Deborah Hopkinson

Karen Healey’s debut novel, Guardian of the Dead, takes place at a boarding school in New Zealand, where Ellie Spencer is living away from home for the first time. As the novel begins, she seems concerned with normal teenage pastimes—settling into a new school environment, getting a bit tipsy with her friend Kevin, becoming involved in a play and catching glimpses of handsome day student Mark Nolan, who inspires daydreams as she sits in her Classics class.

The fantasy elements of the story evolve slowly, and Ellie herself is surprised by her increasingly intense interactions with Mark. When she literally runs into him, she experiences a physical shock, realizing that “the perfect planes of his pale face had rearranged themselves into something frightening.” But as unsettling as her encounters with Mark become, Ellie finds herself turning to him for help when her friend Kevin seems to be in danger from a mysterious woman named Reka. In her efforts to save Kevin, Ellie must learn to trust her own emerging powers as well as the world Mark opens for her—a mythological world populated by mist-dwelling Maori fairy people, known as the patupaiarehe, who need human lives to gain immortality. The incredible battle that follows tests Ellie’s commitment to her friends, her country and her growing love for Mark.

Guardian of the Dead will appeal to readers who are fans of young adult authors such as Holly Black and Libba Bray. And without a doubt, Healey will soon have many fans of her own.

The Devil’s Paintbox begins in April 1865. At the close of the Civil War, 16-year-old Aiden Lynch and his younger sister, Maddy, are near starvation, the sole survivors on their family’s Kansas farm. So when a man named Jefferson Jackson shows up looking to recruit workers for a Seattle lumber camp, Aiden knows his only chance is to convince the man that taking them along is worth the risk.

In this compelling coming-of-age adventure for teens, Victoria McKernan, author of the acclaimed Shackleton’s Stowaway for middle-grade readers, doesn’t shy away from some of the grittier aspects of life in the old West. Aiden’s journey is marked by hardship, tragedy and conflict. Through Aiden’s experiences, readers glimpse a changing world, where settlers, soldiers, timber workers, Civil War veterans, women and Native Americans struggle for existence.

Aiden is a likeable, engaging hero, and the secondary characters stand out as real individuals of the time. For instance, the wagon train’s doctor is a man trying to recover from his war experiences. A young woman Aiden meets explains why she is forced to make her living as a prostitute. McKernan also captures the dramatic, often random events that transformed people’s lives: a difficult crossing, an encounter with a rattlesnake, an outbreak of disease.

Smallpox and its tragic effects on Native Americans are major themes of the novel. The book gets its title from the words of a doctor describing this dreaded disease: “This death is a devil child playing with a paintbox, just spattering all over. You reach out to grab its hand and make it stop, but you find this devil child is made of smoke.”

Through his unlikely friendship with Tupic, a Nez Perce boy, Aiden is thrown headfirst into the controversies surrounding the vaccination of Indians against smallpox. The author’s extensive research makes Aiden’s world accessible to readers, whether it’s daily life on a wagon train, or learning to survive in the harsh world of Pacific Northwest timber camps.

The Devil’s Paintbox is a wonderful choice for teens—both boys and girls—who want a break from a diet of fantasy, science fiction and of course, vampires.

Of course, scary stories have been with us for a long time. In a new anthology of horror stories, celebrated artist Barry Moser has created evocative and suspenseful wood block prints to accompany classic stories by such authors as Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells and O. Henry. Scary Stories is a handsome book and a gift that’s perfect for Halloween, featuring well-known stories such as Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and an excerpt from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Also included are contemporary tales by modern masters such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Ray Bradbury. Moser, the acclaimed illustrator of works including Just So Stories, In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, has created some magnificent artwork for this collection. There’s a gorgeous, frightening tiger for Stephen King’s Here There Be Tygers, as well as some truly ghastly illustrations, especially the title character in E.F. Benson’s The Bus-Conductor. Scary Stories is a volume that is sure to become a classic all on its own.

Deborah Hopkinson’s latest book for young readers is Into the Firestorm, A Novel of San Francisco 1906.

Jack Gantos is perhaps best known as the author of books for younger readers, including the award-winning Joey Pigza novels for middle graders and the Rotten Ralph picture books. But Gantos has written successfully for young adults as well. In his new novel, The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, Gantos offers a darkly delicious tale that will both challenge and appeal to teen readers.

In an introduction, the author describes the book as a plain and true small-town story about a family love curse that is so passionate and so genuinely expressed that it transcends everything commonly accepted about how love reveals itself or conceals itself. The narrator of this small-town Pennsylvania tale is a girl named Ivy, who lives with her mother in the Kelly Hotel, across the street from the Rumbaugh pharmacy. The pharmacy is owned by the eccentric twins, Ab and Dolph, who are alike in more than looks and profession. As Ivy discovers, the twins are bound by a powerful love for their mother, the overbearing Mrs. Rumbaugh. Mrs. Rumbaugh, however, has been dead for eight years. But Ab and Dolph have found a way to do something extraordinary to keep their love for her alive something that appalls Ivy, but also makes perfect sense to her, because she loves her own mother as passionately and fully as they love theirs. Don't worry, Ivy tells her mother later. Someday I'll do the same to you, too. And in that moment, a truth is revealed that sets in motion the course of Ivy's life choices. For Ivy, too, is inflicted with the curse of the Rumbaughs the curse of loving her mother too much. (Without giving too much away, do take care if your teen takes an interest in taxidermy after reading this book.)

In this darkly funny novel, Gantos explores what it means to lose a parent, especially a beloved mother. Without monsters or the supernatural, Gantos has exploited the traditions of the gothic to create a funny, sad and thought-provoking novel for teens.

Deborah Hopkinson's latest book of nonfiction is Up Before Daybreak.

Fourteen-year-old Nate Chance knows that times are hard on his 400-acre Montana dairy farm. His dad has been having a streak of bad luck: if it wasn’t milk virus, it was drought, or the need to buy expensive equipment. And it doesn’t help that Poppa, his mother’s father, seems to think this is all his son-in-law’s fault for not being a better farmer. On top of all this, Mom and Dad’s fights are getting worse all the time.

Still, Nate and his little sister, Junie, are able to appreciate many things that make their father special: his ability to build anything, rattle off batting averages and answer just about any question in science. So when Nate comes home from school one day to find police officers leading his father away with blood pouring down his face, he finds his world shattered and his loyalties torn. At last, he learns that his father, after a botched suicide attempt, has been left blind and sent to a mental institution.

In the coming months, Nate and Junie find themselves confronting the prejudice of classmates and their families. Despite the trauma at home, Nate tries to focus on something close to his heart: the eighth-grade science fair. He dreams of winning first prize and showing his father the trophy. Paired with a girl named Naomi, who struggles with her own difficult family situation, Nate determines to build something called a cloud chamber, an apparatus to make atomic particles visible to the naked eye.

Nate, Junie and Naomi are appealing characters. Maynard shows us their attempts to balance the world of school and peer relationships, while at the same time trying to sort through the tumultuous events in their families. Somehow, by the end of this difficult year, Nate and Naomi succeed in building the cloud chamber. As it turns out, Nate does not achieve the public recognition of which he had dreamed. Still, he finds a way to use the cloud chamber to come to a better appreciation of both of his parents, and an acceptance of the future. Deborah Hopkinson latest book for children is Who Was Charles Darwin?