“What’s to be done about the gloom that’s everywhere?” McNulty, the fire-eater, says to 13-year-old Bobby Burns. He’s a small man, his skin scarred and covered with tattoos of women and dragons. He has pointed gold teeth and deeply creased cheeks, and he smells of smoke and sweat. He’s a “devil, a demon, a rascal,” and it turns out that Bobby’s father knew him in Burma during World War II, that “mad mad time before your time, from a time of bloody blasted war” that spawned fakirs, magic men, dervishes and miracle-makers in the markets, roadsides and frontiers of Asia.

And now the world is near disaster again. It’s 1962. Russia has been testing nuclear bombs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis has made fragile everything Bobby and his friends love in little Keely Bay, a coal-mining town in England. What’s to be done when your small part of the world your family and friends and home is endangered? What do you do when your father is sick, perhaps about to die? Almond’s novels have won several major awards including the Whitbread Award for Best Children’s Book and the Smarties Book Prize in England and the Printz Award in the United States for best young adult novel. No writer today writes so poetically, beautifully and philosophically in such simple, elegant prose as David Almond. In this short tale of one moment in one town, Almond writes of friends and community, life and death, evil and resistance to evil.

What’s to be done about war and sickness and evil? “There’s ancient battles to be fought,” says Bobby’s father. “Let’s do it boldly and bravely,” and in the meantime, “Make sure you get your good times in, son. You never know what’s round the corner.” The world may be mysterious and threatening, but Bobby comes to appreciate his place in it. In an evocative passage near the end of the novel, Bobby records the pleasures and things to value in his “tiny corner of the world.” Almond takes on big ideas in little Keely Bay, and readers will be awed by this beautiful story about living in a world where wonders never cease. “Sometimes,” says Ailsa, “the world’s just so amazing.” And so is this novel.

Top-selling author Louise Rennison has once again captured the more hilarious elements of the teen experience with Away Laughing on a Fast Camel: Even More Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. Although the title doesn’t mention nunga-nungas or snogging, never fear: written in Rennison’s trademark, freewheeling, made-up-word-laden style, Away Laughing picks right up where Dancing In My Nuddy-Pants left off.

The action takes place during two eventful months in the life of Georgia, a self-obsessed, yet kind teenager who’s got an upbeat, wacky personality and a keen eye for the humor in ordinary situations. Her minute-by-minute descriptions of the showdowns between her cat, Angus, and Mr. And Mrs. Across the Street are some of the book’s funniest bits.

There are, of course, many funny bits in Away Laughing, and Rennison’s talent for character development adds to the book’s compulsive readability. Although Georgia chatters on about numerous people, from best friend Jas to hapless teacher Elvis Attwood, each one is memorable.

Georgia fends her way through a forest of vexation, frustration and hormonal fluctuation. Her boyfriend, the Sex God, has gone away and hardly ever writes, but then there’s Dave the Laugh, a friend who gives her good advice and is also pretty sexy. Georgia’s parents seem intent on embarrassing her with their mere existence, and her little sister, well, here’s a quote: “My life is over and I am a mad toddler’s playdough person.” Drama aside, though, Georgia’s a good kid whose love for her imperfect parents and sister is evident beneath the harrumphing and eye-rolling. She’s also a character with a knack for creative linguistics. Some words have “osity” at the end for emphasis (“dignity” becomes “dignitosity”), while others are recognizable as English words or expressions, such as “bacofoil” instead of “aluminum foil.” There are certain words, though “boy entrancers” and “pingy pongoes” come to mind for which it’s best to rely on context clues, or turn to the glossary in the back of the book. Easy-peasy! Linda M. Castellitto writes from her marvy home in Rhode Island.

When I was growing up, teenagers had adulthood thrust upon them in the form of an unpopular war and its accompanying cultural upheaval. We learned—and believed—that the only way to change the world was to be a part of it. We lobbied to lower the voting age to 18, and won. We changed the world all right, but the law of unintended consequences caught up with us, and the reverberations of that time echo across the generations. Today, that passion for change is gone, and voting has declined to a point to where our participation in democracy is no better than many third-world dictatorships. So what’s a kid to do?

Janet Tashjian has her own answer, and his name is Larry, or rather his alias is Larry. His real name is Josh Swensen, and he’s back to tweak a complacent country in Vote For Larry. It’s been almost two years since the events of The Gospel According to Larry, Tashjian’s award-winning teen novel wherein the young crusader took on America’s consumer culture via the Internet. After faking his own death, he’s been hiding out in Colorado, decidedly not practicing the anti-consumerism philosophy he espoused to the world. He’s created a new identity, enrolled in college (at UC-Boulder), and found himself a new girlfriend. His embrace of the consumer culture comes to a shocking halt when someone from his past reappears in his life.

What follows is vintage Larry. His former soulmate, Beth, along with her boyfriend Simon, is determined to be a part of the American political system, and she wants Josh along for the ride. If you’re Josh Swensen, you don’t do anything halfway, so he decides to run for the biggest prize of all: president of the United States. The fact that he’s too young to serve is only a minor obstacle, and Vote For Larry takes us along on Josh’s passionate quest to make a difference. Things won’t be easy, though, with the media and both political parties dead set against him, not to mention his old nemesis, "Betagold."

Vote For Larry is a crash course in the rough and tumble world of national politics, and teen readers will get a taste of just what it takes in idealism and courage to achieve such goals.

When this story opens, 15-year-old Ruby says, “My life better not turn out to be like one of those hideous books where the mother dies.” She hates books like that, where the main character’s mother dies, she has to go live with her alcoholic father who beats her, and she turns into a psychopathic ax murderer. Ruby doesn’t want that. But she doesn’t want what she has either. Her mother has just died, and she’s flying off to Hollywood to live with a father she has never even known, the famous actor Whip Logan, who divorced her mother before Ruby was born, or so she thinks. Ruby is miserable in Hollywood, and she is determined never to give her father a break. She lives in a mansion with a front hall twice the size of her old house, an indoor fishpond, a curved marble staircase and a bedroom right out of her dreams. She is committed to detesting it all, including the drives to school in any of her father’s several classic cars, the bizarre array of actors’ sons and daughters at her new school and classes such as Freudian Dream Interpretation. Still, it is kind of cool to have Cameron Diaz as a next-door neighbor.

For all of her acute and humorous observations of the high school scene and her self-righteous attacks on her father, there are things Ruby doesn’t know or understand, and there are surprises in store for her and the reader. Sonya Sones is one of the leading practitioners of the novel in verse for young adult readers, and readers will enjoy this new book every bit as much as her previous novel, What My Mother Doesn’t Know, a huge hit with teens. Ruby’s voice is pitch-perfect, with all of the humor, high spirits, melodrama and wisecracking typical of a smart teenager plopped down in an unwanted situation.

By the end, Ruby is beginning to find her way in this bizarre new life, and she finds pieces of the puzzle of her life that begin to make her seem whole. She likes that, and her life no longer seems destined to be a hideous book. Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

Julie Anne Peters' newest novel, Luna, is a wonderfully crafted story about a young girl named Regan and her brother, Liam. Liam is unhappy in his boy's body, and has, ever since he can remember, wanted to be a girl. And so, at night, under the gentle light of the moon, he becomes one a carefree girl named Luna.

Regan is supportive of her brother, and patiently allows him to wake her up each night as he slips into her room and tries on girlhood, with the assistance of her clothing and makeup. She joins him in keeping his secret from their parents and their peers, and empathizes with the pain he feels at not revealing his true self.

A breaking point is approaching, however: The teenaged Liam decides he is no longer willing to hide his true identity, and Regan is afraid of what will happen if he shares his secret with their family, friends and schoolmates. Will they be understanding and kind, or will they ostracize him? Will Liam always need her to be constantly by his side always ready to listen, to praise his girlhood, to be nearly consumed by him just as she is beginning to learn more about her own place in the world?

Peters has written several acclaimed novels for teens and middle-grade readers, including Define "Normal" and Keeping You a Secret. In Luna, her skill shines through in her honest and sensitive exploration of what can happen when a relationship shifts, when people need to stretch and grow as individuals and risk possible damage to their strong connection. Her portraits of the children's parents, and her depictions of Luna's tentative forays into public places, are powerful and memorable. So, too, is Luna as a whole: It's an important story told in a way that will surely educate and inspire its readers, be they transgender teens who have heretofore felt alone and misunderstood, or the people who love them.

Luke’s father died two years ago, and since then his life has gone down the tubes. He feels as if everything is falling apart: he’s doing poorly in school, he’s drifting apart from his mother, and he’s gone so far as to get mixed up with the town’s lowlife characters Skin, Speedy and Daz. The story opens with a plan to break into Mrs. Little’s house and steal the box the trio has spied through the window, figuring it must contain something valuable. But when 14-year-old Luke climbs a tree and goes in through an upstairs window, he finds more than anyone expected and something he must keep from Skin and his cohorts, knowing full well that noncompliance with Skin can be deadly. Music is at the heart of Luke’s very being, as it had been for his dad, too. He is a musical genius, an accomplished pianist and he hears sounds, a whole cacophony of sounds of mysterious origin a girl weeping, bells and chords and deep rumbling sound. It is his ability with music that finds, quite literally and mystically, a sympathetic chord with Natalie, the strange little girl he finds in Mrs. Little’s house. She is blind and has the mind of a four-year-old, but she responds to the music Luke plays. As Luke becomes her savior and listens to the music of his being, he realizes the loving presences in his life and finds a way to confront Skin and his gang. Tim Bowler’s writing, like that of David Almond, is intricate, lyrical and poetic, infused with magic realism, a prose style that perfectly matches the theme of the firmament the celestial bodies, the music of the spheres, heaven in the universe and within ourselves. And as Luke regains his life, he regains his music. This is one of those books that pulls you in right from the start, spurring you to race ahead and see what happens next, but it’s so nicely written that readers will also relish the well-crafted prose. Bowler has created a compelling story with much to say about loss, love and the affirmation of life.

Janie Gorman strives to be a normal high school freshman, but the fact that she lives on a goat farm doesn’t help her much in her quest for “normal.” She hops on the school bus smelling of goat poop (thanks to her morning chore of milking the goats), and she eats lunch in the library, because none of her friends have the same lunch period as her. To make matters worse, Janie’s mom insists on writing an extremely embarrassing blog about “farm life.” None of these trials are made any easier by Janie’s knowledge that she was the one who recommended the move to the farm in the first place!

In a realistic and funny voice, Janie manages to make fun of herself and her peculiar situation in a way that provokes genuine empathy. She experiences her first real crush on a boy and feels the pain of trying to hang onto an old and cherished friendship in the face of quite a few challenges. She learns that making new friends can be just as wonderful as hanging onto the old, and she deals with the loss of someone important to her, learning a lot about herself in the process. She does all of this with humor and a great deal of self-awareness. Although she wants to be “normal,” she begins to embrace what it is that makes her different, and that is refreshing and fun to read.

Although Frances O’Roark Dowell is a best-selling and highly acclaimed author of novels for young readers, Ten Miles Past Normal is her first novel for teens. She lives up to her acclaim in this unusual coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old girl who is far from normal, but very endearing.

Jasper Jones starts with a bang. Charlie Bucktin is at home in bed when Jasper, a neighborhood outcast and older boy, taps on his window asking for help. All of 13 and a bit of a bookworm, Charlie follows and is terrified by what Jasper shows him. By night’s end, he’s had his first drink, first cigarette, and is on the way to his first felony obstruction of justice charge. This book pulls no punches at the outset.

So it’s confusing when author Craig Silvey abandons that energetic pace for the rest of the book. The neighborhood gossip in this small Australian coal-mining town is certainly juicy—there’s marital infidelity, racism, incest, suicide and the vicious vandalism of a flowerbed—but each of these side trips pulls focus from the plot thread that opens the book. Charlie’s first-person voice on the page is mature beyond his 13 years (when pondering a world where bad things happen to good people, he describes it as “A world that’s three-quarters water, none of which can quench your thirst”). But in the midst of a potentially life-altering mystery, he idly goofs off with his best friend. And talks about cricket matches. For pages on end. A reader could be forgiven for shouting out, “Get back to the corpse!”

Given all that, there’s still a good coming-of-age story here, wound through all these other subplots. Charlie is alternately likable and ridiculous; in other words, a 13-year-old. And the half-Aborigine Jasper, caught between two worlds, could have sprung from the pages of those Mark Twain books Charlie’s always got his face buried in; he’s the Jim to Charlie’s Huck, and their relationship has an interesting arc. There’s much room for improvement here, but Jasper Jones is a brave and ambitious novel.

Sarah wasn’t sure what she was looking for when she signed up for a class trip to the Florida Everglades. An opportunity to finally make some friends at the new school where she’s an unpopular scholarship student? The possibility of learning more from her favorite teacher? A chance to try her hand at photography with her dad’s fancy camera? No matter what she was seeking originally, Sarah finds much more than she bargained for when, in an attempt to escape her superficial cabin mates, she fakes an illness and instead heads out on an airboat captained by Andy, a boy she’s just met.

When the airboat capsizes, however, Sarah must overcome her fears of snakes, spiders, gators and the zillion other dangers that lurk just below the surface of the scummy water or hide amid the razor-sharp sawgrass. Walking 10 miles back to land may not seem like such a big deal, but it sure is when those 10 miles are through knee-high muck, when you don’t have food or drinkable water, when mosquitoes constantly pester you and lightning storms threaten.

Andy seems like the consummate swamp rat, skilled and confident, chiding Sarah for her city girl’s fears. But as they spend more time together, Sarah discovers that she has her own skills and strengths, too—ones that may become necessary to keep them both alive.

Some readers might be puzzled to discover in the novel’s final pages that the main characters’ races (which have until then been discussed only obliquely and somewhat inconsistently) precipitate one of the novel’s major conflicts; after the kind of life-or-death moments Sarah and Andy have already shared, this drama seems somewhat imposed and unnecessary.

Like many adventure and survival novels for teens, Lost in the River of Grass is also a coming-of-age story, as Sarah gains immense knowledge about herself and her capabilities in a short, intense time period. In addition to outlining this profound personal growth, author Ginny Rorby also introduces readers to the bizarre, almost otherworldly environment of the Everglades, a place readers may even beg to visit—but not without a big can of bug spray and some sturdy waterproof shoes.

Back in the heyday of circuses, tents were waterproofed, believe it or not, with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline. This substance turned the big top into a deadly inferno at a circus in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1944. In his new novel in verse, Worlds Afire, poet Paul Janeczko tells the story of the tragedy that left 167 people dead and 500 more hurt. This is Janeczko's first novel, and in it, he gives voice to 29 eyewitnesses, including a circus buff, a gorilla attendant, a firefighter and a nurse, all of whom share their experiences in spare, lyrical lines. There are poems about the setting up of the circus and the excitement it engenders in the community. Then, circus-goers and circus workers talk about what they like and what they do. When the fire breaks out, the rush of voices matches the roar of the flames, as the horror of the spectacle becomes evident. State troopers come to the scene, children fail to show up at home, a little girl later known as Little Miss 1565 is never claimed from the makeshift morgue. A fire expert estimates the fire took six, maybe 10, minutes to wreak its havoc and exact its toll when "flames shot up the side of the tent like a dragon roaring to life."

The story is grim, and the author provides no resolution, no reflection nor philosophy to make sense of the tragedy. What hope there is resides in the mix of voices themselves. It's the voice of the father who saves his child then stops to save others, of the nurse who works stoically amidst the suffering, of the camera operator who captures the tragedy on his 8mm movie camera. Janeczko, who is known for his many fine anthologies of poetry, delivers the two sides of life here both the joy and the sorrow. His characters represent life and death, lyrically evoking both in a book that is a perfect match of literary style and subject matter.

Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

The homeless teenagers in Todd Strasser’s gritty new novel Can’t Get There from Here are named Maybe, 2Moro, Country Club, Maggot, Rainbow and Tears. They have a glorified vision of street life: they are not walled in, they are free to go wherever they please. The working stiffs they hustle and rob are robots, “prisoners of the system,” who follow all the rules until they die and are replaced by more robots. But of course this vision isn’t reality, and the world Strasser creates in his book is a bleak one. As in his previous novel, Give a Boy a Gun, he writes with vividness and humanity in order to portray the real people behind the headlines and social issues.

Members of Maybe’s asphalt tribe live by their wits and survive by luck. Their story opens on New Year’s Eve on the streets of New York. Maybe and her friends hang out in front of the Good Life Deli as they always do. They decide to jump a drunk guy with a flashy wristwatch, but he fights back, beating up Maggot and grabbing 2Moro. “Just a bunch of punks out to roll some drunks on New Year’s Eve,” he says in disgust. Fortunately, as the novel progresses, Maybe comes to realize that “You couldn’t live on the streets. You could only die there,” starve to death or freeze, or die of alcohol poisoning. The hardness, despair and filth that frame her life are sometimes balanced by acts of hope. Strasser, in fact, ends the novel in just such a way. A man named Anthony is trying to help the kids, and they decide he is one adult they can trust. Anthony helps Tears to get where she needs to be, and he gives Maybe the kind of straight talk she needs to start heading down the right road to the Youth Housing Project. It’s a hint of redemption in a true-to-life novel that should hold strong appeal for teen readers and help keep them off the streets.

Love, Ghosts, and Facial Hair by popular Australian poet Steven Herrick will strike a chord with older readers. Like many teenagers, 16-year-old Jack is preoccupied with trying to demystify the opposite sex, as well as the changes happening in his pubescent body. Unlike many teenagers, Jack writes poetry and gets along quite well with his older sister. He even thinks the new-grown hair on her upper lip is kind of appealing. Oh, and it just so happens that on a regular basis, Jack sees a ghost the spirit of his mother, who died seven years earlier. As he experiences the push and pull of growing up, he writes of his experiences in witty verse, wherein he makes some wise observations about everything from socks to love, and amusingly expresses his frustration at his bizarrely lush nose hair. Herrick lets us in on the thoughts of Jack’s father, sister and girlfriend Annabel, too. Each character takes a turn at free-verse exploration and at the explication of the events of their intertwined lives. They also share their observations and feelings about Jack. It’s easy to see why Herrick’s work is popular in Australia, and this book should please American readers as well. The characters’ musings on family, career, loss and change are realistic, and range from poignant to droll. Readers will delight in Jack’s increasing confidence, as his connection with Annabel enables him to focus on the future and its possibilities. And as he finds himself opening up to the notion of looking ahead rather than focusing on the past, Jack realizes that leaving the ghost behind doesn’t mean he loves his mother any less, a truth that gives Love, Ghosts, and Facial Haira timeless resonance. Linda M. Castellitto writes from Rhode Island.