The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
How to describe Junior -aka Arnold Spirit? Skinny, huge feet, big head, ugly glasses, myriad medical problems, and the lousiest fighter on the Indian reservation where he lives. Or as he describes it "...a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation." He is also funny, intelligent, and a gifted comic artist. When he accidentally (kind of) breaks his teacher's nose, a discussion with said teacher makes him realize that the only way that he is going to survive and thrive is if he leaves the reservation. And so, as a first step, he enrolls in the all-white high school in a nearby town where other than the school mascot, he is the only Indian. But his decision is seen on the reservation as an act of betrayal and in the school he is shunned as an outsider and oddball.
"True Diary" should be a terribly sad read and sometimes is. Junior suffers more tragedy and disappointment in one year than many people do in a lifetime. But he springs off the pages with his acerbic comments, his insightful, funny cartoons and his determination, so that ultimately the tone of the book is one of joy rather than tragedy.

The Recruit by Robert Muchamore
I only got about half-way through this one before handing it over to a ten- year-old who was looking for something to read. We compared notes when he got to about the same point in the book that I had reached, and it seems that our opinions were somewhat different.
First, a quick summary. 11 year old James is mathematically brilliant, but a little too quick with his fists and prone to get into trouble. When his mother, a successful fence for stolen goods, dies, James ends up in group home where he starts to run with a gang. He gets picked up by the police, but before he is charged, he is recruited by a mysterious group called Cherubs. Cherubs is a secret branch of M15 and consists of kids 11 to 17 who perform missions for this British spy agency. James undergoes a rigorous 100 day training before receiving his first assignment.
I certainly thought that The Recruit is a page turner as did my 10-year-old reviewer. However, while I thought that the training was down-right abusive, my co-reviewer thought it was all pretty cool. This is the first in a series about Cherubs. While definitely grittier than the Alex Rider spy novels, it will definitely appeal to kids who are fans of spy novels, which are currently an incredibly popular genre.
On a quick note, James Patterson has done a cross-over from adult into teen novels with his Maximum Ride series. It features a group of genetically enhanced kids who are being pursued by unknown killers. If this isn't trouble enough, they need to save the world from unspecified threat. These are real page-turners with short chapters and lots of action. While past titles in the series have been marketed to teens and tweens, apparently the next book out is going to be marketed across the board to adults, teens, and tweens. I guess the publishers want to squeeze as much out of this series as possible.

The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery by Nancy Springer


Enola Holmes definitely belongs to my "cool girl" list. This much, much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes is growing up as something of a wild child. When her mother mysteriously disappears (to escape the restrictions of Victorian society), Sherlock and Mycroft arrive at the family estate and are properly shocked by their hoydenish sister's upbringing. They decide that she should be packed off to a boarding school where she can learn how to behave as a proper young lady. Enola, however, has very different plans. She gives her brothers the slip, runs off to London, and sets herself up as a detective where she soon is involved in solving a kidnapping case. But despite her incredible competence, she feels very much alone - spell Enola backwards - and longs to connect with Sherlock who is always a step or two behind in catching her sister. Great 19th century London atmosphere, wonderful characters, and a page-turning story in this first book in a series

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

When Daisy's father and stepmother send her to live in rural England with her aunt and cousin, the country is on the brink of war. At first, life seems idyllic to the teens, free from adult supervision when Daisy's aunt must leave the country to participate in peace talks. But when war breaks out, the farm is taken over by the army and the boys are forced to take refuge with one family while the girls are sent to another. Here Daisy sees the fallout of war - food and medicine shortages, a disintegrating infrastructure, and violent deaths. But she also sees people who are trying to milk cows, harvest crops, and perform other vital but unfamiliar tasks. Witnessing this, she is eventually pulled out of her self-absorbtion to perform her own acts of heroism - caring for her young cousin as they cross enemy territory to get back to the farm and reunite with her cousins. Although a short novel, Where I Live Now covers a lot of ground. The kids initially enjoy the war vicariously, then are thrust into the middle where they struggle to survive and finally must deal with going on with life after the war ends. Recommended for teens.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Liz Hall awakens to find herself on a cruise ship with no knowledge of how she got there or where she is going. As she wanders the ship, she notices that most of the other passengers are elderly and it is some time before she realizes that she is dead and she is travelling towards the afterlife. I was curious to see how Zevin was going to handle her version of an afterlife and I wasn't disappointed. It turns out that Elsewhere is very much like Earth, with people having homes, driving cars, holding jobs. However, instead of getting older, people grow younger, until finally as babies they are ready to return to Earth to live out a new life. Liz finds it really hard to accept her own death figuring that at the age of fifteen her life was just starting, but gradually makes friends, gets to know her grandmother who died before she was born, and even finds love. This is a really thought-provoking book, about grief, about letting go, and about being alive. Although in the children's department, it is a book that deals with some pretty adult ideas and would fit well in a teen collection.

So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane
I read this book quite a few years ago and recently have been catching up with some of the other titles in the Wizard series. Premise of this first book in the series is that Nita - bookworm and science geek - takes refuge in the children's department of public library to escape a group of bullies. While there, she spots a book entitled "So You Want to Be A Wizard" and as she reads, realizes that she posesses many of the characteristics needed to train to become a wizard. So begins this series, where wizards work to slow entropy in the universe by fighting against dark forces.
Nita is a well-drawn character who over the course of the series matures, as she encounters challenges and even tragedies in both the real and fantasy world. Despite the premise of young adults training to become wizards, the series is very different from the Harry Potter Books. The magic is rooted in science, particularly physics, and the wizards must always be careful to balance their use of magic against the energy available in the universe. A strong series and highly recommended

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams

Ingrid Levin-Hill's hero is Sherlock Holmes. For several years, the eighth grader has kept a copy of his "Complete Adventures" on her bedside table, and spends a lot of time thinking about how Holmes figures out the world around him. "The more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling..." Holmes tells Dr. Watson.

Everything in Ingrid's world seems pretty commonplace. She lives in a 1950s Cape Cod house located in small cozy town where nothing much happens. She goes to school, plays soccer, fights with her brother - all pretty mundane stuff.

But a wrong turn on the way home from soccer practice lands Ingrid on the doorstep of local eccentric Cracked Up Kate and life starts to get pretty weird. Kate is murdered later that night and Ingrid is going to be in big trouble unless she can retrieve her soccer shoes from Kate's house before the police figure out who they belong to. Next, Ingrid is forced out of her lead role in a local production of "Alice in Wonderland" after the producer is injured under suspicious cirumstances. Somewhere, there is a connection between these two events, and with years of studying the techniques of the world's greatest fictional detective, Ingrid is determined to figure it out.

Abrahams does a wonderful job in creating a three dimensional world in Down the Rabbit Hole. Adults who have read his thriller "The Tutor" will recognize some of the same characters, redrawn for a younger audience, but also in my mind, further developed and more enjoyable.

Ages 10 through 14 (and any age if you enjoy a good mystery)