Anyone who loves to read can remember the books that were watersheds in their literary lives. This is one of the true joys of reading: encountering a book that becomes a magical, life-altering volume. With Inkheart, German author Cornelia Funke has created just such a story a work that could well become a children’s classic, similar in stature to A Wrinkle in Time or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Funke was already a popular author in her native Germany when she made her English-language debut last year with The Thief Lord, a wildly imaginative adventure featuring a group of orphans who manage to survive in modern-day Venice. The book became a bestseller and went on to capture the 2003 Book Sense Book of the Year Award for children’s literature, as well as the American Library Association’s Batchelder Award for best translated book for children. Expectations have been high for her next book, and Inkheart will not disappoint Funke’s new fans.

The novel tells the story of young Meggie, her father Mo and a stranger named Dustfinger who shows up at their doorstep on a stormy night. What happens next is a dark reflection of every child’s experience when he or she discovers that parents are more (or less) than they seem to be. In Meggie’s case, her father has been keeping a secret he is not just a simple bookbinder, and he harbors a special talent, one that defies understanding: under the right circumstances, when he reads aloud from a book, he can bring the characters in it to life! Unfortunately, Mo did this once too often and inadvertently conjured up the evil Capricorn, who escaped into the real world and has been tracking the father and daughter ever since. Things come to a head with the appearance of Dustfinger, possibly the most appealing character in Inkheart and certainly the most complicated. This fire-breathing juggler and trickster is a man of mixed loyalties, coping with a world he doesn’t quite understand. And then there’s Meggie’s great-aunt Elinor, a connoisseur of books who comes to the aid of Meggie and her father.

Inkheart is a magical book, but it isn’t a Harry Potter imitation. This is a story about the real world and what could happen in it if fictional creatures came to life. Funke writes with knowing warmth; she isn’t shy about using literary allusions, even though they might be over the heads of the average sixth-grader. Her “stormy night” opening is reminiscent of the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time, and there are quotes and characters from such works as Peter Pan and The Odyssey sprinkled throughout.

While Inkheart is rich in characters and complicated in plot, it is also a wonderfully visual reading experience. Funke conjures up vivid images of Elinor’s foreboding, book-filled home, of the dreary village where Capricorn holds sway, and of the beautiful Italian countryside, where the majority of the action takes place. And from the moment Meggie glimpses the dark figure of Dustfinger standing in the rain outside her bedroom window the action doesn’t stop. There are quiet moments, to be sure, but they are only breathers in this fast-moving, book-filled fantasy. Inkheart is an engrossing novel that children will treasure for years to come, as much for the paths it opens to them as for the path it leads them down. James Neal Webb writes from Nashville.

The Emerald Atlas begins on a snowy Christmas Eve, when three toddlers are taken from their parents and placed in an orphanage in Boston. Ten years and 12 orphanages later, 14-year-old Kate (who promised her mother to keep her younger siblings safe that fateful night), 12-year-old Michael and 11-year-old Emma find themselves in the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans. Perhaps they have one more shot at a real home when they are shipped off to the village of Cambridge Falls.

Their new orphanage is the grand estate of a mysterious Dr. Stanislaus Pym, and Kate, Michael and Emma are its only residents. While exploring their new abode, the children find an old green book that transports them to the past, where they find the missing children of Cambridge Falls, held captive by an evil countess. The trio learns that the Atlas is one of three Books of Beginning that possess the secrets of the birth of the universe—and that the Countess will do anything to find them.

With magic, humor and unforgettable characters, John Stephens’ remarkable debut novel follows Kate, Michael and Emma as they attempt to outwit the Countess, rescue the children and maybe even save the world in the process. Unanswered questions and two more books to locate ensure a sequel and more robust adventures ahead.

Banish any preconceived notions of apple-cheeked sweethearts cranking out Toll House cookies. Some of the grannies depicted in the new anthology <B>In My Grandmother’s House: Award-Winning Authors Tell Stories About Their Grandmothers</B> are warm and inspirational in the classic mold; others are distant; and some are downright hateful. This collection of a dozen tales, all by women, offers a broad education in the infinite variety that is grandmotherhood. Alternately delightful and disturbing, these glimpses are powerful in the aggregate. Tellingly, Bonnie Christensen, who instigated the anthology and contributes a story called "The Fairy Grandmother," had a peach of a granny, who placed fun far above neatness and, well into her 80s, delighted in performing "parlor-trick contortions," including a family favorite, the "human chicken." That Grammy Cole was caring and brave, beyond a barrel of laughs, comes clear later in the narrative, when she faces cancer with heedless panache, reasoning "it was better it had happened to her than to someone who couldn’t handle it."

At the other end of the emotional spectrum is Joan Abelove’s germophobic Grandma Leah, the subject of the story "The Best Parts." Known for yanking sheets off the bed promptly at 6:00 a.m. regardless of the occupants she insisted on washing the linens daily and for shunning sickbed duty, Grandma Leah even refused to visit her own daughter as she lay dying of a brain tumor. Fortunately for Abelove, she had a palliative counterpart in Grandma Sophie, a feisty socialist who taught her to play poker.

Some of the grannies depicted here are certifiable saints, while others inspire less felicitous tributes from the authors. Clearly, not all the writers who rose to the challenge of describing their grandmothers worshipped their subjects. But as this provocative anthology shows the one thing this beloved family figure hasn’t been is forgotten.

<I>Sandy MacDonald writes from Massachusetts.</I>

There’s a reason school science fairs and invention contests are so popular, and it’s not because mom and dad want to see their little darlings win an award. Kids like to create stuff. When it comes right down to it, playing is a form of inventing: children turn sticks and trash can lids into swords and shields; a car up on blocks becomes an interstellar spaceship; a mound of dirt can be turned into a tiny city. Let’s face it the first anti-gravity device will probably be dreamed up by a 10-year-old.

If your incipient inventor needs some inspiration, What a Great Idea! provides a delightful excursion into the history of those eureka moments that altered the course of civilization. Author Stephen M. Tomecek and illustrator Dan Stuckenschneider have created a fascinating book that covers everything from the plow to the personal computer. The task of singling out really significant inventions sounds daunting, but Tomecek has done it, and like the integrated circuit, he has created an integrated book, simultaneously linking invention with history and the march of civilization.

Some of his choices might surprise you. The wheel, for instance, is not included. Instead, Tomecek cleverly focuses on the axle, and he makes a very good case for it. Other offbeat choices are the invention of fertilizer, art and anesthesia. Throughout, Tomecek not only describes how each idea came to fruition, and how each invention works, he devotes considerable space to the impact each had on our culture, and on the ideas that followed as direct or indirect results of the invention.

It’s too bad there’s not an adult version of this book, but then it wouldn’t have the clear and colorful illustrations by Dan Stuckenschneider. Stephen M. Tomecek’s What a Great Idea! should be required reading for the little scientist in your household. And for you as well.

James Neal Webb would like to invent a way to cram more hours into the day.

Set in a small Pennsylvania town in the early 1900s, Lois Lowry’s <B>The Silent Boy</B> tells the story of Katy Thatcher, a precocious doctor’s daughter, and the unusual boy she meets on a nearby farm. Full of authentic historical details, elements of mystery and the wonder of a young girl awakening to the world around her, <B>The Silent Boy</B> is a satisfying, suspenseful novel young readers will love. Katy, who will one day become a doctor herself, encounters Jacob Stoltz through visits with her father to the Stoltz farm, and through Peggy, the family’s hired girl, who is also Jacob’s sister. Peggy, like many teens of her time, works for a well-to-do family in this case the Thatchers. Her older sister Nell works for their neighbors, and the plot revolves around these two young women.

Katy’s life seems idyllic in many ways. She goes sledding in winter, watches fireworks on the fourth of July and enjoys visits with Grandma. Within this rural world, Jacob’s behavior his stubborn silence and odd way of moving, his remarkable ability with animals is considered strange. To readers, it’s obvious that he is autistic, but the community, including Katy and her family, believes he is touched in the head. Jacob’s autism, Katy’s curiosity and the dreams of the two sisters all come together in a wonderful conclusion.

<B>The Silent Boy</B> is unusually visual, not only in the wonderful verbal pictures Lois Lowry creates, but in the old family photographs she uses as chapter headings. It’s almost as if the book is a biography rather than fiction. Lowry’s mother grew up in small-town Pennsylvania, and her father was both a doctor and a photographer. Lowry herself studied photography and has said that the family photos used in the book provided the structure for the narrative.

<B>The Silent Boy</B> is a simple story, and therein lies its power. A two-time Newbery Award winner, Lowry succeeds in evoking a time long past, but without steeping readers in nostalgia. Could it be that a third Newbery Medal is in the offing?

The team that brought us How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? is back with a sickbed corollary that goes down as easily as a good laugh. Both dinosaur books are essentially didactic: backhanded primers indicating, by bad example, the way children ought to behave. But because the dinosaurs depicted are such monstrous miscreants, kids get to exult vicariously in their capers while absorbing useful pointers.

The new book is peppered with leading questions. "What if a dinosaur catches the flu? / Does he whimper and whine in between each Atchoo? / Does he drop dirty tissues all over the floor? / Does he fling all his medicine out of the door?" Read-along audiences will eagerly provide the correct answers: a resounding "No!" accompanied by the occasional "Ewww." Ten successive dinosaurs-as-children (each one gets a spread, with its name emblazoned somewhere in the scene) tackle such touchy issues as throwing up, visiting the doctor, "opening wide" and getting the necessary rest.

Teague’s illustrations expand on the ingenious conceit begun in the first book of otherwise ordinary households in which the resident "child" happens to be a gigantic dino. The scenario leads to such visions as a rattle-tailed Euoplocephalus irritably tossing off his covers and a mom trying in vain to drag her balky Styracosaurus in to see "the doc." The real miracle is how much human expression Teague manages to eke out in his portrayals of these put-upon invalids. Bleary-eyed, bored, self-dramatizing, scared, obstinate, sneaky (that’s a Tuojiangosaurus trying to hide behind a magazine in the clinic waiting room), greedy (at the prospect of a lollipop) and cozy (tucked at last in bed), these dinos run through the gamut of sickly emotions. Little listeners, some of whom may themselves be bed-bound, get to empathize and enjoy the fun.

As Hazel Rochman has written, "Great literature humanizes history." Beverly Naidoo’s new collection of short stories is excellent literature, and it humanizes the history of apartheid in South Africa. Each story in Out of Bounds represents a decade of that history, dramatizing a crucial political act in the step-by-step, decade-by-decade suppression of the rights of Africans. Readers will feel they have read a great book and gained a good deal of understanding at the same time.

Many of the Afrikaners who took over the South African government in 1948 had been supporters of Adolph Hitler. They institutionalized racism through the passage of hundreds of laws classifying the so-called races and defining the respective rights and restrictions of the classes. The stories in this superb collection are grounded in the everyday experience of children Whites, Coloreds, Indians and black Africans who daily faced the effects of racism. "The Dare" (1948) portrays a white girl who gains a bit of understanding when her stealing of poinsettias is overlooked, while a black boy who stole an orange from the same man is beaten. In "One Day, Lily, One Day," (1960) Lily says, "I didn’t understand that Uncle Max wasn’t allowed to take me a little white girl to the park because he was black. When the police took Daddy away, I didn’t understand that as well." By 1995, Nelson Mandela had been released from prison after 27 years, apartheid laws had been cancelled, and democratic elections had been held. Schools were opened to all children, yet some white parents and teachers resisted. "The Playground" (1995) portrays the tension and the hope as schoolchildren made their way in this new world.

Grim as the history is, the spirit of this collection is hopeful. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says in his foreword, the history must be acknowledged and the new democracy supported. "Never again will we want to treat fellow human beings in this fashion." Naidoo writes, "There have been many different tests for the human spirit in South Africa the land in which I was born and they are the stuff of my stories." A fine collection it is, sure to be among the best and most important books of the new year.

Dean Schneider is a middle school English teacher in Nashville.