take issue with the bare-breasted presentation of the mermaid, she is depicted as readers would expect. Following some pretty specific plot points along the way, the ending is purposely obtuse, however, and therein lies much of my concern with the book. After laboring with Twain for four hundred pages, questions remained for me about an awful lot of the plot, from motivations to actions to conclusions. I tried to work this out with other readers of Sailor Twain, and can assert that it is a title that invites a lot of contemplation and discussion (always a good thing). I encourage readers intrigued by mermaid stories to check this one out, and see what they think Twain decided and if he was successful in his quest.

COOL READ: Fans of innovative storytelling will be very interested in Paul Fleischman's sumptuously illustrated The Matchbox Diary. I've long been a fan of illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline's realistic artwork, and with Fleischman's story he delivers big time. After a contemporary opening, the narrative unfolds over history, as an elderly man invites his great-granddaughter to explore his personal library and to "Pick whatever you like the most. Then I'll tell you its story." The room is a mash-up of a bibliophile and collector's dream, awash in the jewel-like tones of Ibatoulline's palette and infused with a golden glow. It gives the book a dreamy appearance and makes the story that follows even more endearing.

The girl chooses a cigar box full of matchbooks, each containing a small item that provides a touchstone to the grandfather's life journey. The objects, which include an olive pit, a photograph, a bottle cap, and a St. Christopher medal, all are part of his immigration and subsequent career as a small bookshop owner. He hands off his idea of keeping a diary (written or otherwise) to the little girl, who in the final page begins her own collection. This could be easily dismissed as a sweet story (and it certainly is heartwarming), but the celebration of tangible memory, of small innocuous objects that are capable of carrying so much history, makes it a scrapbook that transcends Fleischman's tale, and will inspire readers to create their own collecting diaries. Don't dismiss The Matchbook Diary as a picture book for small children, but view it instead as a transcendent story for all ages. This is illustrated work at its best and Fleischman and Ibatoulline have crafted a quiet sensitive masterpiece.

I never expected to be urging readers to seek out a book on economics, and yet when I was putting together this month's column on graphic novels I found myself consumed with Michael Goodwin's Economix: How and Why Our Economy Words (And Doesn't Work), in Words and Pages. Frankly, this nonfiction title is far more entertaining than it has a right to be, given its subject. As someone who barely survived micro and macro economics courses in college, I approached it with no small amount of trepidation, but Goodwin knows his audience is likely nervous about the topic, and he invites readers to get comfortable and give him a chance. I was hooked after five pages, which is pretty much one of the larger literary surprises of my life.

Dan Burr's illustrations are spare and realistic, and his faces in particular are quite impressive. He nails the famous folks who are easily recognizable, which is a relief. (Thank you for not making me guess which Roosevelt I'm looking at.) Goodwin has also written himself into the action; he appears throughout and talks directly to readers, while not shying away from calling out the idiots who have made hay of international business and politics over the years. It is highly unlikely that most readers will be aware of Adam Smith's philosophies or be able to quote him at will, but within a few pages, Goodwin makes clear that he is well worth investigating, and more pointedly, that his famous work, The Wealth of Nations, has been misquoted more than once. The message here is to beware those who quote Smith for their own purposes. And everyone quotes Smith. All the time.

From the development of socialism and capitalism to the impact of railroads on the early U.S. economy, the ways in which far too many economic theories are bundled together into the mishmash we call American capitalism to why 1920s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was too powerful for too long, Goodwin pings from one powerful historic moment to the next while cracking jokes, raising eyebrows, and illuminating all the dark corners of economic theory that come his way. He warns us about academics who enjoy lecturing on the way things work on paper while ignoring their real world ramifications and points out the careful balance that needs to exist between public and private power in order to keep everyone successful, happy, and wise. This balance is endlessly elusive (as proven by our own current economic problems), but the many different ways we try to find it or avoid it makes for a soap opera of sorts that fuels the momentum of this book. Honestly, I can't believe how captivating a book has been crafted about what most of us would agree is one of the dullest subjects on the planet, but that's what we have here. This is a title that belongs in high school classrooms, college course lists, and on nightstands around the world. And, if you were wondering what to get your Congressperson for Christmas...

Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr have crafted another history title of note with Darwin: A Graphic Biography, which will be published in February. I've read many books on Darwin, and still think there are not enough in the world, yet find it easy to recommend this new one to teens. In detailed, shadowed black-and-white drawings, the authors provide a "really exciting and dramatic story of a man who mostly stayed home and wrote some books." The standard facts are included: Darwin's childhood and early attraction to natural science, his voyage on the Beagle, and his long contemplation of evolution that led to writing and publication of The Origin of the Species. But the facts are not what make this telling of his life so good.

Byrne and Gurr frame Darwin within the fanciful setting of a wildlife program filmed for "Ape TV," and the narrative is peppered with plenty of pithy footnotes, as well as some intense discussion of evolution. The apes interject infrequently, just enough to bring in the humor, but keeping the story from devolving into silliness, and the poignancy of Darwin's life and the challenges he faced on his path to the truth (in a shared role, thankfully noted here by Alfred Russell Wallace) are not overlooked. More importantly, the authors manage to introduce some timely intellectual discussions without intimidating readers who might be fairly new to Darwin's biography and make clear that the conclusions he reached were not casual or naïve. It's a careful tightrope Byrne and Gurr walk of making their subject accessible, while not reducing his ideas to talking points. I think they have done a great job with Darwin, while injecting some unexpected humor into a very serious subject. Taken alongside Economix, this slim volume proves further the harmonious relationship that can be found between nonfiction and the graphic novel format.

Looking to fiction, Zahra's Paradise by pseudonymous Amir and Khalil is powerful, devastating, and brutal. I say all that up front because the topic, Iran's Green Revolution, is one that might make some teens reluctant to give it a chance. But if I can make you understand how this book can change the way you view the world and give you a deeper appreciation for living in a democracy, then you will understand why it should be given a chance. Just don't expect a sweet and gentle story. It starts with dead puppies (damn), and from there, the narrative of a missing son and brother apparently lost in the labyrinthine world of the Iranian prison system becomes hard to put down. Amir and Khalil had something important to share about Iran with Zahra's Paradise, and they did it straightforward and effectively: they told the truth and then dared us all to believe it.

Nineteen-year-old Mehdi has vanished in the street revolutions that shook Tehran in June 2009. His mother and brother, a blogger who narrates the story, search endlessly for him in the hospital, the morgue, and online. They post fliers, they question fellow protesters, and with the help of a surprising source, his brother hacks into a prison computer system to discover some of the government's secrets. No one will confirm Mehdi's imprisonment until his family can confirm first that he was imprisoned. Which they cannot do without someone confirming he was arrested and imprisoned. Is he alive, is he dead? Is he really missing if the officials declare no one is? These are questions that plague the families of so many of the young men and women who marched in defiance of the regime three years ago. In its final pages, Zahra's Paradise moves beyond Mehdi's tale to include all of the names of the missing, along with information on the thousands who have vanished over the years since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Ultimately, what happens to the characters in Zahra's Paradise is inevitable. But for all its sorrow, all its despair, this is also a story of triumph. The authors are saluting those who dared to change the world, and that is no small thing. Teens will not help finding the commitment of these young adults to be a remarkable achievement, and after reading Zahra's Paradise, they will be hard pressed not to pay more attention to the events in places like Iran. It's a small world we live in, as Amir and Khalil make clear, and full of stories we need to hear.

For much lighter fare, Oni Press is releasing in February the first collection of Bad Medicine, Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir's occult mystery series, which is really a blast to read. This first volume provides the necessary backstory with Doctor Randal Horne, a haunted (literally) surgeon with a conscience, who leads his crew of misfits as they seek to find out why a seemingly headless murder victim has an invisible head and is spreading the lycanthrope virus in a small northern town. Along the way, the many disparate personalities in the group get melded together, from the tough NYPD detective to the forensics specialist who seems more skater boy than scientist and, of course, the crusty doctor from the CDC who thinks he knows everything and can't stand Horne but fortunately might be a pain in the ass, but isn't a stupid pain in the ass and, thus, a nice addition. (I hate it when writers toss stupid into the mix just because they want a convenient dupe for the plot.)

The monsters are smart and scary, both on the street and in the office, and the team's evolution is nice to watch. Everyone has a reason for wanting to be part of this crew, especially Horne, who is perpetually seeking redemption and likely will never find it. Christopher Mitten's art is crisp and realistic, and while there isn't a teen character, there's plenty of teen appeal. Consider it a more realistic version of the BPRD, with the requisite silver bullets and occasional bloody death.

The protagonist of Fred Chao's Johnny Hiro can certainly appreciate the over-the-top drama of Bad Medicine, as his day begins with a T-rex breaking down the wall of his apartment building and scooping his girlfriend out of bed. Forced into heroics, he chases her via the NYC rooftops until Mayumi is able to phone Mayor Bloomberg and the troops -- meaning a ton of cops -- arrive. From there Hiro's life and Chao's story unfold in one hilarious moment after another. The apartment destruction results in a comic courtroom drama with his landlord, a run-in with an old classmate at the Met finds him fending off some white collar sword-wielding rōnin, and trying to keep his restaurant job means dodging angry dockworkers and some chefs very protective of their lobster. Your average everyday moments are full of outlandish excitement for our hero, no matter how hard he tries to live the sanest, most ordinary life possible. Of course all of this crazy prompts him to have an introspective moment or two (with the occasional help of Mayor Bloomberg and David Byrne), but readers should not come to this title expecting deep reflection. Chao's goal is a good time and he delivers. With a healthy dose of sardonic wit and winks to Godzilla and pretty much every chase film ever made, Johnny Hiro is full of awesome. If you liked Big Trouble in Little China, then you will know what you're getting into here, and relish every blessed page.

Antony Johnston's quieter story of intrigue and espionage set during the waning days of the Cold War shows Berlin to have been the quiet center of international conflict. The Coldest City has everything a spy novel needs: governments with dueling priorities, operatives left far too long out in the wild, and loyalties that shift with the needs of the moment. At the center is a murder mystery and an agent with no allies and a host of enemies. The story hinges on what she uncovers after arriving in Berlin and how fast she can stay one step ahead of whomever might be trying to kill her.

In the wake of a fellow agent's murder, British agent Lorraine Broughton has been sent to find the important list he might have had at the time of his death and uncover who knew about its existence. Everyone lies to her, which is to be expected, but the pace at which events on the ground move is nearly overwhelming. Johnston keeps his plot tight here, short clipped dialogue, quick meetings, sudden discoveries. Even the quieter moments, as Lorraine ponders what she does and does not know and opens up with other agents in the city (which was essentially spy central), are fraught with tension. Johnston makes sure readers are always holding their breath for what might come next, and while Sam Hart's stark black-and-white drawings can't compete with the big screen splash of 007's latest, they perfectly fit the sharp danger Lorraine finds in Berlin. There are twists and turns and while Johnston tosses a few timely meetings in along the way, they are nothing readers wouldn't expect for Bond, either. He makes sure all the questions are answered and all the clues uncovered, and yes, the ending comes with a kick worthy of old-school Kevin Costner. Though written for adults, this one deserves notice from older teens who will appreciate the atmosphere, the danger, and every dramatic moment.

Less violent but no more realistic, Thien Pham's short and lightly worded Sumo is the story of former football player Scott who seeks athletic success and inner peace in Japan as a student of the ancient wrestling form. In glossy pages, washed in muted tones of green, orange, and blue, Scott's story unfolds from the breakup with his longtime girlfriend back home, to his failure to make it to the NFL, and finally his decision to travel to Japan and enter into a regimented training schedule that dominates nearly every aspect of his life. What he seeks is purpose or direction, something that will help him find himself again. Pham is not obvious about any of this, thankfully, but it all becomes clear as Scott learns, makes friends, and remembers his life before. As competitive as sumo is, Pham manages to write about it in a most noncompetitive way, and he makes clear that the fight is not the point, but the preparation for the fight, accepting the challenge of the fight, is everything. The message is subtle, the artwork simple but quiet. Scott is a noble hero on the quest of his life. Reluctant readers will especially be comfortable with Sumo, and while I don't often send titles in gender specific directions, Sumo is a book that should be put in the hands of teenage boys at every opportunity. It will help them think like a sumo wrestler, which clearly is a very good thing.

Finally, David H.T. Wong takes on a bunch of seriously skewed American history courses with his saga of the Chinese who came to North America in Escape to Gold Mountain. From the Opium Wars of the early nineteenth century that sent so many Chinese citizens looking westward, to the discovery of gold in California, construction of the transcontinental railroads, and the booming cannery industry, Escape to Gold Mountain is a piece of historical fiction based on the author's family's immigration experiences. He touches on major legislation that sought to limit Chinese immigrants from citizenship and separated their families, and shows more than one gut-wrenching episode that should resonate strongly with readers following the current immigration debate in the U.S. It's all very historic and yet achingly topical, and thus very hard to ignore.

Escape to Gold Mountain is forgotten history, and all the more important for teen readers in particular, because it has been so overlooked. Wong does a solid job of bringing his characters to life and making the narrative both informative and emotional. Readers will want a happily-ever-after for these people and feel real emotion for those who receive only despair upon arriving at Gold Mountain. As a fan of both American and Canadian history, I found this graphic novel quite compelling and perfectly suited for the illustrated form.

COOL READ: Oleg Lipchenko has illustrated a new edition of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits that makes the ultimate of nonsense poems accessible for a new generation. Lipchenko's style is reminiscent of nineteenth century fairy tales, and the muted palate of blacks and browns used throughout lends itself well to the aura of old world fantasy that permeates Carroll's poem. Lipchenkno's interpretation of the characters brings humor and pathos to the words, creating sympathy and hilarity at every turn of the page and providing some direction for those who get lost while trying to follow Carroll's very twisted direction. Honestly, The Hunting of the Snark still doesn't make any sense, but the humor leaps off the pages here, and the classic feel and old world charm are hard to beat. Carroll aficionados will love this edition big time, but older readers, seeking the best way to appreciate his poem, should find Lipchenko a very worthy guide. It's a picture book, but The Hunting of the Snark is ageless, and it certainly looks and feels that way turning these pages.

As the "Best of" book lists start showing up at the end of the year, I am always struck by how repetitive they are. It's like a secret cabal gets together somewhere and decides what the big sellers will be and then insists that they will not stop until every single list everywhere hammers those same books down the throats of holiday shoppers. Finally, after entering yet another Barnes & Noble with a big table up front touting those same titles, the shoppers bow down in defeat and buy the damn books. Then everyone unwraps the same thing and says a collective "What the hell?" to the universe. This is not the sort of holiday scenario I'm especially fond of so I've kept my eye out for offbeat choices that teens (and a little younger) would like to find under their trees this year. There a little bit of something for everyone here, from fashion to dinosaurs to art to classic adventure. All are beautiful, interesting and guaranteed not to show up in the donate bag by New Year's. I start with one that adults will love too and, if the world was a perfect place, would be already be a bestseller.

If you spend any time at all in the science fiction and fantasy section of your local bookstore, you are quite aware of the effect steampunk is making on the genre. While there have been several excellent guides to steampunk released over the past few years (most notably Jeff Vandermeer's The Steampunk Bible), Brian Robb's spectacular oversized Steampunk: An Illustrated History of Fantastical Fiction, Fanciful Film and Other Victorian Visions is the title fans have been waiting for. With a foreword by James P. Blaylock, one of the three authors along with Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter credited with "laying the groundwork for a huge explosion of the genre" in the 1970s (Jeter actually coined the term "steampunk"), and chapters on everything from graphic novels to film to Japanese influences, Robb touches on various aspects of the steampunk world with both an academic's precision and fan's excitement. I cannot stress enough, that this title is the complete package and truly a book worth spending serious time with.

While the "Gilded Age" of Verne, Wells, and Burroughs receives a chapter of its own (rightly so), Robb also gives plenty of attention to the work of contemporary artists like authors Gail Carriger and Bryan Talbot and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. He writes of "Victorian Fantasies" and "Clockwork Graphics" and nods to Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, China Mieville, Stephen Hunt, and many more. In fact, other than sadly overlooking young adult titles, Robb manages to touch on pretty much every aspect of the steampunk world, including a welcome nod to the great Ada Lovelace (and author Masaki Yamada's graphic novel Ada). Readers and filmgoers will find a lot to enjoy, but the sections on music and machinery, artwork, and museums cannot be missed. More than anything though, the design is what puts Steampunk over the top, from the cover to the end papers to the stunning full color illustrations. Robb gives his readers history to ponder, pretty things to look at, and countless stories to follow up on later. It's simply wonderful and left me with a great list of books and more that I cannot wait to get my hands on.

Lucky cofounder and longtime fashionista Andrea Linett has crafted a very unique and visually appealing style memoir with I Want to Be Her!: How Friends & Strangers Helped Shape My Style. Linnet devotes a couple of pages to each source of her sartorial inspiration, from childhood through the present day. Accompanied by washed color illustrations from Anne Johnson Albert, this is a beautiful peek into one woman's lifetime closet and an excellent source of inspiration.

Linnet cut her fashion teeth at Sassy, where she ultimately became the fashion and beauty editor, and later joined Harper's Bazaar as a fashion writer. From the evidence presented in the book, though, it is clear she has been interested all her life in what people wear and how their clothing choices fit their personalities. This fascination has colored the memories and impressions of people she has met for only a moment -- passed in the street even -- and those she has loved her whole life. All of them receive equal billing in I Want to Be Her! making the book a collage of styles ranging from "leather biker jacket, skinny black (always ripped) jeans, combat boots and chains" to "giant beige corduroy overalls and a handmade turbanlike patchwork hat." The range is immense and Linnet's friendly writing style is equal parts nostalgic and sardonic observation. This is a book to read for sheer pleasure the first time and for ideas every single time after that. It's the best stocking stuffer for any girl who loves Rookie.

Cinephiles will find a lot to love about Caroline Young's Classic Hollywood Style. While focusing heavily on the careers of such Hollywood costume greats as Edith Head (readers interested in a YA novel about a Head devotee should certainly check out Sara Ryan's coming-of-age tour de force The Empress of the World), Young works her way through movies from the silent era up to the 1968 Steve McQueen classic The Thomas Crown Affair, all the while taking a long look at who wore what and how the clothes affected the films.

There are a ton of photographs in this title, as there should be, and they include both the shocking (the flesh in the early 1930s is really unexpected) to the sublime (Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca! Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not! Audrey Hepburn in everything!). But Young is not just interested in showing pretty pictures; each chapter includes observations on costume budgets, the interplay between stars and costumers, and the all too easily overlooked but important ways in which clothing is used as a tool to explain the characters. When we see the final product and the films succeed, we don't think twice about what is worn onscreen -- we just know the characters are believable to the story. But the work that goes on to make that all look easy is what Young finds fascinating, and she provides multiple examples of movies both famous and forgotten for readers to peruse. Classic Hollywood Style thus ends up being attractive, informative, and will provide readers with a long list of wonderful old films to track down and watch.

The idea behind Gerald Guerlais and Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi's Sketchtravel is alone the stuff of creative dreams. In 2006, the two friends decided to share a sketchbook, and then took the idea a gigantic step further and developed a list of other artists around the world to include in the project. After "hundreds of emails, telephone calls, meetings and miles," the sketchbook was sent on a journey around the world. The rules were simple for the seventy-one participants: turn the page, make your art and then physically hand off the sketchbook. It always traveled from person to person and most of the sketches include photos of these exchanges, which were initially included on the book's website.

Some of the more famous names in Sketchbook include Hayao Miyazaki, Glen Keane, Frédéric Back, and Taiyo Matsumoto. From collage to oils to gouache and more, multiple media and styles were explored. Some of the sketches are angry, some sweet, and many will make you laugh. The variety is staggering, and the fact that so many were accomplished in a matter of days (if not hours) makes them even more impressive. In their accompanying notes, the artists often noted their trepidation over the project, especially after seeing the work of those who held the sketchbook before them. As there is not a disappointment in the bunch, it seems hard to believe that any of them could have been nervous, but for young artists especially, it will be heartening to read of their concerns.

Sketchtravel is an obvious source of artistic inspiration for young artists, and with its full color, glossy pages and a heavy textured cover, it is an object to both admire and appreciate. It's a unique initial concept that has resulted in a one in a million collection.

One of the more unexpected titles to come my way in recent months is Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle. This reissue of Conan Doyle's original diary from his 1880 voyage on the whaling vessel Hope is fascinating both as a historical document and for its insight into the mind of a literary giant. Every time Conan Doyle made an allusion to a nautical past in Sherlock Holmes, its roots were in the Hope. But you don't need to be a Conan Doyle scholar to enjoy the hell out of Dangerous Work. This is a title to read as literary and whaling history and, at its most basic, one young man's journey into a dangerous place and having his adventure.

The University of Chicago Press rolls out the royal treatment for Conan Doyle with their design, providing an entire facsimile of the diary in the first half of the volume. The pages are sepia, Conan Doyle's drawings are crisp, his maps are clear, his renderings of the Hope, the animals they encountered and his crewmates are all gorgeously reproduced (this is the kind of diary we all dream of keeping), and he tells his story in perfect script, on straight lines, in a manner that begs to be read. But if the diary is hard on the eyes, the editors have kindly provided it in type with nearly two hundred explanatory footnotes in the book's second half. Also, Jim Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower, editors of a collection of Conan Doyle's letters and his first novel, provide both an introduction and a follow-up for what happened in the years after the Hope's voyage. There is also "The Glamour of the Arctic," an article by Conan Doyle first published in 1892, and the short story "The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'" from 1883. So readers get to fully immerse themselves in this long overlooked Conan Doyle experience and revel in an object of singular publishing achievement. I can't imagine being the student who brings up this book in the classroom during a discussion of English literature. Between Robert Downey, Jr. and the Arctic, Arthur Conan Doyle just gets cooler as the years go by.

With Unusual Creatures, Michael Hearst has put together a large format book that uses a twenty-first-century sense of humor to explore the lives and habits of selected animals in a very nineteenth-century way. Using hand drawn illustrations, softly tinted matte pages, and a rich field guide feel, Heart's muted style stands out from other animal books. He provides all the standard information, distribution, scientific name, and classification, and there is a brief encyclopedic description for each subject, but he also gives readers the oddest of facts (Salvador Dali had a pet giant anteater). Occasional silly pop quizzes and poems are certain to provide a quick laugh. Unusual Creatures is an unexpected but engaging way to learn about some overlooked creatures (the blobfish! the hammer-headed bat! the tardigrade!) that rarely receive the coffee table treatment. It works for the widest range of age groups and should be a winner with everyone who comes across it.

I would be remiss here if I did not mention one of the few Christmas books to come my way that has all the marks of a future holiday classic. The Lost Christmas Gift by Andrew Beckham has an old fashioned style that is both heartwarming and sentimental without being cloying. Framed as a discovered story based on a package lost for decades in the mail, The Last Christmas Gift is about a father and son who become lost in a sudden snowstorm while hiking in the mountains for their Christmas tree. A book within a book, the narrator rediscovers a warm childhood memory by the paging through the notebook his father created so many years ago and lost.

The main text, from the contemporary narrator, frames the notebook, which has sepia pages, handwritten (but easily read) text, and inked illustrations. The holiday story is in those pages, about the hike, the storm, and the sudden appearance of someone -- Santa? -- who provides much needed assistance. Beckham has included photographs in the notebook as well, and hand drawn overlays add an aura of mystery. The combination of textural styles, from the straightforward text to the antiqued notebook, makes this a rich reading experience. Readers will enjoy it, but designers in particular need to take note -- this is how you make a book that will last for generations as part of a family holiday reading tradition.

Rounding out the titles I think should be on everyone's shopping list are a few of the picture book variety that I think have been terribly overlooked. Hannah Bonner's Cartoon PreHistory series for National Geographic continues with the third volume, When Dinos Dawned, Mammals Got Munched, and Pterosaurs Took Flight. In her inimitable style, with full color illustrations, comes a ton of information on the time period (the Triassic this time) and a plethora of humorous comic strips that all make a hysterical but entirely factual point. Middle grade (or younger) dino lovers will eat up Bonner's work, but anyone who has ever sought a better understanding of prehistory needs to give these books a read; the format is highly entertaining and quite successful at imparting an enormous amount of information. These are books that will truly grow with young readers.

Art lovers should check out Coppernickel Goes Mondrian, Wouter van Reek's salute to Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. With the naïve Coppernickel as our guide, Mr. Quickstep (aka Mondrian) seeks the future and pushes the boundaries of his work. Coppernickel takes him and goes looking for the future in the city. In big, bold graphic illustrations, van Reek shows Mr. Quickstep finding his new innovative style and Coppernickel embracing all that it has to offer (which includes some great music -- also part of the Mondrian story). An afterword provides information on the artist that older readers will appreciate. The young ones will want to see the illustrations again and again. The kooky characters (and their two endearing dogs) with their madcap adventures prove too appealing to ignore.

Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane's Musical Journey by Gary Golio with paintings by Rudy Gutierrez offers a completely different artistic perspective. Golio's story explores the life of the jazz great who faced some tremendous challenges, but Gutierrez heightens the book with an explosion of color and expressive style. The artwork mirrors Coltrane's sound, and as Golio takes readers through his life, the paintings are alternately poignant, buoyant, and devastating. Music fans will like what author and illustrator have done here -- they are perfect match for their subject -- but artistic teens are going to want to lose themselves in what Gutierrez has accomplished. This is what a picture book should be, and why I think that the format works so well for readers far beyond the standard audience. Yes, a ten-year-old will find Spirit Seeker interesting but a fifteen-year-old or twenty-five-year-old is also going to be dazzled by it. Pair it with some Coltrane CDs and you have a real treasure to unwrap.

Libba Bray's The Diviners arrived with a huge splash this fall and happily, it is worth every single laudatory word. Weighing in at 578 pages, this doorstop-sized thriller is equal parts Stephen King and Zelda Fitzgerald, with bonus forays into Buffyesque research fun at the appropriately named Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult. It includes a multi-ethnic cast of characters, a peek into GLBT life during the Jazz Age, multiple POVs throughout, and a very good reason to burn abandoned houses to the ground. The mystery is gripping, the pages drip with atmosphere, the dialog is crisp and period authentic, the history is solid, and the big bad is so big and so bad that readers will get a scare long before the final, not the slightest bit disappointing, pages. Does The Diviners have it all? I think so, and the best part is that it's the first book in a projected four volume series.

In 1926, seventeen-year-old Evie finds herself on the train out of Ohio after a scandalous evening with friends. A few clairvoyant tricks to liven up a party have backfired, and while everything Evie "sees" is true, her small revelations about a fellow guest were not appreciated by his family. She is banished to her uncle's care in New York City where, we hope, she will stay out of trouble and, more importantly, allow her parents' social standing back home to recover. Uncle Will is not at all what Evie expects, however, and his museum and association with the police soon catapult her into a serial killer case that is terrifying and violent. Evie's story is just one thread to this intricate spellbinding plot, as her friend Mabel struggles to balance her parents political affiliations with the lure of Evie's adventures; a Harlem numbers runner named Memphis seeks to protect his little brother from visions of an apocalyptic future; a chorus girl named Theta plays out a masquerade that finds her at the center of murderous events; a small time criminal named Sam saves the day for his own mysterious purposes; and Jericho, Uncle Will's assistant, harbors a secret that is so outrageous it very nearly makes every other moment in the book pale by comparison.

Is your head spinning yet? If not, it should be, as The Diviners is a head-spinner in the best sense, and it puts together with such elegance and artistry a story that sings like few others. Each chapter, each character's stumbles and successes, builds on those that came before, and always the search by this group of disparate individuals to get to the Big Bad is the thread that readers will find most irresistible. Bray is clear to leave many clues for the story to come, especially in the budding relationships (romantic and otherwise) between the characters. But it is the many small touches of humanity (in spite of the paranormal elements) that lift The Diviners above so much YA fiction today. Through Theta and her roommate Henry's cementing their friendship in her moment of direst need, to Evie's misguided struggle to transform herself into a girl who will live up to her family's expectations, readers catch a glimpse of life in another time and the demands it placed on those who were trapped within in. Who you can love and how you may live, the pressure to succeed within the narrowest confines of convention, the weight of religion and ethnicity and sexuality, and the long unwritten list of shoulds and should nots that has always existed and likely always will are what The Diviners is about. The fact that Bray tells that story on top of a monster thriller that harkens back to the best moments of It (not including the ending) proves how talented this author is. Outstanding.

John Scalzi has a whale of a good time in his smart and cheeky SF novel Redshirts. Anyone who is familiar with the original Star Trek is going to know what Scalzi is doing here and will love it. Redshirts follows the growing unease of Ensign Andrew Dahl, recently posted to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid. The Intrepid has a glamorous captain, a brilliant chief science officer, and a lieutenant who gets the crap beaten out of him by some alien or another on a near weekly basis. Dahl and his fellow recruits are excited by their new posting, but over a period of a few days they begin to notice that something is not quite right on the Intrepid. With the exception of the highly regarded officers, everyone is terrified of taking part on away missions. When Dahl and his friends find themselves sent on missions they quickly realize the reason why -- the redshirted ensigns assigned to the Intrepid die with alarming frequency, while the rather boneheaded senior officers escape every single time. The worst part is that the ensigns seem powerless to prevent themselves from making suicidal decisions -- even when they know what they are doing is stupid. Something is wrong on the Intrepid, and Dahl and his pals resolve to figure it out, rather than hide from the officers like everyone else.

Here's what you have to know about Redshirts: it's metafiction to a pretty much unprecedented level. You have the initial innocuous seeming parody of Star Trek, then you have the revelations that take the narrative nearly inside Star Trek. Then you go deeper yet and realize this is a book with a thing or two to say about the all too common lazy writing in science fiction television and abysmal character development of those shows. It's about creativity and Hollywood, about the power of writing and the lure of easy money. It's also about changing your destiny (could there be a more powerful sci-fi trope?) and making your mark. There's some alternate world stuff, some jokes about actors, and so much good dialogue that you want to read it out loud. Redshirts wins the award for the most enjoyable and fun novel I've read in ages and will lighten up anyone suffering from the winter blues. It's perfect for teenagers -- it screams crossover with its young adult characters and mocking tone -- and I hope that it gets nominated for an Alex Award. This is the book I think John Scalzi was born to write. I certainly know it's the one a lot of Star Trek fans have been waiting to read.

Ned Vizzini brings on the funny as well with The Other Normals, which presents early on as the best sort of coming-of-age story. Fifteen-year-old Perry is stuck with a couple of the world's most ridiculous parents. Incapable of dealing with each other, they have become involved with their divorce lawyers who now interfere in all elements of their lives, from how they live to how they raise their sons. Perry's older brother is a burnout and his one joy, the role-playing game Creatures & Caverns, has rendered him a social pariah. A new friend, Sam, who is equal parts smartass and game-geek, is about the only decent thing going on in Perry's life. Then the lawyers decide Perry needs to attend the world's worst summer camp, where he joyfully discovers Sam is also exiled, but unfortunately, in this locale, he is too cool for Perry. It is going to be, for sure, the worst summer ever. Then denizens of the World of the Other Normals arrive. Perry discovers that Creatures & Caverns is real, and he has a major part to play in its future (à la The Last Starfighter) and everything he does in that world affects what goes on in his own. Even though he might die a bloody death at the hands of a fish-faced (literally) bad guy, at least he is being proactive. He is needed. He is significant. Pretty heady stuff for a kid whose first day at camp involved getting his butt kicked by the bully du jour.

In short order, Perry finds himself threatened, arrested, and on the run in the World of the Other Normals. He also finds out he is the key to saving that world and that it involves him going back to camp and doing something socially perilous. (This involves a pretty girl.) (If you were Perry you would be terrified.) Nothing, of course, goes as anticipated. More dangerous adventures in the World of the Other Normals occur, this time with deadly consequences, and Perry learns the connection between the two worlds works in ways that he can not begin to predict. Bottom line, he has to be a hero and he has to do it while suffering some serious social suicide. If Perry were just a little more savvy, then this might be hard to swallow, but he's so... well, he's so Perry that it's all quite believable and even, in spite of the bloody bits, absolutely hysterical. I don't like saying any book is gender specific, but this one has junior high school boy written over it in such big broad letters that it can't be ignored. My only question is what on earth happened to Ned Vizzini when he was fourteen to provoke this insane adventure? Thank goodness for whatever it was though because The Other Normals is too wonderful to miss.

Gwenda Bond delves deep into one of America's defining mysteries with her exploration of the Lost Colony of Roanoke in Blackwood. I still remember learning about Roanoke in elementary school, with the doomed infant Virginia Dare and the last lonely clue of the carved word "Croatoan." It was much more appealing than Jamestown and the Pilgrims, and certainly fodder for writers of all sorts of genres. Bond concocts her own gumbo of story here, with a blend of mystery, thriller, paranormal, and romance to create a densely packed adventure that sucks readers in with a blistering plot pace but then keeps them riveted with some truly dark and scary moments. Plus there's a great dog that does not die. (This is not a spoiler; it is my gift to dog lovers everywhere.)

Miranda has lived her whole life on Roanoke and labors under a reputation of family weirdness that makes any chance of social acceptance impossible. In Blackwood's opening pages, she is struck with a bizarre vision and makes a spectacle of herself in a very public setting, basically thus committing social suicide in front of the entire town. Then her father is killed and the people of Roanoke begin disappearing. By the time you hit page thirty-two, it is clear that Miranda is not the only one in trouble, and while the police scramble and the media swarms, the island descends into chaos. That's when Phillips, son of the police chief and holder of a powerful gift, is called back home from school. The first person he wants to see is Miranda (there's some history there), and together the two of them get to the bottom of what happened to the colonists more than four hundred years earlier.

There is an escape from jail and more than one episode of evading authorities, a basement library with wicked cool stuff, a dead man walking, a megalomaniacal killer from the past bent on destruction and world domination, apparitions that pack a wallop, compulsive donut eating, the aforementioned awesome dog, and the weight of history that threatens to break our teen heroes just when we need them the most. Bond is relentless in her story and while occasionally her adults are just a bit too convenient in their parental moments, I'm willing to forgive her those episodes for how brilliantly she sells this story. Miranda and Phillips are equal parts smart and terrified and handle the drama that surrounds them in about the most realistic way a reader could hope for. What really elevates Blackwood, though, is the very end. While Bond delivers on all the excitement she has built up, it is in the aftermath, the serious final pages, where she really makes her tale all that it could be. I expected predictable, but what I got was poetic and heartfelt and exactly right. Thoughtful teens will eat this novel up, and honestly, who could blame them?

Jasper Fforde, best-selling author of the bombastic Thursday Next series (great crossover for older teens), has his first foray into the YA world with The Last Dragonslayer, the first book in the Chronicles of Kazam series. In a world physically much like our own (and with an obvious British sensibility), Fforde introduces a backstory where magic was at one time indispensable and now is fading away, leaving those who make a living from such things as speedy magic carpet deliveries in some financial trouble. As acting director for Kazam, an employment agency for sorcerers and other magic practitioners, Jennifer Strange is particularly worried about the situation. Between the loss of income, keeping her many sensitive employees from killing each other and maintaining control as a sixteen-year-old foundling (akin to indentured servitude) whose boss has vanished, she has a lot to deal with. Then all the sorcerers start getting visions that the world's last dragon is about to die at the hands of the unknown Last Dragonslayer and everyone goes crazy over what this means. "Big Magic" is on the way, and soon enough, just surviving is going to be a test of epic proportions.

Fforde excels at sly humor, and he is in rare form here on that score. For all that it involves the potential violent death of a dragon and a major war, The Last Dragonslayer is not a dark novel. There are a few moments of reflection, but from the plotting of real estate land grabs (once the dragon is dead the Dragonlands will be open for development), to the product sponsorship of slaying and many, many political inanities, Fforde is clearly having a blast with this story. He's also doing something very unusual in YA -- writing a novel that is all about a cagey female protagonist having to make difficult but smart choices, none of which have to do with love or romance, and all of which involve kicking butt -- either with her brain or a little sword swinging. Jennifer is a young Thursday Next in many regards, but carrying her own baggage and wholly within her teenage self; this is not an adult novel masked as a teen one, but YA all the way. With fellow foundling Tiger, her ever-faithful Quarkbeast, and the best dragon since Sean Connery voiced Dragonheart (don't judge me), The Last Dragonslayer is the sort of YA adventure novel that emphasizes story and spares readers the kneejerk angsty passages that seemed to be so prevalent in YA fantasy today. Fforde has channeled Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett, and I very much look forward to his next visit to Kazam.

In Tiffany Trent's The Unnaturalists, an alternate New London has its own magical groove going on, and Vespa Nyx finds herself surprisingly right at the center of it. Although this society has some hefty Victorian ideas about what girls can do or be, Vespa has dodged a lot of cultural bullets by working with her father at the Museum of Unnatural History. Magical beasts are contained there for study or survey, and Vespa is grateful for the opportunities to mount the corpses of these dangerous creatures. There are two problems, however; her father's creepy obsequious assistant and her own unsettling experiences that seem to be of a perilously magical kind. If Vespa has some magic of her own going on, then she is in big trouble, but if she doesn't, she just might be going crazy. Getting to the bottom of things is a goal that quickly gets out of her control when she is caught doing something she shouldn't be able to do by a local rich girl with an eye on catching a desirable husband. Vespa must cast a spell for the man of the other girl's dreams or risk being revealed and all the horrors that entails (picture Salem). So then The Unnaturalists becomes a bit of a social farce, albeit with steampunk, witchcraft, and some very unfortunate folks who are magically enslaved to power massive generators.

Trent has created a fascinating world with New London, but I couldn't help thinking as I was reading The Unnaturalists that it could easily have contained another hundred pages, or a second book. Vespa's revelations about her family and her budding romance are rolled up into a plot that includes shades of everything from The Scarlet Pimpernel to Robin Hood, and the characters are not given enough time to think through the events around them before they must move on to reacting to the next thrilling moment. It's an enjoyable read, but a bit rushed, and the ending involves a lot of killing off of everybody you don't like, which seems more than a tad convenient. Trent is on to something with New London, and the final pages do hint at more to come. I hope in Vespa's next adventure she has time to puzzle out what is going on around her, rather than just hold on tight as the world rushes by.

Finally, Kate Milford recently utilized Kickstarter to come out with a middle-grade gem, The Kairos Mechanism. A sequel to The Boneshaker, it picks up a year later with Natalie relishing life in quiet Arcane, after the world's creepiest carnival has left town for good. Things take a mysterious turn when two teenage brothers show up ushering home the remains of a local man who disappeared fifty years earlier. Somehow, even though he apparently died in the Civil War, his corpse is remarkably preserved. As the town leaders close ranks, Natalie becomes determined to both help the brothers and learn the truth. This is Arcane, home of a significant crossroads, so of course things are going to get complicated pretty fast, of course there is something scary brewing, and of course Natalie is going to be up to her neck in a dangerous adventure before she is done. But The Kairos Mechanism manages to be not only a tightly written mystery (only 164 pages) but also an excellent buddy novel and another fine foray into the (slightly creepy) escapades of my favorite girl detective this side of Kiki Strike. Milford is creating quite a world with her novels and they have middle-grade delight written in every word. (Also note that an illustrated ebook version of The Kairos Mechanism is due out for the holidays. Am I the only one who thinks that putting some books on an ereader is a killer stocking idea?)

COOL READ: Two unique picture books came my way lately and while they skew quite a bit younger than the usual fare for this column, I can't resist mentioning them (and plenty of teens have younger siblings to read to anyway). Pomelo Explores Color is the latest in Ramona Badescue's series of this charming little elephant's adventures. This should be a rather ordinary outing -- we've all seen a zillion books for little ones on colors -- but Badescue is not the type to do ordinary. Pomelo, as rendered by the whimsical illustrations of Benjamin Chaud, wrapped in the "comforting white of his favorite dandelion," peers out from within the "shiny brown of chestnuts" and enjoys the "bouncy green of the meadow." This is an exuberant joy-filled title that is equal parts cheeky and thoughtful. The design makes it perfect for little hands, but the text will be a delight for much older readers as well. I can't remember the last time I came across a colors book that was so offbeat. Pomelo Explores Color is one not to pass up. (And do check out Pomelo Begins to Grow as well.)

For slightly older children, I highly recommend Waterloo and Trafalgar by Olivier Tallec. This wordless title follows the war-time hijinks of two nearly identical little men, one dressed in blue and one in orange, who spend every day peering over the wall at each other. Dedicated to their conflict, they man their posts through all sorts of weather and circumstance and never let a moment in which they might mock or tease one another pass. It all is silly, and readers will share more than a moment of laughter in response to Tallec's facial expressions or goofy situations, but it's the astounding, astonishing, absolutely perfect last page that will really give readers pause. Then you go back to the beginning and go through it all over again with a new appreciation. Waterloo and Trafalgar is a true gem -- a much-to-be-admired example of storytelling power and a serious lesson about the absurdity of war that any reader (no matter how young) can appreciate.

Recently I read a batch of novels that took the notion of "school story" to a whole new level. While many books for teens are set at least partly in school settings (they come with the territory), these stories rely as heavily on their locations as Buffy relied on Sunnydale High. Case in point is Nathan Kotecki's creepy mystery The Suburban Strange. The author had me guessing every step of the way with this one and managed to keep the paranormal elements at just the right level -- ever present but not the focal point. His protagonist has classic coming-of-age concerns, her new friends are hip and broody in a manner that defies classification, the romantic interest has a host of his own issues to deal with, and she attends school in a place where girls seem to suffer increasingly horrifying accidents on their sixteenth birthday. Except the non-virgins, which introduces a whole host of interesting conversational topics to a book that is already bursting at the seams with possibilities. Plus everyone is reading Kate Chopin's The Awakening, which is enough to recommend the book right there.

Artistic Celia is a classic sophomore -- no confidence, little style, and desperate to find her place in the halls of her new school, Suburban High. Over the summer she makes friends with a cool fellow artist who happens to be part of a smart aloof clique known as The Rosary. Celia can't believe her good fortune of being accepted by the group, and spends her days blissfully safe in their collective embrace. They travel as a pack, meet for lunch, spend Fridays at a fairy tale-goth nightclub that is straight out of Terri Windling's Borderlands, and while suffering their own dramas (largely romantic), they are extremely supportive of their new friend. Without those dreadful accidents it would all be a cooler version of My So-Called Life. (The Angela, Rickie, Rayanne, and Jordan Catalano archetypes are alive and well in The Rosary.) But the girls just keep on wiping out from one end of the school to the other. Then Celia learns something startling from her chemistry partner and, well, it's not the Hellmouth but something is certainly not right in these particular halls of higher learning.

Chapter by chapter Kotecki ratchets up the tension as the students wonder whether to take their chances on their birthdays (Celia's sixteenth is looming large) or just have some quick and dirty sex to avoid the "curse." In the meantime he tosses smart zingers left and right and leads his characters into discussions of everything from Siouxsie and the Banshees to symbolic anthropology to John Hughes to Philip Glass to Henry James to, again and again, The Awakening. Stupid this group is not and it's nice to see their intellectual pursuits make sense and be balanced by the standard prom drama. In the midst of all the smartness, Kotecki never lets Celia lose sight of the curse, however, and her discovery of just what is going on and why amps up the danger to epic levels. Readers just won't know for sure what is going to happen next, and then even when the plot blows up Kotecki doesn't give up -- he keeps readers holding on to the very end, to the romance, to the promise of a sequel (although this story is fully told), and to some final moments with these characters who are all fascinating originals. It's rare that I read a paranormal that stands out so much and manages to be less about the otherworldly elements then the real-world concerns, but Kotecki walks that line brilliantly with The Suburban Strange and has crafted a bang-up mystery that just happens to be filled with the fantastic as well. Excellent! (And a hat tip to Kotecki for some wonderful GLBT supporting characters.)

Daisy Whitney's The Mockingbirds effectively blends both a wish fulfillment novel of the first order and one of the grittiest (and saddest) coming-of-age stories I've read in a while. Set in a Rhode Island boarding school for the best and the brightest (destined, no doubt, for nearby Brown), it showcases all we wish those elite campuses could provide. The students are witty and creative, the campus full of grassy athletic fields, and stately brick buildings, music, and theater abound. There is even a secret society that everyone knows about and admires. Themis Academy is the kind of institution that fall issues of Seventeen always made me dream about. I would wear tweed jackets and boots and find friends for life in that kind of place, my high-school-senior self was sure of it. The harsh lesson of The Mockingbirds is that sometimes people fall so in love with the ideal that they fail to see the reality. This is what has happened at Themis, and after Alex is date raped (she wakes up on the morning after on page one), then a hidden layer to the school's story is revealed and her own struggle to carve out a new brave life begins.

The plot of The Mockingbirds is very straightforward: Alex shares what happened to her (and her own confused recollections of the night) with her roommate who persuades her to take her case to The Mockingbirds, a secret group widely acknowledged to exert a level of influence among the student body. Alex is initially reticent, and the more she remembers, the more she seesaws between anger and guilt over the night's events. She is eventually persuaded by the appalling behavior of the young man involved (the expected conquest bragging commences) and her case slowly makes it way through the Mockingbirds process.

As much as the personal drama leads readers along (Alex's very believable uncertainty about making her date rape more widely known is especially spot on), it is really The Mockingbirds organization itself that provides the greatest intrigue. Themis is a place where the faculty has convinced themselves they have created a wonderland of achievement, and the patronizing attitude of the adults is beyond frustrating (and a common subject of derision among the students). Whitney paints a convincing picture of an institution replete with elegance and success, and yet she also shows how all the sloppy messes of humanity, the hate-filled dramas of greed and power that are sadly all too familiar, are right at home at Themis as well. With the faculty blissfully unaware, the students get the job done, and that means accepting the accusations, hearing the evidence, and passing judgment. Tying all of this up in a story of one girl's pain, some classic moments of true friendship, a healthy dose of To Kill a Mockingbird, and many scenes out of collective school memories is an achievement. The Mockingbirds rang so true for me because I remember a girl in college who woke up like Alex, and I remember what happened next, which was truly heartbreaking. That is why this book is such a strong piece of wish fulfillment to me; if only a group like this had been there for my classmate, then her story might have turned out much differently. If only, if only. (Note that a sequel, The Rivals, was published earlier this year.)

The fourteen-year old protagonist of Jennifer Miller's The Year of the Gadfly is struggling, not just with a new school but also with the recent and devastating loss of her best friend. Forced to relocate to a new town under the instruction of her therapist and the well meaning but misguided concern of her parents, Iris is a young journalist with Edward R. Murrow as an invisible friend. Playing off the great reporter in a manner reminiscent of teen Sym's relationship with the long dead Antarctic explorer Capt. Lawrence "Titus" Oates in Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness, Iris enjoys long discussions with Murrow about her adolescent troubles. Naturally she gravitates toward the newspaper at her new school, but it is the perplexing power of the underground paper, The Devil's Advocate, that captures her attention. All is not as it appears at Mariana Academy and Iris, with Murrow's example burning bright, is determined to pull a Nancy Drew (or, with all the twists and turns ahead, perhaps Brenda Starr might be a better example).

Comparisons to Donna Tartt's The Secret History are made easily by Miller's publisher and there is certainly a secret society with all manner of cruel past times to investigate, as well as a professor with possibly ulterior motives concerning his own student past, and a book Iris discovers on the shelf in her borrowed house that suggests much if only she could uncover its secrets. (It has the most compelling title: Marvelous Species: Investigating Earth's Mysterious Biology, although the inscription is much more relevant to the plot.)

Although published for adults, Iris experiences such classic teen moments in The Year of the Gadfly that it makes for an obvious crossover title. Interestingly, the narrative splits early on to convey the perspectives of her science teacher and that of another student, Lily, from more than a decade before. The two girls both suffer the whims of mean girls and the desire to stand up to peer pressure while also succumbing to the siren song of fitting in. The deepening mystery propels the plot forward (and all manner of shocking moments occur) but it is the emotions felt by Iris and Lily that ring with such heartbreaking truth that readers will not be able to turn away. Miller is more in touch with her teenage self than seems possible and there is no denying the sincerity of the adolescent traumas she portrays. Every step in this story, both in the past and in the present, rings with a poignancy that very nearly hurts to read. It's worth the pain however, to see Iris put all the ghosts to rest and, just like Murrow, stand tall in the face of those who challenge her veracity. I adored this character and every moment of her adventure and selfishly, I'd love to see more of her in the future.

Another excellent crossover choice, Elizabeth Percer's An Uncommon Education, focuses on bookish Naomi Feinstein, whose father has a well-tended Kennedys obsession and whose mother is slowly coming undone. Naomi's childhood solace is found in the company of next-door neighbor Teddy but their friendship ends abruptly when he has to move away. Naomi feels his loss deeply, and the search for her friend and what has become of him spawns a mystery throughout her life. That's the setup and the initial chapters, but the novel spends most of its time on Naomi's collegiate adventures which are both familiar and startling, in the best sense of the word. (So nothing paranormal but nothing wholly predictable either.)

At its heart, An Uncommon Education is about how a certain bookish young girl stays sane in a world of troubling situations both at home and school. She reads her way in and out of the pains in her heart and grounds herself with a resolution to become a doctor. This decision allows Percer to pepper the narrative with evocative descriptions of studying Gray's Anatomy, but Naomi's attraction to Shakespeare is not ignored either and actually what leads her to the most significant part of her Wellesley experience, membership in the secretive Shakespeare Society. (Secrets again!)

"Shakes" is, of course, about performing Shakespeare. It appears to be a highbrow diversion populated by smart and determined young women who engage Naomi in the sort of thoughtful conversation she has longed for. But as much as Shakes presents intellectual excitement, it also pulls Naomi into personal dramas of epic proportions. As the girls jockey for position both inside the club and their class, Percer exposes all the glorious mess that is college. She nails the emotional labyrinth that young people encounter when leaving home for the first time and their all too common struggles to separate from parental expectations while also pleasing their parents. It is especially refreshing how the author resists using romantic entanglements to further the plot. Love does play a part here (and attraction even more so) but again and again the story circles back to the fundamental question of just who Naomi wants to be and how she wants to live her life.

Ultimately this novel hinges on the challenge of recognition: seeing yourself, your friends, your family, and all you really are (and wish to be). An Uncommon Education, for taking place in a college, is more about the curriculum of growing up. There are many mysteries Naomi must solve, and she does so, with great aplomb. But along the way Percer challenges her readers to see themselves for whom they truly are and to be brave enough to recognize just how difficult a task that can be. A wonderful, and quietly powerful, coming-of-age novel.

Finally, Timothy Decker's illustrated novel The Punk Ethic explores the power of music in the lives of seemingly disaffected youth. Guitar-playing protagonist Martin is struggling to find a reason to succeed in a world that appears all too happy to let him disappear. Financially, life is a constant struggle in his single-parent household, and his friends are a collection of likable if somewhat annoying idiots who have no clue what their futures will hold. He is in love with an impossible Dreamgirl (shades of Some Kind of Wonderful) and, inspired by a class assignment, has a wild desire to change the world, but little ability to do so. What he needs is a plan, a plan so big that it will make his life the sort of wild and dramatic life he has been afraid to imagine. In one month it all comes together, in the sort of ridiculous fashion one would expect for teenagers, but the story remains hopeful and stays true to its cool music roots at the same time. There is nothing saccharine or sparkly about The Punk Ethic (perish the thought) and the text is in fact peppered with the sort of wry observations that any high schooler would appreciate: "If the federal government really wants to change public schools and ensure that no kid gets left behind, they should close the cafeteria and call it a threat to public health." Or consider this look at the opposite sex: "Goth girls live in a dream world, all operatic nonsense and crappy literary allusions... It's complete bullshit. That's why they go to college, wash off the makeup, and become GOP lobbyists. At least punk girls are honest."

Decker takes Martin along on a journey that sees him realizing the punk ethic of "do what you can with what you have," and tosses in more than a few significant moments about book learning versus the real world (both of which are to be valued) and why high school matters (for many reasons other than what you think). The illustrations and surprisingly intense ending all lift The Punk Ethic to a level of appreciation that makes it a memorable read. Don't let this quiet beauty pass you by; Decker has a story to tell worth reading and Martin, quietly depicted in so many black and white drawings, is a character to hold dear.

If you're looking for a great escape this summer, you absolutely have to pick up Robin Wasserman's recent thriller The Book of Blood and Shadow. Comparisons have abounded to Dan Brown's juggernaut The Da Vinci Code (I would also make the case for The Eight by Katherine Neville), and while the plot of a scholarly uncovering of a centuries-old secret prompting attacks from dueling religious societies hellbent on achieving their own aims is certainly in that vein, there is something far more powerful going on in The Book of Blood and Shadow. At its heart, this is a coming-of-age story about first love and friendship. It carries the same themes of any realistic fiction about the perils of high school. In the midst of all the excitement, protagonist Nora must deal with distant parents, squabbling friends, and heady romance. While she dodges assassins and translates Latin on the fly, her mind is always partly on the questionable loyalties of the people she is supposed to be able to trust. In every way that matters, it's the twelfth grade all over again; Nora just has to solve a murder and stay alive on top of traditional hallway drama.

Readers learn on the first page that Nora's friend Chris has been killed. From there, the plot backs up and we discover how Nora and Chris became involved in a translation project, and the grave issues affecting Nora's home life. We meet the other two members of their group and the odd professor who supervised their independent study. Her friends are her lifeline as her family slowly falls apart and the hours spent on "the book" are a welcomed distraction, especially as Nora has been handed the relatively innocuous assignment of translating some letters written by a young woman more than 400 years earlier. Wasserman excels at bringing the distant Elizabeth alive, and it is entirely believable that Nora would identify so strongly with her subject. (I would have felt the same way at that age.) The letters, written to Elizabeth's brother and detailing the work of their alchemist stepfather, present a literary puzzle that Nora slowly decodes. As the teens begin to discover what Elizabeth knew, it becomes clear that they are not alone in their interest and those who have observed them are out for blood. (Insert loud sinister music here.)

So there is murder and there is chaos and there is running for your life and finding clues. There are teenagers in Prague with cloaked mysterious men out to get them and a priest with a gun and no one who can be trusted. In the end, Nora is left with the bitter choice between what she always believed and what might be the truth. This might just mean that The Book of Blood and Shadow is a first rate thriller (with a golem story!) guaranteed to keep you up all night turning pages, and that would be fine -- it would actually be better than most YA titles in this vein. But Wassermen never forgets who her characters are -- in this case a bunch of teenagers with conflicting priorities -- and so more than anything this is a novel about growing up. The Book of Blood and Shadow is about determining whom you can trust, letting go of whom you thought you were, and turning a corner into adulthood. It's about first love and broken hearts, about confidence and self-worth and making a choice about who you want to be. That all of this happens while being chased by crazy people intent on discovering secrets hidden in old letters written in Latin makes it more exciting than most, but the elements are still the same. Some of us come of age crying in a bathroom stall during an afternoon pep rally, while Nora has her moment hiding on a darkened street in Prague. But we all know what she is thinking, and Wasserman's genius is not sacrificing those moments for thrills. She keeps this story's heart beating in universal territory and because of that it will resonate far longer than this reader hoped. Amazing.

For a more lighthearted adventure that has a most appealing retro sensibility, reach for the utterly charming adventure Zeuglodon by James Blaylock, com

Being a big fan of bird watching, I am more than a bit addicted to field guides. Is it the pictures, the descriptions, the color-coded location maps? I have no idea, just can't get enough of them. Bill Thompson, editor of Bird Watcher's Digest, has come out with a new Peterson Field Guide, The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America, which is a sweet introduction to the hobby for budding ornithologists. Arranged first by location (swamp, pond, meadow, farmyard) and then by species (ducks, hawks, jays, sparrows), each page offers a color photo of the bird, descriptions of appearance and song, and something special to remember it by -- such as the straight bill of the Black-Necked Stilt or the black and white appearance of the Black-Throated Gray Warbler (it is the only western warbler dressed all in black and white).

Along with the prerequisite location map and notes on how to find the birds in their specific habitats, Thompson includes a "WOW!" factor for each bird. Some of these are about sounds to listen for or curious habits like the Turkey Vulture puking on intruders. (Let's just stop and think about vulture puke for a moment, shall we?) But others are more along the lines of the notion that "If the Beach Boys had been birders, their hit song might have gone 'I wish they all could be California Gulls!'" (Cheesy, yes, but worth a chuckle.)

The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America is not the most comprehensive field guide for your area as it covers all of North America and thus will note birds that likely will not apply to any one reader. But it is a great overall guide, very well put together, and if you are traveling about the country (or our border neighbors) then it must be tossed in the duffle bag for easy reference. (I also want to note that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just came out with the first new guide to moths in a zillion years, the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America, and it's a beauty. Summer nights are prime times for moth spying and you will want this full color title at your side.)

Older teens with a deep interest in bird lore (or natural history fans of any age) should be sure to take a look at Winged Wonders: A Celebration of Birds in Human History by Peter Watkins and Jonathan Stockland. This elegant little book (the cover is stunning) considers sixteen different birds and how they have been discussed in literature, science, and history. The eagle is here, along with the peacock, owl, and falcon, but smaller less impressive birds also prove to be worthy reads, such as the wren and sparrow. The information the authors have so lyrically put together manages to be wonderfully esoteric but still useful. I had no idea that Alcatraz was actually originally named La Isla de los Alcatraces, the island of the pelicans, by Spanish explorers who were saved from colliding with The Rock in 1775 by a flock of the birds. (This makes the whole "Birdman of Alcatraz" story that much more interesting.)

The authors discuss William Blake on eagles, the connection between the Crusaders and falconry, how Charlemagne's mother is the likely origin of the Mother Goose legend, the connection between mahjong and sparrows, and what peacock meat tastes like. (Turkey is much tastier, apparently.) The chapters are short and meander in the most charming manner while catering to readers with time to read in short bursts (or as long as you might like). I found it to be enormously informative, and while the appeal to bird lovers is obvious, I couldn't help viewing Winged Wonders as a quite valuable literary reference tool as well. If you want to be an ornithologist or just watch the bird feeder outside your window, Winged Wonders is a step beyond field guides in truly appreciating the long relationship between humans and their feathered friends.

For younger nature-minded teens, Loree Griffin Burns (author of Tracking Trash and The Hive Detectives, both of which I highly recommend) explores the notion of "scientific discovery from your own back

In grad school, one of my most memorable courses was "Polar Exploration and its Literature." Over the course of the semester we immersed ourselves in the words of Pierre Berton and Barry Lopez and a host of biographers who wrote of Peary, Scott, Shackleton, and others. What we did not read was much about the women who married those men, an oversight finally rectified by Kari Herbert's delightful collective biography Polar Wives: The Remarkable Women behind the World's Most Daring Explorers. In a period spanning Lady Jane Franklin's efforts to find her missing husband in the mid-nineteenth century to Herbert's own mother who traveled to Greenland with her exploring husband and infant daughter in 1970, this is a solid critical view of women who supported famous men and were affected in both positive and negative ways by their marriages.

Everyone you would expect can be found in Polar Wives: Kathleen Scott, Jo Peary, Eva Nansen, Emily Shackleton, and both Lady Jane and Franklin's first wife, Eleanor. Arranged in a thematic manner that introduces the women in separate chapters and then follows them through sections on love and marriage, the difficult days of separation, and finally as the standard bearers of their husbands' heroic exploits, the book provides plenty of material on each subject without getting bogged down in the minutiae of any particular life. I would argue that all of these women could easily support their own biographies, but Herbert is wisely writing for a general audience who might be new to her subjects, and she should get them with such compelling stories.

Consider Jo Peary, who, while attempting to reach her husband, spent a winter icebound in Greenland sharing quarters with his Inuit mistress and son (Aleqasina later bore him another son as well). The fact that Robert Edwin Peary took a naked picture of a reluctant young Aleqasina as part of his "ethnographical studies" of the Inuit just makes this whole episode that much more sordid. And the fact that Jo had lost her own infant daughter to illness while Robert was gone is just a further heartbreak. Frankly, I don't know why Jo stayed with him and readers might well wonder the same, as well as just how true Peary's claim was that he reached the Pole.

There is also Kathleen Scott, who was determined to find the man worthy of fathering her intended son and got just that with the most tragic explorer of all, Robert Falcon Scott. And Marie Herbert, who had a drive to carve out her own niche as an explorer. Herbert recounts the many jobs the women were forced to take on including everything from publicity to logistics to organizing and funding rescue operations. (Robert Peary was particularly needy in this regard.) There were also the situations unique to loving someone whose job was to go to the ends of the earth in a time when communication across the ocean was difficult. Consider Eva Nansen's struggle in 1895, three years after the last time anyone saw or heard from her husband who was attempting to reach the North Pole:

In many ways Eva had lost hope and faith. Enough time had passed for her to question her husband's motives for embarking on such a long and dangerous journey, and she began to doubt his love for her. Dwelling on such thoughts plunged her into a depression verging on the suicidal: "At any rate, I went round and thought out the easiest way of killing myself." Profoundly unhappy, she confessed to a friend that, as a result of such despair, the memory of her husband had all but disappeared.

Eva Nansen was a famous singer prior to marrying her husband, but after he did successfully return, upon reaching a farthest point north, their reunion did not bring peace. She chafed at the role of "long-suffering explorer's wife" and yet, like the others, she was powerless to keep him home. The explorers were either continuously trying to attain a self-imposed geographic goal or, having met it, felt compelled to surpass it and stay ahead of others. (Jane Franklin appears to be the only e

I would be hard pressed to think of two characters more different than Luna in Stewart Lewis's You Have Seven Messages and Chris in Jason Skipper's Hustle. Both teens are trying to achieve some level of normalcy in lives torn apart by circumstance and must deal with issues of parental loss and lies as they look to the future. The fact that every time something goes wrong for Chris the reader quickly learns it will only get worse and that every time something goes well for Luna it will only get better, are plot issues that do, in both cases get tedious. But the teen characters are so strongly written and so damn appealing that in spite of plot points that will cause an eye roll or two (especially in Luna's case), the pages keep turning. Watching them work their ways through all of the family drama is well worth the literary ride.

Chris wants to be a guitar player and saves his money for an instrument and then strives to find time to practice, learn and perform in a band with his friends. His musical aspirations are severely hampered by his family life, however -- the occasional visits of his alcoholic grandfather, the needy selfishness of his alcoholic father and the poor choices of his mother who relies on men to save her and does not choose her romantic partnerships wisely. The family business is selling shrimp (except for a detour into bar ownership that goes as well as you expect) and Chris is out there every weekend and all summer doing his best to contribute to the family coffers. As he gets older he would prefer to make music (and have his own life) but his father relies more and more heavily upon Chris helping out. Even after his parents break up he continues to be guilted into getting the job done. Things don't get better when his mother finds a permanent someone else, because, of course, new guy starts out great then loses his job and becomes a controlling monster who delights in making Chris's life hard. In the end mom, of course, chooses the guy and Chris is bounced to dad and his girlfriend until things don't go well there and dad dies and he is bounced back to mom and finally -- finally -- he decides he has had enough and bolts for life on his own. You will cheer that decision, believe me, and also lament all the idiots everywhere who clearly need parenting classes before making the choice to reproduce.

Meanwhile, in Luna's world money is not an issue because her father is a great film director and her recently deceased mother was both a model and author. (The eye rolling can start now.) The death of her mother walking across a busy NYC street is the root of the book's conflict, as Luna discovers her mother's cell phone a year later with seven messages still remaining. Slowly (so incredibly slowly) she listens to the messages and follows up on their clues, discovering her parents did not have the marriage she thought, that both of them kept secrets, and her father is not telling her the truth about the day her mother died. Along the way she receives an impressive antique camera from her dad that helps her realize her dream to become a photographer. She uses the camera to take pictures of a famous model who befriends her and that, of course, leads to a show at a trendy gallery, representation from an arts agent, coverage in the New York Times, and a promised meeting with Annie Leibovitz. There is also a trip to Italy to visit her beloved uncle. Luna's world, as you can tell is very different from Chris's, and though the pattern of expect bad news for Chris and good news for Luna is unrelenting, the similarities between the characters can not be ignored. Both of them are very smart, both end up hurt by first romances, and both are stuck with parents who underestimate their strength. Chris and Luna are characters who force their parents to acknowledge they are not children and, in many ways, are far more capable then the adults around them. This makes them excellent choices for readers looking for teen empowerment titles and with their vastly divergent settings, class structures, and even

In Boltzmann's Tomb Bill Green has written one of those delightful science history titles that welcome the general reader while offering numerous insights into topics that most of us failed to learn in school. Green, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Miami University, has areas of interest that range from Antarctica's lakes (he's been there nearly a dozen times on field research) to the philosophies of Camus to (in his youth) the launching of model rockets. He has spent his life asking questions, seeking answers, and finding his way through the discoveries of those who inspire him. In his essays he relates all he has learned along the way and can't hide the joy that learning has brought him.

The tomb of the title refers to Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, whom Green discovered in a transformative college lecture. With his gravesite in Vienna as a goal, Green reminisces about the places and experiences that brought him there. He writes about a childhood interest in Scott Crossfield and Ray Bradbury and Popular Mechanics, which led to those model rocket experiments (they did not end well), as well as a meandering academic career that saw him venture in and out of colleges and majors until, crazily enough, he ended up doing chemistry research at McMurdo Station. No one, least of all Green, would have seen that coming, but in 1968 he headed south, and in the decades that followed continues to go back, culminating in a trip with his own college-age daughter recounted in the book's opening chapter.

Boltzmann's Tomb includes many Antarctica anecdotes, as well as stories found in cities and towns across the U.S. and Europe. Green namedrops numerous great men as he leads readers through his life, writing about Tycho Brae, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. But surprisingly for a science title there is also Camus and Saul Bellow, Alexander Pope, Italo Calvino, Henry Miller, and many other historians, authors, poets, and philosophers. His enthusiasm for all of them is impossible to resist as he leaps from physics to poetry in an instant and carries the readers along on these connections, making clear that science and literature live side by side. The reader is left dazzled and also wishing that both subjects could be taught this way much more often.

In the midst of all the great ideas and discoveries, it is unexpected to come across the book's most stirring passages, which concern Green's childhood in Pittsburgh. With evocative descriptions he brings the reader to an American city that has radically changed but once was our burning heart. He writes, "In Pittsburgh, fire was all around us. You had to drive only a few miles to the nearest mill, which lay just sought of the city on the river. At night, the mills made their own sky, filled with smoke clouds and redness, and the long slag heaps to the west cast a flickering glow on the horizon. At times, you might have been standing on the plains of Mars."

As the best lecturers do, Green shares stories that weave in and out of a central narrative and manage to impart an enormous amount of wisdom. Boltzmann's Tomb is a title that stirs curiosity, prompts original thinking, and suggests, through the author's own inquisitive nature, that there is so much more to know about the world we live in. Elegant, erudite, and supremely satisfying, it is the sort of book that gets all too easily lost in the shuffle but deserves a lot more readerly attention.

Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science by Bill Green
Bellevue Literary Press
ISBN 978-1934137352
288 pages

Penguin's Firebird imprint reissues three outstanding novels from the great Diana Wynne Jones this month with Dogsbody, A Tale of Time City, and, one of my favorite books of all time, Fire and Hemlock. In this modern retelling of the ballads "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," Jones startles readers from the very first pages when new Oxford student Polly realizes that she has forgotten large swaths of her life. While she can recall experiences with friends and family, there are nagging gaps that only grow wider and more disturbing as she nudges her brain to recall what she is missing. Reaching back to her childhood and her parents' deteriorating marriage, Polly latches onto one person in particular who is absent from most of her memories. Finding out why she has forgotten Thomas Lynn and the sinister reasons behind her selective amnesia propels the narrative forward but there is so much more here than a little mystery. Fire and Hemlock is mythic fiction at its very best and a strong example of how the most captivating stories are often found in traditional sources.

Polly's relationship with Thomas Lynn begins when she mistakenly crashes a neighborhood funeral and continues from there through long fanciful letters (the story is set in the prehistoric period before email), occasional meetings, and the exchange of great books and music. They meet when Polly is only ten and desperate for adventure. In Mr. Lynn she finds an unlikely sympathetic listener who seems to have his own need to escape from the pressures of reality. (Polly soon realizes he has the ex-wife from hell.) The funeral also introduces Polly to Seb, a Draco Malfoy-esque boy who appears haunted by ulterior motives and his father, the terrifying Mr. Leroy. In the years that follow, Polly and Mr. Lynn find themselves making bizarre discoveries on their occasional afternoons together. They are pursued by unnatural beasts and monsters, save a great horse, are saved in turn by a car, befriend three stellar musicians, wander through a hardware store from the X Files and learn why you should never go on a carnival ride. (For more evidence of this, read Something Wicked This Way Comes and commit it to memory. Please.)

The dozen years age difference between Thomas and Polly is explained more than once in the story and although our twenty-first century suspicions might want to find something nefarious in that, Fire and Hemlock is a story about contemporary heroes and ancient tales that are rooted in medieval songs. As Polly uncovers the clues to her past (letters, pictures, and toy soldiers point her in the right directions), she must come to terms with how much of her life she has lived as the pawn in a game she never knew the rules for. The world is a more powerful and complicated place then she ever imagined and that reality is a shock, as it should be, and gets to the root of why mythic fiction is such an endlessly appealing genre. Fire and Hemlock, like the ballads that inspired it, is a book of richness and intensity, language and ideas, and wild, wild nights that invite readers to escape into a powerful fantasy that leaves much of modern paranormal fiction in the dust. I cannot thank Firebird enough for bringing it back. (Also be sure to check out the Firebird title Tam Lin by Pamela Dean for another outstanding take on that ballad.)

Elizabeth Hand continues to plumb the souls of creative teens in her new novel, Radiant Days. As she did so brilliantly with Shakespearean plays and complex family dynamics in Illyria, Hand now turns to art and poetry in a whirlwind look at the lives of two starving artists separated by time: Corcoran School of Art student Merle in 1978 and outlaw poet Arthur Rimbaud in 1870s France. Their separate passions for painting and words overwhelm every facet of their lives, sending Merle into a tailspin after a disastrous love affair and Rimbaud onto the road to Paris in search of intellectual freedom. The twist here is that on one spectacular night, when everything seems to go wrong, Merle and Rimbaud are br

One of my all time favorite groups of books is those with illustrations. Example number one is the recent Printz Honor title by Daniel Handler. Knowing Handler only for the Lemony Snicket books, one would approach his contemporary YA title of teen heartbreak with more than bit of skepticism in his heart. And yet, Why We Broke Up with powerful, prescient illustrations by Maira Kalman, is one of the most honest depictions of teenage life that I have come across. Handler has tapped into his inner high school self on a level that is impressive and created a protagonist in Min that readers will feel an instant rapport with.

The story plays out in a long letter, broken into brief chapters that address every object in the box of memorabilia that Min is returning to her ex-boyfriend Ed. The relationship was short, intense, and filled with all the drama that cross-clique dating can bring, which Handler exposes with care and precision. Why We Broke Up begins with the relationship already ended and Min carefully documenting in her letter why she is giving each item to Ed. Through these "souvenirs" she takes readers into every aspect of their couplehood, from the first long conversation, through dates big and small, meeting family members, altercations with an ex, and the most difficult moments when they mingle with each other's friends. Far from a typical teen romance, Handler instead looks at how much more there is to teen dating than simply the dating part. Min notes more than once how she wished the two of them could just have disappeared into some utopian ideal where nothing and no one else would exist. And yet as much as she dreams of this happily ever after land, she can't help recounting the times that she and Ed didn't quite mesh. It is those moments, which increased as the relationship continued, that finally became too much to bear. And so by the final pages when she details that last thing that broke them up, the reader will realize just as Min did, that they were headed there from the very beginning.

Why We Broke Up is a flashback that anyone could have, regardless of whether one is a jock or sort-of "arty." It is about all the ways you try to make a relationship work and yet just can't seem to do the right thing at the right moment, how you have to work all the time at trying to figure out what that right thing is. (There is an especially poignant moment when Min attends Ed's basketball game and struggles to care enough to pay attention, waving the pennant that marks her as a girlfriend, wondering why she is there and what she is supposed to do with the thing when it is over.) Page after page after page, Handler strips away at all the little lies we tell ourselves about who we are and who we can be; he makes clear that knowing who we are from the very beginning could save us so much time when it comes to life and love, and yet who can resist that sudden attraction, that curiosity for difference, for being loved? And that's the kicker, Min and Ed did love each other and did try, but it just couldn't work, just like we always knew.

As sublime as Handler's narrative is though, Kalman's illustrations give us the pennant and the map and coat and condom wrapper, and as the story progresses the pictures, which begin each chapter, cause readers to linger more and more. Now of course, we know what is coming, and so we pause for a moment to consider what the cookbook will tell us, or the umbrella...

I think illustrated books are a particularly good format for biography and graphic novels and add an essential element to the genre that makes them especially appealing to reluctant readers. Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love is an example of a biography that excels with authors Patricia McKissack and Frederick McKissack, Jr., along with illustrator Randy DeBurke tackling a woefully overlooked American.

Nat Love was born into slavery in 1854 and became the most famous African American cowboy in the Old West. He knew Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, he rode the range

Every time we talk about "coming of age" titles for teens there is a heavy emphasis on those books that show teenagers facing typical social situations such as peer pressure and bullying or family difficulties like poverty, abuse or divorce. All of this is well and good but none of those books shows teens how to live their lives. There are books that will show you how mean your friends can be but when it comes to figuring out what you want to do professionally with your life and how to accomplish that goal, well, you're better off choosing the job of vampire slayer (or lover) because there are a metric ton of titles to help you with that. What I wish I saw more of on the YA shelves was books about actual people, in the form of biography, memoir and historical fiction, that could provide readers with navigable pathways into the world. One of the best of these books I've recently come across in that vein is Michael Uslan's new The Boy Who Loved Batman.

Uslan is the producer of all the modern Batman movies, from Tim Burton's Michael Keaton, to the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. He started out as an average comic book loving kid from New Jersey (well, your average comic book loving kid who saved all his comics and funded law school by later selling some) who never wavered in his dream to return the Batman to his sinister roots and put him on the silver screen. What's great about The Boy Who Loved Batman is that he doesn't just tell what Uslan wanted to do but explains how he did it, every step of the way. This makes the book not only a fascinating peek into the comic book world but even more so a highly entertaining guide to professional success.

Uslan's love of Batman led him to teach the first college course on comic books (while he was himself enrolled at the University of Indiana), intern at DC Comics, and eventually go to Hollywood. Not only does he explain how he turned a hobby into a career, he shows how hard it was. As deeply personal as his story is, however, Uslan takes the time to discuss the history of the industry, the history of the Batman comic itself, and how fans turned what was once a dismissive aspect of childhood into the stuff of legend. (Just consider the moneymaking possibilities at Comic-Con.) But none of this would matter if Uslan was not such a likable author and if Chronicle Books had not done such an outstanding job with their design, with personal photographs, copies of letters, and a wealth of comic book illustrations. The Boy Who Loved Batman is a visual delight, and it does not matter if you are a comic book fan when it comes to Uslan's appeal. The Boy Who Loved Batman is fundamentally about how to make it in the world doing what you love. Every high school library should have this book and every business-minded teen should be reading it. Uslan made it, big time, and he provides a perfect example for others to follow.

For fans of historical subjects, and especially those whose dreams lead to exploration and adventure, Matt Phelan tackles three memorable individuals in his sublime graphic novel Around the World. In separate self-contained stories he recounts the exploits of late nineteenth century adventurers Thomas Stevens, who rode around the world on a bicycle; Nellie Bly, who traveled around the world in fewer than eighty days; and Joshua Slocum, who sailed around the world alone. While they knew great fame in their day -- Bly, in particular, enjoyed near infamy for a while -- they have largely fallen off the reality TV-dominated radar of modern teens. Phelan shows his subjects' passion for travel to be deeply personal choices, which draws readers in from the outset. As Stevens pushes himself for something more than a dead-end life as a miner, Bly seeks the journalistic respect denied her as a woman, and Slocum struggles to survive the loss of his beloved, Phelan's art and words presents them as people to both admire and emulate. This is heroic literature at its best, executed with an understated panache that lets the subjects tell their tales. Although wri