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.

Cassie, Emily and Lydia could be Siamese triplets, if there were such a thing. Friends forever, they look out for each other as they weave their ways through high school life. In The Year of Secret Assignments, their English teacher, Mr. Botherit, proposes a pen pal project between their school, Ashbury High, and Brookfield High, the scary school across town. The girls are skeptical but eager to dash off letters, wondering about the possibilities of a workable project between the "Ashbury snobs" and the "lowlife Brooker kids."

As it turns out, their new pen pals are boys Sebastian, Charlie and Matthew. Moriarty uses the difference in tone in the early exchanges between the girls and boys to establish character and set up events to come. Told through notes, letters, diary entries and e-mails, the novel moves along briskly, and the variety of formats is effective in delineating characters. Em's first letter is a four-page missive all about herself and her interests. Lydia's is an off-the-wall explanation of family history and an offer to do a bit of drug trafficking. And Cassie tells all about her counseling. In response, Lydia gets a rude letter with some sexual innuendo, and Cassie receives an offensive one-liner from the decidedly unusual Matthew Dunlop.

Readers who accept the premise and format will find much fun and humor in the madcap series of events that ensues, including the spraying of graffiti on walls, the spreading of computer viruses and other pranks and missions. Some occasional lewd comments and swear words make The Year of Secret Assignments a work for older readers, eighth grade and up. The tone of the story is spirited and upbeat, and the enthusiasm and self-absorption of the three female protagonists is always amusing. "Like I can change things, punish people, fall in love, and find myself, all by writing the right words," Lydia says. Through this onslaught of words, presented in various forms, Moriarty's characters find themselves and define themselves. The novel is a story of self-discovery, of girls and boys who come out from behind their words and realize they have been transformed.

<B>A teen’s endless tour of America</B> Called lots of things con artists, thieves, swindlers, trailer trash the Travelers are a band of contemporary gypsies who tour the roads of America by trailer. Their ancestors in the Middle Ages, guided by the stars, traveled the countryside repairing weapons, pots and pans. In Kim Ablon Whitney’s debut novel <B>See You Down the Road</B>, Bridget Daugherty’s dad has told her how their people came from Ireland during the potato famine and got by however they could trading horses, working scams, selling fake lace. And they are still traveling. They work odd jobs at Kmart or Wal-Mart, roof houses and pave driveways, sell trailers, steal and scam their way across America. Bridget’s family of Northern Travelers is an insular, patriarchal culture, disdainful of country folk the term they use for everyone who is not a Traveler. Marriages outside the group are discouraged, and conversions to the culture are rare since Travelers shun those who mix with country blood. But the open road doesn’t seem so alluring when it’s all you have ever known. The teenaged Bridget does not attend high school very often, though she would like to. She compensates by being a big reader who wants to go to college, but she is supposed to marry Patrick Murphy. She simply doesn’t have much say in the life planned for her by her father.

<B>See You Down the Road</B> is a fascinating look at an invisible subculture in the United States. And though the Traveler society Whitney describes is unconventional, Bridget’s struggle for identity is universal. Bridget has educated herself, and she knows there’s more to life than being a Traveler. But what will it take for her to find the life she wants for herself? This is a satisfying novel and a compelling exploration of a way of life that will be new to many readers. <I>Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.</I>

It’s the summer of 1895, and 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is bored and impatient. Tired of her life in Bombay, India, she’s indignant that her mother continually rebuffs her requests to move to London. But Gemma’s teenage angst is quickly forgotten when she has a terrible vision, a frightening experience that sets off an astonishing series of events. In the space of a few shocking moments, her life is altered in ways she never could have imagined and suddenly, her days are far from boring.

After tragedy strikes, Gemma’s family falls apart, and her pompous brother deposits her at Spence Academy, a boarding school near London. Readers who enjoy the archetypal high-school-girl-triumphs-over-her-tormentors storyline will not be disappointed in the characters Bray has created: unfashionable scholarship student Ann; beautiful yet mean-spirited Pippa, and power-hungry Felicity become central to the plot and commit much mischief after lights-out. There is also the sophisticated but wise teacher, the uptight headmistress who just might have something to hide and, for good measure, a compelling-yet-creepy young man who utters cryptic warnings to an increasingly disconcerted yet determinedly curious Gemma.

And yes, Gemma uses her wit and creativity to win the girls over, learning along the way that she has ties to a former Spence student who possessed strange powers, too. As her visions become ever more vivid and strange, it becomes clear that her new talents are from an unearthly realm. She convinces the other girls to join her in learning more about these powers, and together they venture into a world where each discovers her own strengths, longings and weaknesses. As the cover indicates, there is a bit of bodice-ripping to be found in Bray’s book, but for the most part, corsets are loosened rather than torn off. Bray also explores family secrets, personal history and the ways in which knowledge, power and ego interact and affect one another. A Great and Terrible Beauty is a multi-layered, ambitious work that mixes history, magic, romance, humor and mystery, making it a good choice for a wide range of readers.

Linda M. Castellitto writes from Rhode Island.

A school visit to the community of Ketchikan, Alaska, inspired acclaimed children’s author Karen Hesse to write Aleutian Sparrow, a poignant new novel concerning a side of American history few people know about. In 1942, seeking control of the North Pacific, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands. The American government evacuated the Aleut people to the towns of Wrangell and Ketchikan, and within a year American forces had regained control of the land, though many of the Aleuts were not allowed to move back for three years. Vera, who is part Aleut, realizes that her work is to know the ways of the Aleut people, and in this story she records what happens to them. “We are moving you to save you,” the American government says. But being relocated a thousand miles away from their beloved island to the “dark suffocation of the forest” around Ketchikan destroys a way of life for the natives. Eventually whooping cough, tuberculosis, measles, mumps and pneumonia kill a quarter of the evacuated population. Despite its tragic subject, Hesse’s novel reads lightly, telling young Vera’s story in unrhymed verse, a perfect match for her voice. Evon Zerbetz’s linocut illustrations, an attractive map and an author’s note provide solid support for Hesse’s impressionistic verse, and altogether yield an important, attractive volume. It’s a bleak story, though. When Vera returns home to Unalaska, her house has been destroyed, and the fishing grounds and beaches are slick with oil. The Aleut culture has been devastated, “not by the enemy,” Vera observes, “but by our own countrymen.” What little optimism remains is reflected in the last line of the novel: “We will find the will to begin again.” As she has done with other outstanding free-verse novels, including the Newbery Medal-winning Out of the Dust, Hesse tackles an important subject, skillfully develops character and setting, and balances dark themes with a poetic voice and a touch of hope. Dean Schneider teaches middle-school English in Nashville.

I heard an interesting piece on the radio the other day: a recent study revealed that women are attracted to men who do housework. The male announcers found this information hilarious and assumed that some powerful feminist organization had funded the study. But the truth was out: men who do housework are hot. Later that day, I read Flavor of the Week, in which teenage boys learn the power of food to lure the objects of their affections. Coincidence? I think not.

Cyril Bartholomew, shy and overweight, is a cooking genius. More comfortable in the kitchen than he is anywhere else, Cyril spends his time concocting recipes, reading cookbooks and working at the nearby American Institute of Culinary Arts, where he hopes to study after he graduates from high school. Cooking, besides providing him with piles of calorie-laden comfort food, is his ticket to success. But Cyril is no fool. He knows that kids at school would make fun of him if they knew about his passion, so he keeps his talent and his dreams for the future to himself. Sweet Cyril is the perfect boy-who-is-just-a-friend for beautiful Rose Mulligan. Rose confides in him about her romances and breakups. Little does she know that Cyril spends the better part of his cooking time fantasizing about her. When his pal Nick (a.k.a. “the supermodel”) moves back to town, Cyril watches painfully as his two beautiful friends fall for each other. But there’s a catch: Rose loves food, too, and Nick wants to cook for her. Anyone who has read Cyrano de Bergerac knows what’s coming next. Despite the connection to that legendary story, Tucker Shaw’s tale is as fresh as newly harvested green beans. The recipes that complement each chapter add to the story, and the characters are bright, complicated and familiar. The devastation that drives Cyril to eat an entire loaf of bread and sugar sandwiches brought me right back to my high school days, when I salved my own heartbreak with toasted almond fudge ice cream. Shaw has written a delightful story of innocent romance, heartbreak, growing up and good food that will leave his readers hoping for seconds.