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Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman and Judy Pedersen

Arraying different voices like threads on a loom, Fleischman (Bull Run) weaves a seamless tale of the advent of a garden in urban Cleveland and how it unites a community. Here Fleischman slips with equal ease into the voices of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl grieving for the father she never knew; a retired peace activist; a shopkeeper from Delhi; a dedicated British nurse; a 39-year-old Korean widow and crime victim hesitantly rejoining the world; a pregnant Mexican teenager; and seven other equally diverse characters. Fleischman carefully adds texture upon texture, crafting his story with wry humor and lustrous imagery: dead leaves reappear as the winter snows melt away "like a bookmark showing where you'd left off"; beans inadvertently uprooted are laid back in the ground "as gently as sleeping babies." The story's quiet beauty unfurls effortlessly--and lingers after the final page has been turned. Ages 10-up. Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

Arraying different voices like threads on a loom, Fleischman (Bull Run) weaves a seamless tale of the advent of a garden in urban Cleveland and how it unites a community. Here Fleischman slips with equal ease into the voices of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl grieving for the father she never knew; a retired peace activist; a shopkeeper from Delhi; a dedicated British nurse; a 39-year-old Korean widow and crime victim hesitantly rejoining the world; a pregnant Mexican teenager; and seven other equally diverse characters. Fleischman carefully adds texture upon texture, crafting his story with wry humor and lustrous imagery: dead leaves reappear as the winter snows melt away "like a bookmark showing where you'd left off"; beans inadvertently uprooted are laid back in the ground "as gently as sleeping babies." The story's quiet beauty unfurls effortlessly--and lingers after the final page has been turned. Ages 10-up. Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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March Toward the Thunder by Joseph Bruchac

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Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks

Starred Review. Sinister yet seductive, this brooding thriller bears all the Brooks (Lucas) hallmarks, chiefly the British author's painful awareness of teenage alienation, made urgent by violent events; and a marked taste for ambiguity. Five teens precede a trip to a carnival with a visit to their long-abandoned hideout; as the narrator, Pete, explains, all five used to be friends, now they see one another as people you used to know. The next morning, one of them is missing Raymond, a borderline type who believes his black rabbit can talk to him as is a local girl turned wild-child celebrity, seen taunting Raymond the previous evening. As the police hunt for the starlet, Pete alone worries about Raymond and begins trying to track him. Brooks calibrates the relationships among these characters with such subtlety that readers get swept up even by the MacGuffins, and it's in the characters' hidden histories that Pete finds his clues. A running motif about the relationship between close observation and intuition might encourage readers to pay unusually strict attention; it will equip them for the semi-open ending. Ages 12 up. (July) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Nation by Terry Pratchett

Starred Review. In Carnegie Medalist Pratchett's (the Discworld novels; A Hat Full of Sky) superb mix of alternate history and fantasy, the king of England, along with the next 137 people in line to the throne, has just succumbed to the plague; the era might be akin to the 1860s or '70s. As the heir apparent is being fetched from his new post as governor of an island chain in the South Pelagic Ocean, his daughter, the redoubtable Ermintrude, still en route to join him in the South Pelagic, has been shipwrecked by a tsunami. She meets Mau, whose entire people have been wiped out by the great wave (he escaped their fate only because he was undergoing an initiation rite on another island). She and Mau each suffer profound crises of faith, and together they re-establish Mau's nation from other survivors who gradually wash up on shore and rediscover (with guidance from spirits) its remarkable lost heritage. Neatly balancing the somber and the wildly humorous in a riveting tale of discovery, Pratchett shows himself at the height of his powers. Ages 12 up. (Oct.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

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Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman

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Aurelie: A Faerie Tale by Heather Tomlinson

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Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi

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The Glass of Time: The Secret Life of Miss Esperanza Gorst by Michael Cox

Starred Review. Set in 1876, Cox's gripping second gothic thriller (after The Meaning of Night) follows the fortunes of 19-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst, whose guardian charges her to go undercover as a lady's maid. Without knowing precisely why she's doing so, Gorst insinuates herself into the inner circle of Baroness Tansor, the fiance of the preceding volume's villain, Phoebus Daunt. The fake maid soon learns that her mistress has many secrets, and may, in fact, have been complicit in the death of a former servant. Cox excels at conveying his heroine's conflict over deceiving her employer, especially after learning the role the lady played in her own difficult personal history. While readers unfamiliar with the first book will find themselves deeply engaged by the elegant descriptive prose, those with the benefit of the full context and nuances of The Meaning of Night will better appreciate this sequel. (Oct.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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