As the first African-American student in the history of Draper, a prestigious Connecticut boarding school, 16-year-old Rob Garrett has the chance to break barriers, just like his heroes Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis. Intelligent, determined and ambitious, Rob is also eager to work hard and prove himself: I would have to fend for myself, and I was thrilled by the prospect. Accustomed to feeling constantly threatened by whites back home in segregationist Virginia, Rob is surprised to find little overt prejudice directed at him. Instead, Rob witnesses the boys’ abusive treatment of his friend Vinnie, whose New York City background, Italian heritage and severe acne make him the brunt of cruel jokes. Rob succeeds at Draper, making the honor roll his very first semester, and begins to feel safe in his new environment. When he makes a Thanksgiving trip to Harlem and encounters Malcolm X and other black activists, though, Rob begins to wonder whether he’s becoming too complacent. After he learns of his friends’ plans to stage a sit-in at Woolworth’s back home in Virginia, Rob becomes ever more eager to figure out how to combine his activist and academic desires.

New Boy is a work of fiction, but it is based on the early life of its author, Julian Houston, now a Massachusetts Superior Court Justice. Houston’s depiction of racism during the 1950s is brutally honest. The n-word is used frequently, and an attack on demonstrating college students is described in painfully vivid detail. The novel does a fine job of explaining for young readers the political and social issues that divided not only blacks and whites but even the African-American community itself. New Boy’s personal, emotional account of segregation and racism would be an excellent choice to read after studying the period in social studies or history classes. With a likeable narrator making tough decisions, New Boy is bound to elicit lively discussions. Although the ending of the novel leaves many questions unanswered, readers will be hopeful that Judge Houston will pen more novels about this promising, principled young man.

Mark Warren has what seems to be an enviable life. He has a good family, he’s the star pitcher of his high school baseball team, and he has a new girlfriend named Diane. But then Dad gets a phone call: He sits to tell us/words tossed out like fly balls/ tumor cancer spread. Mark’s world changes at that moment when his father finds out that his pancreatic cancer has spread. And yet, so much doesn’t seem to be any different. I think there’s some-/thing wrong with my/eyes everything looks/the same …/Don’t they know/everything is changed?/That I’ll never be the same? Mark comes to understand there’s no road map for death and says, I am terrified/of the time/when I touch him/and he won’t touch me/back. Like most novels in verse, Ann Turner’s Hard Hit is best read in one big gulp to absorb the rhythms of the verse and the subtleties of Mark’s coming to terms with the impending loss of a beloved father. The images are fresh and immediate. Mark and his friend Eddie go out for target practice, shooting at cans: click the trigger, gun kicks/each one/high /Sick!/Tumor!Growing! The simple, elemental lines of Turner’s free verse novel are the perfect match for the stark subject matter the questioning, the wonder, the loneliness. There are no easy answers, no comfortable philosophizing, just a teenaged boy living his life as his father is losing his. If there is any help for Mark, it is in the web of his life that goes on: his sister and mother, Diane, Eddie, school, baseball, memories of his Dad in the garden working the earth, Dad with the telescope saying, We’re made from stars. And the wrenching scene: Dad?/I pitched a no-hitter! /The damnedest thing, he opened/his eyes and said, Good boy,/Marky, you always were a good boy! As in her Learning to Swim, Turner has fashioned a gem of a novel about a tough subject. Her transcendent poetry deals with matters of life and death, family and friends, the earth and the stars.

Leaving home can be both exciting and scary, with new places, new people and maybe a bit of adventure. In Patricia Elliott’s teen novel, Murkmere, 15-year-old Aggie is understandably thrilled when she gets a chance to leave her dull life in the village to be a paid companion to the ward and heir of the local lord. Even warnings from her friend Jethro cannot put Aggie off and things seem to go well at Murkmere, at least at first. The steward of the manor, Silas Seed, is warmly welcoming and the Master of the manor, who is wheelchair-bound, has clearly chosen Aggie for this position, partly because of her age and partly because her late mother was once a maid at Murkmere. Leah, the Master’s ward, is not happy with her new companion and views Aggie with suspicion and anger. Leah is not Aggie’s only problem. A believer in the divine power of birds, Aggie is aghast to learn that Leah and the Master both disdain this official religion of the state. Silas asks Aggie to report back any odd behavior by Leah and while Aggie worries about her mistress being in moral danger, she is uncomfortable with spying. Even after Leah opens up a bit, Aggie still feels lonely and longs for home. All this changes after Leah finds a swan skin, one that has a strange pull over the young heiress.

Elliott’s fantasy echoes the fairy tales in which enchanted princesses becomes swans, but her story has a dark side, with deep secrets and evil schemes. The intriguing characters, twisting plot and atmospheric settings make this a fascinating page-turner that will beguile as well as thrill. It is a perfect book for those who like a gothic edge to their stories. Colleen R. Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.

Drugstore owner Frank Robinson wants to bring Dayton, Tennessee, back to life. Since Cumberland Coal and Iron shut down its blast furnace, business is hurting and the population is declining. Robinson’s solution? Publicity! Let the outside world know the town’s charms. So, when the ACLU seeks a teacher willing to test a law that bans the teaching of evolution, Robinson thinks of John Scopes, a young football and basketball coach who taught the chapter on evolution when he was a substitute teacher in science class. Complicating matters is 15-year-old Frances Robinson, who has a crush on Scopes and finds herself torn between loyalty to her father and her love for Johnny. She is forced to grow up and see the world in new ways that summer.

As the 1925 trial of the century shapes up, Dayton does, indeed, attract publicity. It becomes the laughingstock of the entire nation. Readers who know the story through Inherit the Wind will enjoy Ronald Kidd’s retelling in Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial. Kidd does a fabulous job of recreating the sense of a small Tennessee town taking on more than it can handle. When William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow hash out evolution versus science, with H.L. Mencken reporting for the national papers, Judge Raulston decides to limit the case to a simple matter of whether Scopes did indeed teach evolution. All of the fiery rhetoric comes to naught when Scopes is found guilty after nine minutes of jury deliberation and fined $100.

In the chaos of a little town inundated by the outside world and a young girl in love with a man on trial, all lives are changed.

Readers will find inevitable similarities to To Kill A Mockingbird in this superb historical novel, which has a strong sense of place, well-developed characters and clearly related ideas. Dean Schneider is a teacher in Nashville.

Donna Jo Napoli, an author long admired for her fairy tale retellings (Zel, Beast, Bound and The Prince of the Pond), explores the famous Hans Christian Andersen story of The Ugly Duckling in a new version set in Tasmania.

Mother, a Pacific black duck, desperately encourages the enormous green egg in her nest to hatch. But when it does finally hatch, Mother is the only one who is happy. It seems that every critter on Dove Lake has it out for poor Ugly. The freckled ducks gang up on him, the grebes are simply terrified, and the teal ducklings bite him. Soon Mother has no choice. For the safety of the rest of her family, she sorrowfully lets him know his fate: You're my little genius. If you use your head, you have a chance. But if you stay here, you have none. The other ducks of Dove Lake will surely kill you. She advises him to make a friend. A friend helps. All anyone really needs is one good friend. So, sadly, that is what Ugly sets out to do, make a friend.

Napoli warmly embraces the wildlife of Tasmania through the eyes and beak of Ugly. First he attempts to befriend a plainspoken wallaby. But the wallaby seems only interested in boxing and protecting itself from the odious Tasmanian Devil, his most feared predator. Then, our unlikely hero meets up with a wombat, who promises to be a better friend, even though he stays in a hole and lives in fear of quolls. And on through the wonderful world of Tasmanian wildlife Ugly goes from wombat to swamphens to geese to human beings to possums and, finally, to swans. He learns the truth about himself and finds out that his mother was right after all: all anyone really needs is a good friend.

Napoli's hilarious ducky voice rings through this entertaining tale. She chooses not to talk down to her young readers, filling her prose with such scientific words as crepuscular, undulate, nocturnal and monotreme. A professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, Napoli conveys a contagious delight in language and a charming animal's-eye view of the world.

Rose and Ivy Latham are sisters, friends and companions, until one winter night when a new driver in a blue truck slides off a mountain road into their car. Eighteen-year-old Ivy was driving, but now she is in a coma in a convalescent home. Though she is not technically brain dead, doctors find virtually no brain function. When she is experimentally taken off the ventilator, Ivy tries to breathe and convinces her bereft mother that she wants to live. So her life continues. She is fed by a stomach tube, her hair grows, her eyes stay closed, even when her sister sits with her for hours and hours, reading and talking to her.

Anyone who has lived through the horror of a traumatic brain injury will recognize the survivors. First we have 17-year-old Rose, who relives the terror of the accident every day. She wakes up, hoping that this memory is nothing more that a terrible nightmare. But it isn't. Every quiet moment is filled with the blue truck, the brakes, the rainy road, the blood, the terror and the emptiness. It can not be filled by the hours and hours spent visiting Ivy and reading to her. It cannot be filled with gratuitous sex. Nothing can make her feel anything. The weight of the accident is too much for Rose as she is consumed with memories and the thoughts of what she would give up to have Ivy back. Would she sacrifice even her life?

Then, we have their mother. She fills her day at the brewery, righting bottles, straightening labels and blindly working. At night, her hands are busy, too. She is obsessively folding 1,000 paper cranes, folding and folding as if that will save her girl. She does not fill her days visiting her comatose daughter, however. In the words of her compassionate neighbor, William T., she is doing the best she can.

Though Rose's mother is living in denial and in her own pain, William T. and a childhood friend, Tom Miller, recognize her pain and help her move toward healing. Little by little, Rose comes to realize that Ivy was someone who lived her life like a rushing river, while Rose has to rely on her inner lake of calm to restore herself.

All Rivers Flow to the Sea presents a sad, touching and altogether realistic story. The first-person narrative can, at times, be almost too painful, too close. But McGhee's voice is always clear and honest.

Rain May’s life seems to have fallen apart, as revealed in the opening line of Stranded in Boringsville: “When Dad moved out of our home and into Julia’s apartment, Mum changed her name to Maggie, put our house up for sale and had a huge clean-out.”

Rain May and her mom leave Melbourne, Australia, and move into her deceased grandmother’s old house in a small town. She’s a city girl suddenly adrift in the country, but luckily there’s a boy next door to keep her company. Daniel is a bit younger, and the unlikely pair forge a friendship. Both are sensitive and isolated (Rain May, by the way, gets her name from a line of poetry by e.e. cummings). Daniel is a brain who is shunned by his peers, but he takes refuge in chess and Star Trek. Rain May tries to figure out how to enjoy new friends at school without being disloyal to Daniel.

Author Catherine Bateson is a poet and children’s writer in Australia, where this novel was first published as Rain May and Captain Daniel, capturing a Book of the Year Award from the Children’s Book Council of Australia. The plot moves quietly but quickly along, as Rain May goes back and forth between her mother and father and tries to comprehend her father’s new life and significant other, Julia.

The Australian setting adds interest and universality to the everyday joys and sorrows. Rain May slowly starts to appreciate her new surroundings, especially when she and Daniel spot a platypus after days of failed watching attempts. Daniel’s father, a busy physician, tells them: “You’ve joined an exclusive club, kids. Not many people these days have seen a platypus in the wild.”

Stranded in Boringsville is a lovely account of trying to comprehend the many changes of adolescence. Rain May and Daniel are believable characters who tackle their problems with grace and humor. How lovely, too, to see a book about a deep friendship between a lonely boy and a lonely girl that has no sexual overtones, and is simply a story of giving and caring.

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

If your teen prefers short stories to novels, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, edited by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielson Hayden, offers a range of excellent choices culled from stories published in 2004. In the first such collection especially for teens, the 11 entries cover the gamut from high fantasy to hard science fiction and everything in-between. From fairies living in handbags to augmented super dogs, flying islands, dark changelings and baby dragons, there is something for every reader’s taste. The contributors include many authors already popular with kids today, such as Garth Nix and David Gerrold, as well as some who might be new to teenage readers, including Theodora Goss and Kelly Link. A bonus story by Rudyard Kipling, first published 100 years ago, gives historic range to the collection. With suggestions for other books to read and a list of Honor Stories that came out in 2004, this anthology can lead the reader to even more wonderful tales. Colleen Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.

In Stephen Baxter’s The Web: GulliverZone we are shown what teenagers might do for entertainment in the near future. Sarah is delighted to be spending World Peace Day by spinning into the Web and visiting the hot new theme park GulliverZone, which is based on Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. She is not amused that her little brother and the most unpopular girl in school are tagging along, but sometimes older sisters have to pay a price and this one is not too high for the latest Web entertainment spot. Sarah and her companions had hoped for cool rides but instead stumble into a dark plot, one that could lead them to become slaves of an evil force that is trying to take over the entire Web. Only three kids stand between chaos and saving the whole computer network. This exciting book is especially good for those interested in computers and virtual reality.

Colleen Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.

The word Siberia conjures up images of hardship and grueling labor in snowy wastelands. Rosita and her mother are banished to such a place in Ann Halam’s Siberia, her third science fiction novel for young adults. Once a scientist, Rosita’s mother now makes nails from scrap metal and tries to keep her daughter alive in a challenging environment. Both mother and daughter share a secret in their treasure box of seeds: these are seeds not of plants, but of animals, a cache of species that are endangered or extinct. In this repressive society, Rosita finds that even small mistakes can be dangerous; her mother disappears and she is sent away to a prison school. Toughened by life, Rosita sets out on a journey to reach sanctuary, not just for her own sake, but also to save her mother’s treasure. This compelling story is science fiction but has the atmosphere of a fairy tale, which makes it attractive to fans of either genre. Colleen Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.

Sorcery is usually seen as a great power, but in Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness magic can be a dark curse. Reason Cansino has had an unusual childhood, as her mother Sarafina keeps the family traveling through Australia, trying to outrun Esmeralda, an evil witch and Reason’s grandmother. After Sarafina tries to kill herself, Reason finds she is now in the custody of her grandmother. If she had any doubts about Esmeralda working spells, one trip to the basement cures her uncertainty and sends the girl on a search for answers about her family background. Magic runs throughout her family tree, and Reason seems to have a choice of using the evil power or going mad. With the help of her neighbor Tom, Reason tries to escape her grandmother’s grasp and goes through a door that sends her to New York. Some hard lessons are learned as Reason searches for a way to make her life more than a choice between two unhappy paths.

Colleen Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.

Carol Emshwiller is an award-winning writer whose new book for young adults, Mister Boots, is a fantasy, but don’t expect fairies, elves or magic wands. Ten-year-old Bobby is more familiar with California’s arid ranches and the poverty of the Great Depression than Oz or Narnia. While exploring one night Bobby discovers a naked man sleeping under a tree, a man who claims to be a horse. It is soon clear that Mister Boots is sometimes a man and sometimes a horse. He asks Bobby to keep his secret, something Bobby is good at because unbeknownst to all but her mother and sister, Bobby is actually Roberta. This disguise is not to fool the locals, but to protect her from an abusive, often absent father who obsessively desires a son. When her mother dies and Bobby’s father returns, it takes all of Mister Boots’ and Bobby’s magic to face the challenge.

Colleen Cahill is Recommending Officer of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the Library of Congress.