Lemony Snicket does not want you to read his new book. In fact, he doesn’t want anyone to read it. And really, why should he want you to read it? It’s not like he knows you, or probably even wants to know you. Come to think of it, why would you want to read this book anyway?

“Who Could That Be at This Hour?”is the first book in Lemony Snicket’s new All the Wrong Questions series. It gives the reader details of young Snicket’s childhood, complete with his unusual education at the hands of a mysterious organization. You may be asking: “What mysterious organization? What kind of unusual education?” If you are, then you are asking the wrong questions.

As a child, Lemony Snicket asked the wrong questions quite often. In fact, this new autobiographical series will focus on the four most important wrong questions he asked. The first wrong question—“Who Could That Be at This Hour?”—comes soon after he begins his apprenticeship with the stern, mysterious and dangerously inept S. Theodora Markson. What does the “S” stand for? Silly reader, you’ve asked the wrong question again.

Young Snicket and Ms. Markson travel by car to the deserted Stain’d-by-the-Sea, a seaside town that is no longer by the sea, with a forest of seaweed rather than trees. There, they are introduced to Mrs. Murphy Sallis, who wishes to hire the pair to recover her stolen statue of the Bombinating Beast. It isn’t long, however, until Snicket discovers that what was thought stolen was never stolen at all, and that no one in this desolate little town is who they seem to be.

Filled with mystery, double- and triple-crosses, intrigue and Snicket’s distinctive brand of deadpan humor, literary jokes, sneaky book suggestions and snarky asides, “Who Could It Be at This Hour?” is a wonderfully disorienting ride through the childhood of one of today’s most mysterious and misunderstood authors (otherwise known as Daniel Handler). Like Snicket’s debut, A Series of Unfortunate Events (which has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide), this book contains elements of both the realistic and fantastical, offering just enough to keep the reader from ever truly knowing what will happen next.

Adding to the book’s appeal are the wonderful, ominous and foretelling illustrations by Seth, an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. On the cover, at the beginning of each chapter and scattered throughout the book, Seth’s masterful illustrations give subtle yet important clues to the reader.

Now that you know the wrong questions to ask, it’s time to learn the correct one. That question, obviously, is “Even though Lemony Snicket really doesn’t want me to read his book, should I?” And the answer, of course, is a definitive YES!

Step back into the glorious days of childhood with Ellen Bryan Obed’s lovely, lyrical tribute, Twelve Kinds of Ice, a book whose 64 pages can be easily devoured in one sitting and enjoyed by both children and adults.

Who knew there were so many types of ice, starting with “The First Ice,” a fragile sheet that appeared in a barn bucket when Obed was a girl growing up on the family farm in Maine. “The Second Ice” was a bit thicker, becoming a plaything that could be held, admired, then shattered into shiny shards. In each short chapter, excitement builds as the author remembers how she, her siblings and friends began each season by skating on a neighbor’s field, then on a frozen stream, and later in the middle of a lake, accelerating “to silver speeds at which legs, clouds and sun, wind and cold, raced together.”

The icing on this icy cake was the family’s annual ice rink, known as “Bryan Gardens,” which was built with boards and filled with a garden hose. “It was our Boston Garden,” Obed writes, “our Maple Leaf Gardens, our Montreal Forum. . . . It had just about everything that the great arenas had except a roof. But Bryan Gardens had the sky, and to us, that was the best roof of all.”

Barbara McClintock’s enchanting illustrations bring this winter kingdom to life, her graceful lines showing the skaters’ wonderful whirls and spins atop the many kinds of ice. She catches the thrilling runs of skaters heading downhill, zigzagging through an apple orchard on the magical day that a heavy crust of ice on snow turns the world into a rink. McClintock’s final spread is a whimsical creation, showing how these dreamy thrills live on throughout the year, after all the ice has melted.

Warm up some hot chocolate and cookies, light a fire and gather ’round on a cozy winter eve to read aloud Twelve Kinds of Ice. Then be sure to have everyone’s skates sharpened for your own outing.

He looked the same: the same space alien pajamas, the same holey socks, the same way of descending the stairs on his rump. But Liza knows this boy in front of her at breakfast is not her brother Patrick. He’s too quiet, too polite, and his eyes are strangely vacant.

Liza knows what has happened: the spindlers. The spiderlike creatures have stolen her brother’s soul and taken it to their underground lairs, leaving his body to crumble to dust and release thousands of new spindlers to wreak havoc on unsuspecting humans. Liza’s a willful girl, so she sets off through a hole in the basement wall and, like a famous soul sister named Alice, falls into a strange new wonderland of a world. Teaming up with a rat named Mirabella, Liza meets troglods, nids, the Lumer-Lumpen, the lovely nocturni and the awful scawgs.

Readers will be right there with Liza on her odyssey, who proves her strength and resourcefulness at every turn in the fascinating world below. Oliver has crafted a thoroughly engaging, fast-paced novel that will remind fans of Suzanne Collins’ Gregor the ­Overlander (2004). Besides an exciting story full of terrible and marvelous creatures, this is an ode to the power of stories and the attachments to home. Young readers will be as caught up in the story Oliver spins as souls are trapped in the spindler queen’s web.

Blue, all three pounds of her, was discovered in a copper kettle in December 1941 and adopted by the generous and caring Hannah Spooner. Now Blue is going into fifth grade and spends many of her waking hours wondering about her birth mother. Was she Amelia Earhart? A movie star? Why did she desert Blue?

Set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont against the faint backdrop of the Korean War, True Colors is a gentle page-turner, filled with secrets, mystery and history. Blue’s farm life is simple, if difficult: There are weeds to be pulled and cows to be milked. Blue is in charge of delivering the breads from Hannah’s small bakery and listening to the stories each recipient tells.

Blue is on the verge of puberty, but her best friend, Nadine, seems to have already grown up. It’s a confusing time, made more confusing by other changes. Why is Nadine’s father absent this summer? Why are the farm animals disappearing?

Natalie Kinsey-Warnock envelopes the reader in the world of the early 1950s, where divorce is a terrible scandal, being in trouble means making difficult choices and family secrets are respected by the community as private.

Blue’s 10-year-old voice is especially effective here. She has a lot to think about, but she sees the world clearly through her young eyes. True Colors is a real keeper.

Like troubled, dream-filled sleep, there’s a delightfully mysterious quality to Grace Lin’s new novel, Starry River of the Sky. More a companion than a sequel to her Newbery Honor novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, this is a meditation on home, forgiveness and what it means to be in balance in the world. These are not easy ideas for anyone, but Lin invites young readers to think beyond the page.

The reader is lulled into the tale of Rendi. At first he is a cranky runaway, fleeing his materialistic magistrate father. Later he learns to consider needs greater than his own and to become not only the hero of his life, but the hero of the Village of Clear Sky. The villagers all suffer from the missing moon and worry about the innkeeper’s absent son. Rendi fills in for the missing boy by working as a chore boy at the inn. When a mysterious woman takes up residence there, things slowly begin to change. Her storytelling, and the stories she teases from Rendi, change everything.

Like the earlier novel, much of the story is told through Chinese folktales that are woven together to reveal a mystery. Slowly, through these stories, we see Rendi examine his circumstance, take great risks to save the village, endure painful goodbyes, forgive his father and realize his need for home.

I found myself folding over page corners and flipping back to reread sections as the meaning of the story was slowly revealed. Savoring a book like this reminds me of what I like most about reading: diving deep into a new place and finding personal connections in the most unlikely of characters. Lin has written another book that is truly for all ages.

As historical fiction goes, few do it better than Avi, winner of the Newbery Medal for Crispin: The Cross of Lead. And as a topic for his latest novel, he couldn’t have chosen a more engrossing one than the American Revolution. Avi uses a young female protagonist, who narrates Sophia’s War: A Tale of the Revolution in first person, to tell the thrilling story.

The story opens in 1776 in New York City, where 12-year-old Sophia Calderwood lives with her mother and father. Her older brother, William—a patriot and proud proponent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—has gone missing. When Sophia witnesses the hanging of Nathan Hale, she worries even more about the whereabouts of her brother and about the impending outcome of the war.

Fiercely (yet initially secretly) a supporter of the American cause, Sophia sets off to lend her support to the patriots—serving as a spy while she works as a housemaid for a commander of the British forces. With her life and her family’s at risk, she is determined to do anything possible to foil a treasonous plot that involves Benedict Arnold.

Extremely thorough and accurate research (as detailed in an author’s note) teams with creative license to weave a compelling tale. While many of the characters and situations described in the book are real, Avi invented Sophia as a bridge to tie all the elements together.

Today’s young readers may react with a bit of disbelief to Sophia’s bold spirit amid grueling and dangerous circumstances, like walking 50 miles through rough terrain or visiting an abominable British prison. Through it all, Sophia grows up, learning perhaps more than she intended along the way. Her riveting story also serves as an ideal introduction to some turning-point moments in the nation’s founding.

As anyone with a young son knows, pirates are fascinating and exciting. Many pirate stories, however, are too scary for a younger audience. In The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate, Scott Nash has created an ideal world of pirate birds—sailing in ships through the air—and this helps distance the danger for a younger reader. There is plenty of action in the fighting scenes, but nothing more intense than found in current kids’ movies and books.

Blue Jay is the captain of a pirate ship, complete with a frightening reputation, but he and his crewmates are actually quite nice. Even though they do steal grain and treasure from other ships, they aren’t as violent as Blue Jay’s cousin Teach and his gang of crows.

Captain Blue Jay, like most real blue jays, loves shiny things, and his acquisition of unusually pretty eggs leads to a curious new crewmate: Gabriel the gosling. With Teach hot on their trail, the merry band of birds aboard Blue Jay’s Grosbeak must battle weasels and look for help from a star-nosed mole to bring peace to their world.

Nash’s illustrations are phenomenal and his love of birds is evident in detailed descriptions of each species—right down to their personality characteristics. The characters’ voices steer the story along at a pace sure to keep youngsters reading (though parents should be aware that the language includes pirate words like “damn” and “hell”). This thrilling book should not be missed.

Author Polly Horvath has brought back her lovable character Primrose Squarp from the Newbery Honor book Everything on a Waffle for another year of life in Coal Harbor, a fishing village in British Columbia. Having survived the earlier time when her parents were missing at sea, Primrose now finds herself at loose ends. In lieu of any better project, she makes it her mission to bring together her Uncle Jack and the lovely Miss Bowzer, even if it seems to be against their own intentions. In addition, Primrose decides she herself is in desperate need of a best friend.

Fortunately, her grown-up friends Bert and Evie become foster parents to a teenage boy named Ked who is also in need of a friend. Together they plan the next cookbook for the Fisherman’s Aid fundraiser and bike up to Mendolay Mountain to enjoy the scenery and the quiet. Just as everything in Primrose’s life seems to be settling in to an enjoyable routine, several upsetting things happen at once: Miss Bowzer’s old boyfriend returns to town loggers come to clearcut the mountain, and Ked is accused of stealing. Things go from bad to worse and Primrose is sure nothing will be right again.

As the heroine struggles, the reader is privileged to listen in on her first-person thoughts. Primrose’s observations about people and life in general are worth the reading on their own, and her inclusion of the recipes she gathers adds its own flavor to the tale. Horvath creates a world in which we can truly feel all that a smart 12-year-old girl can feel and leaves us wiser for having done so. You need not have read Everything on a Waffle to enjoy this book, but everything about One Year in Coal Harbor will make you want to.

Colorado anthropologist Jeannie Mobley shines a light on her native state in Katerina’s Wish, her debut novel about an immigrant Bohemian family in a Southern Colorado mining town at the turn of the 20th century. Katerina and her two younger sisters already know the drudgery of daily life as they help their mother with seemingly endless loads of laundry to supplement Papa’s wages in the mines. At the rate they are able to save, Katerina despairs that the family’s dream of having a farm of their own—a dream that brought them so far from home—will ever be a reality.

Katerina, who is almost 14, decides to take matters into her own hands. Her sisters may believe that wishes are granted by a magic fish in a nearby pool, but Katerina knows better. An entrepreneur at heart, she finds a way to grow cucumbers, raise chickens and circumvent the high prices of the only store in town to save money.

Then comes the day of the explosion in the mine. During tense days of waiting for news of the trapped miners, Katerina proves to her mother that she is growing up. It is not only Papa who is missing, but their best friends, Old Jan’s sons, Karel and Mark.

Just as Aaron Hawkins does in his delightful historical novel, The Year Money Grew on Trees, Mobley provides engaging details of Katerina’s creative exploits into gardening and running her own business. It’s also fascinating to see the relationship among the different immigrant groups in the town, and how Katerina finds a way to bring them all together.

Young readers, accustomed to heading out to the store or mall to get new “store bought” clothes at the start of the school year, might be surprised to learn just how hard Katerina and her sisters must work to buy cloth to make a dress. No lecture required: just hand them this thoroughly engaging story.

In this short illustrated chapter book, new readers will giggle along with Robot and Rabbit as they compromise their way through one of childhood’s milestones: the sleepover. Unlikely friends, these two have different ideas about spontaneity, food, games and sleep.

Rabbit is the host of the sleepover and he has made a thorough list and insists on following it, no matter what. The first order of business is to “Make pizza.” Easy enough, until it turns out that these two friends have very different taste buds. Rabbit prefers fresh veggies while Robot loves anything attractive to his magnet hands, especially the nuts and bolts that hold together Rabbit’s furniture. Watching TV is difficult when Rabbit cannot find the remote control, playing Go Fish is impossible when Robot loses power, and going to sleep is made more interesting (and funny) when Robot forgets his pajamas.

Illustrations, in gentle greens and purples, add to the story. When Robot’s magnet hands grab the pizza toppings, alert readers will notice something new in Rabbit’s ear. The thing is there for a few pages, unnoticed, until it is revealed to be the missing remote! Robot in pajamas is also calculated for humor. The pajamas are hooded, transforming the rectangular Robot’s head into a hilarious egg-shape.

An engaging, well-paced story, told with simple (but not too simple) vocabulary is tough to write, but Cece Bell has nailed Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover. Let’s hope it’s the first of a series.

A burning witch, a girl celebrating her birthday, a master puppeteer and his two orphaned assistants, and a dark city half-drowned in fog animate Laura Amy Schlitz’s lushly written Victorian gothic tale, Splendors and Glooms.

It’s Clara Wintermute’s 12th birthday, and the Phenomenal Professor Grisini and his Venetian Fantoccini (puppets) perform at the Wintermute mansion. Later that evening, Clara disappears, and Grisini, “with his foreignness and his flamboyance,” is the prime suspect. His assistants, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall, come to realize that Grisini is not just a puppeteer but an evil magician who has kidnapped Clara.

Until now, Lizzie rose had thought that “magic spells—and evil magicians—They’re only in plays.” But she and Parsefall discover Clara’s horrible fate and soon find themselves en route to Venice, where the stories of Grisini, the children and the witch—Cassandra Sagredo—converge in a magical castle, complete with spells to keep the children from running away.

A challenging read for its intended middle-grade audience, the novel is expertly plotted and elegantly written, a dramatic Dickensian story of good and evil, the odd machinations of fate and the ever-present dripping fog of London. Schlitz animates her characters as adeptly as Grisini does his puppets, and readers may well notice that the fantoccini are not the only things manipulated by strings in this story: Spells, enchantments, desires, secrets and power pull strings of their own, as do—importantly for the fates of Parsefall, Lizzie Rose and Clara—loyalty and love.

Schlitz, author of the 2008 Newbery Medal-winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From A Medieval Village, again demonstrates her storytelling prowess and love of the grand tale. Besides the rich language, setting and plot, Splendors and Glooms features an utterly delicious story that weaves its spell through the fortunes of innocent and not-so-innocent children, the cadaverous puppet master, a dying witch eager for revenge and dramatic action in a castle tower that will have readers as entranced as Grisini’s audiences.

Things are tough for Tommy Pepper. His mother has recently died, his sister refuses to speak, and his father is engaged in a desperate fight to keep their home from being torn down by an over-zealous real estate agent. In What Came from the Stars, the latest book by two-time Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt, Tommy finds his life very different from what it was only a few months earlier—and it only gets stranger when he finds a necklace in his lunchbox and puts it on.

Times are dark for the Valorim—the evil Lord Mondus is only hours away from taking control of the Ethelim, and dooming their race. In an act of desperation, the heroes of the Valorim bind their art and beauty into the Chain of the Valorim Art, and entrust Young Waeglim to protect it from Lord Mondus and his evil army of O’Mondim. Young Waeglim does the only thing he can and spirits it away, through the cosmos and galaxies, and on and on until it falls, unnoticed, into an Ace Robotroid lunch box in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

As soon as Tommy puts the necklace on, he begins drawing beautiful, detailed pictures of the twin suns of Valorim, and acquires a great deal of knowledge about what appears to be a nonexistent universe. However, none of this matters when Ouslim the Liar and one of the O’Mondim begin tearing Plymouth apart, looking for the Chain. Tommy must then protect his family, friends and city, as well as a world he has never seen.

What Came from the Stars is written with two parallel story lines—Tommy’s story in normal print and the Valorim’s story in italics—giving the book added depth and interest. This is a rich fantasy that draws the reader in from the first chapter and keeps hurtling along at a breakneck pace until the exciting and satisfying end. Perfect for fans of science fiction and adventure stories, What Came from the Stars is a fast-paced and thrilling journey that sees a young man grow beyond all expectations.