Fresh out of high school, Keeba and Teesha Washington have no plans for the future. These sassy sisters, who star in Twists and Turns, Janet McDonald's terrific new coming-of-age novel, live in Brooklyn Heights and watch from the sidelines as their friends find their fortunes. Despite the challenges of life in the projects, Aisha is making some serious money with her TV commercials. Raven had a baby in high school, but her mother is raising the infant while she is away at college. Toya, their brainy friend, is getting a degree at a tech school so she can work with computers. Meanwhile, Keeba and Teesha spend their time listening to music and throwing loud but innocent parties, complete with Cheez Doodles and grape Kool-Aid.

Mrs. Washington is proud of her girls, but she knows they can do more. When she learns that her daughters have finally come up with a plan for the future, her spirits soar. For years, the girls have been braiding hair for friends. With a little help from Aisha, they turn their talent into a money-making enterprise and open a storefront business called TeeKee's Tresses. Do-gooder librarian Skye March, who recently moved into the neighborhood from a tony suburb, also helps the girls get started.

But things are a little harder than the young entrepreneurs anticipated. The details of paperwork prove to be daunting. And when a freewheeling politician encourages the gentrification of their neighborhood, rents are raised. Soon, the girls are faced with more challenges than ever before.

Award-winning author Janet McDonald, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, does a remarkable job of capturing the feel of this struggling community. Her portrayal of young girls on the edge of adulthood seems just right. One minute the sisters are daydreaming about dating hip-hop stars, and the next they are faced with difficult decisions about life and work.

McDonald has created two true-to-life teenagers that readers can really cheer for. Twists and Turns is an uplifting look at life in the projects and the real people who live there and love it.

The late Stephen Ambrose, who brought the Lewis and Clark expedition to life for adult readers in his best-selling book Undaunted Courage, does the same for young people in This Vast Land: A Young Man’s Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This fictional account of the famous westward excursion is Ambrose’s final book and his only work for young readers.

Eighteen-year-old George Shannon, an enterprising young man from Philadelphia anxious to join the expedition, convinces Captain Meriwether Lewis that neither his youth nor his genteel upbringing should be held against him. Lewis eventually accepts Shannon, charging him with the responsibility of keeping a journal of their travels.

Through Shannon’s words, Ambrose portrays the sense of wonder and wariness of this band of pioneers, braving the elements, boredom and other challenges in their quest to expand the nation one day, one mile at a time. As if to mirror the growth of the nation, Shannon develops from a relatively innocent youth to a hardened frontiersman. Though faced with dangerous situations and dishonorable dealings from various Native Americans, he refuses to generalize and condemn all: “I cannot agree with Capt. Louis [sic] that [they] are savages. Some of them are to be sure, . . . but this does not mean all Indians are.” Lewis and Clark complete their assignment, but the story does not end there. The narrative continues many years later, with Shannon, now an established attorney, hailing his colleagues in commemorative ceremonies, defending their actions and refuting historical inaccuracies.

Ambrose writes in the vernacular of the era, with intentionally incorrect spellings, which can be distracting at times. Parents and teachers should also be cautioned that there is a fair amount of violence in the book, as well as some brief but fairly explicit sexual material. Still, Ambrose’s novel is an imaginative and informative account that puts a human face on an expedition that helped to shape a nation. Ron Kaplan writes from Montclair, New Jersey.

Kids are fantasy literature’s natural audience. After all, children are exposed to magic from the moment their little eyes are able to focus on a page and find a cow jumping over a moon or a velveteen rabbit that becomes real.

In a story that almost seems like a fairy tale itself, a young author named Christopher Paolini, only 19, has emerged with a fantasy novel of amazing depth and scope geared specifically to his own demographic. Eragon is both the title and the protagonist of Paolini’s promised Inheritance trilogy. The story of a teenage boy who by happenstance—or perhaps design—becomes the partner of a dragon, the book is set in a place much like medieval Europe.

When Eragon’s discovery and subsequent adoption of the young dragon Saphira results in danger and tragedy for his family and his town, he goes on a quest for vengeance with the help of a local storyteller named Brom. His is a world in which magic, while real, is feared, a fear based in large part on the ascendance to power of the evil lord of the land, Galbatorix, the last of the Dragonriders.

Fantasy writing is a tricky business; some authors slap on a thin coat of backdrop for their characters to parade against, and others lay on detail after excruciating detail. Paolini strikes a happy medium, showing wisdom beyond his years. He gives his world and his characters depth and reality. The dragon Saphira is a sentient creature equipped with both intellect and instinct. She and Eragon bond mentally, and their relationship deepens as the novel progresses. The old man Brom is an enigma; he serves as Eragon’s guide and teacher, and there’s more to him than meets the eye.

Paolini started this novel when he was only 15. He self-published it, and when the son of author Carl Hiaasen happened upon a copy, the book soon found its way to Random House. Four years later, Paolini is at the starting line for what may be a long writing career. Eragon is an exciting beginning.

When Joyce Carol Oates wrote Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, her first book for young adults, I must admit I was skeptical. I figured, "Another adult writer thinks it will be easy to write for children." Luckily, my cynicism proved unjustified, and after reading Freaky Green Eyes, I realized that Oates' first novel for teens was not a fluke. Set in the chic suburbs of Seattle, Freaky Green Eyes is a chilling, suspenseful tale with an everyday family at its center. Handsome, well-respected Reid Pierson is a local celebrity a former football player turned television sportscaster with a beautiful wife named Krista. Their oldest child, Todd, a college athlete, is the son of Reid's first wife, who died in a boating accident. There's also 15-year-old Francesca, nicknamed Franky, a swimmer and a diver, and 10-year-old Samantha.

Underneath this perfect exterior, though, the foundations are cracking. When Franky is almost raped, her response to the violence brings out Freaky, her strong inner persona. Before the summer is done, she'll call on all of Freaky's instincts for survival. It's Franky who chronicles this dark story. Her mother is absent more and more, and Franky notices strange bruises on her wrists and neck. Everyone is tiptoeing around the house, and keeping Dad happy is the order of the day. Both parents, as it turns out, are in a battle for the hearts of their children.

Is Mom having an affair? Will the Piersons divorce or separate? And just who is to blame for the chasm developing between them? When Mom and her male friend, Mero, suddenly disappear, the novel takes a tragic turn. Franky's attempt to solve the mystery of her mother's whereabouts leads her to examine what is real and unreal in her own life. Her story moves along at the breathless pace that readers of all ages have come to expect from Oates. A reviewer friend once explained that the difference between an acceptable book and a great book is that each page of a great book begs to be turned. By that, or any other definition, Freaky Green Eyes is one of them.

“Families are the strangest things. They can drive you nuts, make you run screaming into the night, but there is still this connection.” With this remark, the narrator of Joan Bauer’s “Hardware,” the lead story in Necessary Noise, sets the tone for an excellent collection of narratives. Editor and writer Michael Cart invited leading young adult authors to contribute stories responding to the question “What does the word family mean to teenagers today?” The range of responses he received reflects the range of families in America. Themes include mental illness, homelessness, drugs and physical abuse, but these darker issues are well balanced by the lighter, humorous stories that begin and end the collection. “Hardware” is about a family and community responding to a giant corporation’s moving in and taking over, driving a family hardware store out of business. It’s a serious topic made humorous by Bauer’s wonderful characterizations. In “Snowbound,” the story by Lois Lowry that concludes the volume, Evelyn Collier arrives home from college with her new boyfriend Loosh. Everyone, including Evelyn, comes to hate this interloper, who sleeps naked, says Whittier “sucks,” wipes his nose on his sleeve and doesn’t eat “mammal.” The story, framed by lines from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Snowbound,” humorously delineates how a family regains its equilibrium after disruption by an alien presence. Sonya Sones, a master of the free verse novel, delivers “Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,” a powerful story about an abusive older sister. Lucy chases Sasha, her younger sibling, down the hallway “like a fire-breathing dragon, hands clawing the air at my back.” She torments Sasha, making her fear for her life at times. It’s a dark story, but there’s hope: Lucy goes off to college in 739 days. Along with the range of themes in this anthology is a range of writing styles, from conventionally structured works to stories written in dialogue and free verse. Traditional nuclear families are a minority now, and it’s nice to see an excellent collection that reflects reality. An author of other solid short story collections, including Tomorrowland, Cart offers here another fine and important volume. Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

Traveling is invariably an adventure for children. Their fresh eyes and minds can make even the most mundane trip memorable. The short stories in Donald R. Gallo’s marvelous collection, Destination Unexpected, are all about the journeys young people make, both literally and figuratively, from city to country, from ignorance to understanding.

Author Joyce Sweeney leads off the anthology with “Something Old, Something New,” the story of a black teenager’s bus trip across town to accept an award a small journey with big consequences. Distances increase in Margaret Peterson Harris’ “My People,” when a shy girl from Appalachia journeys to Mercer University for a week-long camp for high school students. There, she finds undreamed-of horizons opening up for her. The teenage girl in “Tourist Trapped,” by Ellen Wittlinger, travels from Kansas to Cape Cod for a summer, but her horizons are far from open.

Not all of the trips featured here involve mileage. Some of the most important journeys take place in the mind, as David Lubar’s “Bread on the Water” demonstrates. The story follows a young man on a journey of conscience, as he gets a lesson in charity from a friend. Not all of these young characters are innocent, either. Will Weaver’s story, “Bad Blood,” concerns the youngest member of a family of grifters, and his dogged quest to convince an old woman to give him a classic Corvette. In “Keep Smiling,” Alex Flinn’s protagonist seeks redemption after a drunk driving fatality, and Kimberly Willis Holt shows how an adopted Chinese girl and her big brother are drawn together in “August Lights.” Travel can be both an internal and external experience, but the most wonderful journey is, in the end, the one made from adolescence to adulthood. Destination Unexpected is a fine tribute to that journey. Serious, contemporary literature for young people, it’s a book that teen readers will enjoy.

With her mind on the movies and a voice as fresh and electric as her personality, Ruby Millers loves films going to them, talking about them, writing scripts for them. She especially loves beginnings, the part before the movie starts: “When the lights go dim, and you’re sitting in the dark with your popcorn,” Ruby says, “. . . At that moment anything is possible.” Ruby even has a seven-page script-in-progress to send to Steven Spielberg. Much of her experience, her references about life, and her accumulated wisdom over 12-and-a-half years come from the movies. Her father’s favorite, before he left, was Groundhog Day, and her neighbor reminds her of Almira Gulch in The Wizard of Oz. But Ruby’s real life isn’t so cinematic. She’s heartbroken by her father’s absence and imagines him as a movie hero, dodging assassins’ bullets or flying Air Force One. She dreams of his return home. Her mother is dating a balding podiatrist, and the big event in her life at the moment is the loss of her brother’s wooly mammoth toy. To make matters worse, she can’t seem to shake Big Skinny and Mouse, two boys in her class at Rutherford B. Hayes Middle School. When the boys spray-paint an ode to Ruby on the river wall near her house, and she goes to take care of the mess, all three end up snagged by the law. At the police station, where the desk sergeant looks just like the Tin Man (without the tin), the trio is assigned 50 hours of community service. Thus begins an unexpected relationship with Big Skinny, Mouse and Ed the podiatrist, who turns out to be involved with the boys through the Big Brothers Program. The gang collaborates on a mural to beautify the wall along the drainage ditch that was once the Los Angeles River, and Ruby continues to fantasize about finding her father. Hollywood makes dreams come true, and sometimes, too, as Theresa Nelson shows us in this terrific book, they come true in the lives of twelve-year-old girls.

Dean Schneider teachers middle school English in Nashville.

Unlike E.R. Frank's acclaimed previous novels, Life Is Funny and America, both prismatic portraits of urban adolescents traumatically coming of age, Friction is structurally straightforward and seems relatively tame—at least on the surface.

Suburban, soccer-loving, 12-year-old Alex has everything going for her: supportive parents and a nurturing alternative school where her teacher, Simon, is also a friend. The trouble starts when a new girl, Stacy, something of a drama queen, points out that Simon is also a hottie. Next, she suggests that Simon is hot for Alex, and vice versa.

You'd think that, with all the resources available to her, Alex could figure out a way to quash this insinuation. But she's just young and innocent enough, with inchoate desires of her own, to fall victim instead to Stacy's manipulations. Insisting that "it's natural for guys and girls to like each other," Stacy spins out her soap-operatic theories: that Alex's best friend, Tim, has a crush on Alex, thwarted because Alex is in turn hung up on Simon. For all that Alex protests (the scenario strikes her as "completely weird and gross"), she finds her face growing hot, her stomach "clamped tight." She does make repeated, if vague, efforts to turn to her parents for advice, but they try to joke her out of her discomfort ("Aren't you a little old to think romantic interest is gross?") and suggest that Stacy is just "acting out" to cope with the stress of being the new kid. The situation soon gets worse much worse. Stacy always seems to be on hand to catch Simon with Alex in the midst of a friendly gesture, and she rumor-mongers relentlessly. And when these allegations come to naught (although they do alienate Tim from Alex), she escalates her campaign, claiming that Simon has molested her.

The author makes it subtly clear that Stacy's compulsion to sexualize may have its roots in abuse. Frank, whose profession as social worker lends psychological veracity to her considerable descriptive skills, provides no easy out for her characters. Friction is a bold, perceptive and ultimately unnerving account in which people get hurt, some irrevocably. It's an illuminating novel that will help young readers understand themselves and adults a little bit better.

Sandy MacDonald is a writer based in Cambridge and Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Much of Joss Aaronson’s life is defined by what she isn’t. She isn’t a proper comp, a user of antique screte, or a genetic monster created in a lab. She isn’t even a real-kid, and her legitimacy in school becomes questionable when she discovers that her mother may have bought her way into the Centre for Neo-Historical Studies. But she is the partner of the new alien student at the Centre, a student not so different from her, except that he who goes by the name of Mavkel has two noses, two mouths and huge, double-jointed ears. And he’s hermaphroditic. Mavkel, who hails from the planet Choria, has lost his twin, and since all Chorians must communicate telepathically, he feels isolated and is losing his will to live. To make matters worse, there’s an assassin on campus, and Joss comes to realize that she herself is the assassin’s quarry.

Offering much mystery, adventure and food for thought, Singing the Dogstar Blues is a rich, futuristic romp. Fans of M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Nancy Farmer’s House of the Scorpion ought to feel right at home in the futuristic world Alison Goodman has conjured a world which, oddly enough, feels perfectly real in no time. The themes are normal enough: Joss is trying to figure out who she is and find a place in a world where she doesn’t quite fit. Her mother is a rising TV star who has no time for her, her father is a sperm donor unknown to her, and she is not like her classmates, who have been made by a "genetic potluck" from "the best of six or more people." And if Joss feels like an outsider, think of Mavkel, a real stranger in a strange land confronted by "Alien Go Home" demonstrations when he arrives at the Centre. Together, Joss and Mavkel travel back in time Joss to find her father, Mavkel to make a genetic connection to her or, at least, to her cells, which are stored in a petri dish. Together, they find what they’re looking for.

This debut novel from Goodman won Australia’s Aurealis Award for the Best Young Adult Novel in 1998, and readers will relish her sure command of a complex story combining science fiction, mystery, adventure and family drama.

Dean Schneider teaches middle school in Nashville.

A new recruit to the growing ranks of noted novelists tackling the young adult genre, best-selling author Francine Prose picks a timely topic: the tradeoff between security measures and personal freedom, particularly as they pertain to the daily routines of high school. It occurred to her post-9/11, as she notes in a foreword, that "the problematic aspects of our new lives baggage searches, metal detectors, incursions on our privacy were already part of our children’s lives, and had been for some time." In the wake of Columbine and comparable tragedies, students have come to expect certain infringements on their range of motion and self-expression. With After, Prose expands on this trend to create a semi-realistic scenario of escalating repression. Tom Bishop’s high school, Central, doesn’t seem to have any egregious problems at least none that the administration can’t handle using common sense. Once a shooting spree occurs at a school 50 miles away, however, it’s a whole new regime, spearheaded by one Dr. Willner, an ostensible grief counselor and certifiable control freak.

Prose deftly portrays the gradual erosion of seemingly petty privileges among 15-year-old Tom and his self-styled "smart-jock" friends: dress codes become draconian; drug testing is implemented; Catcher in the Rye is excised from the curriculum. Parents are deluged with cautionary e-mails. "If the school is going a little overboard to make sure its students are safe," Tom’s father rationalizes, "maybe that’s not so bad." But things take a different turn when students and teachers begin disappearing.

Prose seems to have perfect pitch for how today’s adolescents think, talk and act. As she nudges the book towards an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style denouement the 1956 classic happens to be a special favorite of Tom’s stoner friend Silas Prose forces her readers to consider the cost of sacrificing freedom for security. A chilling novel for young readers, After will definitely get kids talking.

This new offering from adult novelist Alice Hoffman is a haunting, beautiful post-9/11 fairy tale for our time. When Green’s parents and little sister, Aurora, go to the city for the day, Green stays home to work in the garden. But disaster strikes the city. The ground shakes, people jump from buildings, the whoosh of fire can be heard across the river, and ashes sweep across the water in "black whirlwinds." Embers fly into Green’s open window, set the ends of her hair on fire and burn her eyes, When looters threaten houses and it becomes clear that many people in the city have perished, Green becomes Ash. She wears her father’s black boots and leather jacket. She clips thorns from bare rose bushes and sews them to her clothes. She uses black ink and a pin to tattoo a raven, a bat and a rose on her arm.

"Blood and ink. Darkness where before there had been patience, black where there’d once been green," Hoffman writes. Green’s change into the girl she names Ash mirrors the darkness of her ruined world. After the disaster, everything changes. A disfigured, hooded boy she names Diamond appears, and they become friends. They garden, bake bread, cook and look after neighbors. In the magic realism of the conclusion, the inky black vines on Ash’s body begin to turn green, the rose turns white, and she realizes more changes are in store for her. Metaphors of hope and renewal in the form of seasons, gardens and blank white pages that await stories signal Ash’s transformation back to Green. In its images of thorns and vines, embers in eyes, and flights of ravens, Hoffman’s tale has the visceral effect of a fairy tale on the reader’s consciousness, more powerful than most realistic renderings of current tragedies.

Following on the heels of Belle Teale, her acclaimed novel for preteens, Ann M. Martin has left the Babysitters Club for richer, more serious fare. A Corner of the Universe, set in 1960, brings us Hattie Owen, an almost-12-year-old who lives in the fictional town of Millerton. Hattie narrates this poignant story of truth, lies and one family's struggle to cope with a mentally ill relative. Hattie's world is made up of the residents in her parents' boarding house, her best friend Betsy and her grandparents, Hayden and Harriet Mercer, the wealthy, strait-laced pillars of Millerton society.

Out of the blue, Hattie's sheltered world is shaken up as she learns that she has a 21-year-old uncle named Adam who has been living in a special school in Ohio. The school is closing, forcing Adam to move home to Millerton with his parents, the stiff and patrician Nana and Papa. Hattie's mother tries to explain the situation, but the words she uses to describe Adam are unfamiliar and frightening: autistic, schizophrenic.

When Adam arrives, Hattie is unexpectedly enchanted. Reciting long passages from the I Love Lucy show and brimming with enthusiasm for Hattie and her parents, Adam is a burst of energy in contrast with his staid, controlled family. All smiles and excited words, he enthralls his niece, even as Nana is constantly reminding him of the rules of behavior and etiquette.

But there is another side to Adam. When frustrated or overwhelmed with sights and sounds, this boy-in-a-man's-body (or freak, as the mean girls in town call him) can suddenly be reduced to shaking tears and hysteria.

The complexity of this novel lies in the characters' responses to Adam. Nana appears tough and intolerant, but in the end it is her love for her troubled son that remains. Hattie's mother seems hardened and unattached to Adam, whom she says is difficult to love. But we learn that she was the one who stayed close to him during his long stay at the special school. Even Hattie herself, who loves and is so changed by Adam, harbors her own fears: She worries that she might be like him and wonders if there are any more secret uncles out there.

Without being didactic, Martin has told the story of one unforgettable summer in the life of a strong, mature heroine. This story will resonate with young readers.