"The Game Is Afoot!" Tru and Nelle by G. Neri

When Truman first spotted Nelle, he thought she was a boy. Barefoot and dressed in overalls with a boyish haircut, she perched on a stone wall that separated their rambling wood homes. He was trying to avoid her stare by pretending to read his book.

"Hey, you!" she said.

Truman gazed up from pages. He was sitting quietly on a wicker chair on the side porch of his cousins' house, dressed in a little white sailor suit. "Are you talking to me?" he said in a high wispy voice.

"Come here," she commanded.

Truman was taken aback. "You're a ...girl?"

Nelle stared back. Truman's high voice, white-blond hair, and sailor outfit had thrown her for a loop.

"You're a boy?" she asked, incredulous.

It's not a propitious meeting. Two misfit kids, self-possessed but lonely, are drawn to each other, and when Nelle spots the cover of Truman's book, The Adventure of the Dancing Men: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, she senses a kinship to this strange, bossy, but sissified boy. With some bragging about his days of tap-dancing on a Mississippi steamboat, he admits that he's been left by both parents with his elderly cousins, and despite herself, Nelle is intrigued. She takes possession of the book imperiously, promising to return it when she's "good 'n' done" with it.

And with that, a friendship is made. Nelle Harper introduces Truman to life in the small Alabama town, the bullies, the Court House, and her enticing treehouse, where the two bond over their love of Sherlock Holmes and conspire to solve mysteries of their own. Naturally, Tru has to be Sherlock, allowing Nelle to be his Watson, and neighbor Jennings (a.k.a, Big Boy) is assigned the role of Lestrade. Truman's cousin Sook even turns a couple of old baseball caps into a deerstalker hat, and they are ready for action. All they need is a case.

And a suitable mystery, a break-in at the local drugstore, soon presents itself. Nelle's suspicions fall on the local bully, Elliott, called Boss, and his sidekick Billy Eugene. And when Nelle discovers a slingshot contraption in a tree, rigged to fire rocks  through the store's plate glass windows, they have real evidence in hand. The slingshot has a curved shape carved into the handle--a snake, or perhaps the letter S. Nelle leans toward the snake as the clue, but Tru has another insight, their reclusive young neighbor, Sonny Boular.

The game is afoot!

Nelle and Tru's detecting lead them into late-night surveillance. Recruiting Sook's cook, Little Bit, for cover for their pretense of catching fireflies, they duck down in the tall grass when they hear a group of men assembling in the field.

Someone struck a match and lit a torch of some kind.

Truman's view was blocked by Little Bit, but he could see silhouettes of pointy heads. He saw the flames lick at the bottom of the sheets wrapped around the tree. The fire shot up the sheets and set the whole tree ablaze.

Only it wasn't a tree. It was a cross. And the men didn't have pointy heads; they were dressed in white robes and hoods with holes cut out for their eyes.

The Ku Klux Klan.

Young adult readers who know the the novel (or even the movie) may recognize the small town setting and the young Sherlock and Watson as the doppelgangers of the fictional Scout and Dill, the real Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee, two towering literary figures of the twentieth century whose childhood exploits led to the friendship which gave us To Kill a Mockingbird and whose shared passion for crime-solving led to Lee's uncredited but real collaboration on Capote's award-winning In Cold Blood.

That amazing happenstance of history makes for a new and delightfully fictionalized account of that friendship, G. Neri's Tru and Nelle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), a novel with all the fun of the free-range childhood that Madisonville, Alabama, offered two brilliant but offbeat kids growing up together in the 1930s. Tru teases Nelle about her accent, calling her "Na-il Harpuh," and Nelle (Ellen, spelled backwards) gives the prissy Truman as good as she gets about his signature white suits, all in the easy style of kissin' cousins, in a portrayal of the early and epic pair of soul mates who were to cast a long shadow across the literary future. Savvy readers will recognize Atticus in Nelle's father "A.C." and Boo Radley in the mysterious "Sonny Boular." Readers who have yet to experience Harper Lee's landmark novel will find the re-told childhood adventures of Nelle and Tru both funny and poignant in their own right, perhaps steering them to read her Pulitzer-winning novel even before it is assigned to them in school.

"Tru and Nelle is a wonderfully imaginative re-creation of the childhoods of two great American writers, but even more, it is a novel that affirms the mysterious and glorious ways that friendship reaches across boundaries of all sorts to claim unexpected kinship." says two-time Newbery author, Gary D. Schmidt.

Tracing the Tree Assassin: Beetle Busters: A Rogue Insect and the People Who Track It by Loree Griffin Burns

The Asian longhorned beetle (ALB for short) is a stunner. Its 1.5-inch body is a deep black speckled with white, and its head bears a set of shockingly long striped antennae. These antennae and the beetle's six feet are tinted blue, and its mouthparts, if you get close enough to see them, resemble a miniature lobster claw.

If an Asian longhorned beetle landed next to you right now, you would probably never forget it.

And it's a good thing that the ALB is such a memorable bug. In 1996 a man in Brooklyn noticed some small round holes in some maple trees. He blamed teen vandals and mounted a one-man surveillance program on his own. What he spotted was a large, black beetle with long, striped antennae and blue legs, caught in the act of emerging, well fed and ready to mate, from the trunk of one of his favorite trees.

It didn't take long for local officers to ID the perp. The ALB had a long rap sheet with the tree police. It had been discovered chomping up newly planted American poplar trees in China in the early 1980s. The Chinese discovered the pests and leveled the infected trees, but instead of chipping or burning the wood, they thriftily used it to build thousands of shipping pallets, which were loaded with manufactured goods and shipped to the East Coast of the U.S. The alien stowaways hatched and matured and emerged at the ports of New York and Boston, and got busy doing what tree beetles do. They found a lavish beetle buffet on the American ash, sycamore, horse chestnut, willow, elm. hackberry, mimosa, ash, and maple entrees in their new home.

When the Brooklyn tree watcher collared the suspect, the tree scientists of New York went into action. An urban forest has fewer trees, usually not in close quarters, so tree surgeons figured that they would locate all the diseased trees, cut them down, chip them up finely to kill the larvae inside, and that would be that. But before long, infestations showed up in Boston, and the tree men went on red alert, playing whack-a-mole as each infestation was found and eliminated. The ALBs are inept fliers, so they attack trees that are close by, so the hope was that each area could be cleared easily enough once it was located.

But then the pest was discovered in the leafy suburbs of Worcester, Massachusetts. Suburban forests are denser, spread over many independently owned plots of land, and even worse, located near real woodlands, part of the great North American forest that stretches from eastern Canada to the Great Lakes area and southward through the Appalachians into the deep South. If the beetles infected that great expanse of trees, millions and millions of our most beautiful trees might be lost, with serious consequences for human and wild animal habitat across almost half of the country.

Teams of tree scientists descended on Worcester, trudging through briers and undergrowth, suffering though ice and snow in winter and ticks and mosquitoes in summer, and climbing into the canopies to identify affected trees for removal. Homeowners and park visitors grieved over the loss of majestic maples and elms. Entomologists studied the beetles' two-year life cycles, and botanists and foresters studied cross-section "cookies" of tree trunks to determine how infestation affected growth. Zoologists observed how the loss of these trees affected all the creatures who depend on forest trees. Chemists created ALB pheromones to attract mating adults to traps, and sniffer dogs were trained to detect the characteristic smell of chemicals released by the beetles to speed up surveying.

Many pesky suspects were arrested, but the Asian longhorned beetle's crime wave has not been stopped, They are now being fought all over the world, in Austria, France, Italy, England, Japan, and Switzerland. Resolute scientists never give up, but so far, the fight depends more on amateur observations of new infestations than on miracle pesticides, exotic new predators, or evolving resistance among the affected trees.

Loree Griffin Burns' Beetle Busters (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) details the struggle with one of the pests that threaten our forests in an easy middle-reader text stacked with information. These are truly "scientists in the field" (actual fields) revealing how teams of experts with varying specialties cooperate in the their assignment. Many color photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz document the work of these insect CSI experts. In fact, any reader of this book is well prepared to identify this insect pest if it is encountered. In the tradition of Houghton Mifflin's estimable Scientists in the Field series, a glossary with terms such as dendrochronology and vascular cambium, a bibliography, and an index is appended

The fight against the ALB is not a skirmish, but a real war. America loves its leafy towns and cities, its glorious shady glades, and its forested state and national parks. What do we have to lose? The shade of towering elms, the autumn glory of red maples, and the inimitable taste of sugar maple syrup, the songs of birds, and the beauty of our woodlands.

The Source: The Son by Lois Lowry

She turned away, feeling tears well in her eyes. What on earth was the matter with her? No one else seemed to feel this kind of passionate attachment to other humans. Not to a newchild, not to a spouse, or a coworker, or friend. She had not felt it toward her own parents or her brother. But now, toward this wobbly, drooling toddler–

“Bye-bye,” she whispered to him, and he looked up and wiggled his little fingers.

Claire choked back tears as she pedaled her bike back to the Hatchery. More and more she despised her life, the dull routine of the job, the mindless conversation with her coworkers, the endless repetition of her day. She wanted only to be with the child.... It was not right to have these feelings. Not normal. Not permitted. She knew this. But she did not make them go away.

Lois Lowry’s final book in the Giver Quartet series, Son (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), takes the reader back to the source, the dystopian society she delineated in her initial volume. Her protagonist in this finale, Claire, we see to be indeed the source, the mother of the child Gabriel for whose sake Jonas, the chosen, the intended future Giver, flees his colorless world to save the life of the child he has come to love, the one who doesn’t quite fit into that regimented society.

In her own ceremony of the Twelves, when children are assigned their vocation, Claire is disappointed to be chosen to be a Vessel, a Birthmother, to be inseminated and to bring forth a Product, a child that she is never intended to see, taken at birth to the Nurturing House until its adoption by a parental pair chosen by the Committee. Unable to give birth easily, Claire undergoes a Caesarian and is decertified and sent to the community’s fish hatchery. But Claire realizes that she craves the depth of emotions felt during her pregnancy and secretly disposes of the “pills” given to all citizens, pills which she intuits hide the vividness, the colors and emotions of real human life, and keep the citizens docile. Having inadvertently discovered her “product’” was a boy designated only  “Number 36,” she befriends one of the Nurturers and volunteers to help with the babies in order to be with her own son.

But when Jonas, the boy chosen to receive the history of the society from the aged Giver, suddenly disappears, taking Claire's son, now named Gabriel, Claire has only one hope of finding him, to stowaway on one of the supply boats that move freely between communities along the waterway and and search for Jonas and her son. Claire befriends the cook, who helps her make her escape, but when the boat reaches the sea and is shipwrecked in a storm, Claire is the only survivor, brought ashore in an isolated communitym very different from the only one she had known, a primitive one of fishermen and farmers, but one in which the normal human emotions and attachments are deeply rooted in daily life.

Claire is taken in by a childless old midwife and healer, but as her memory of her former life returns, she is determined to return to the world she left behind and find her son. She manages an impossibly grueling climb up the cliff face, only to meet with a frightening figure, a man who calls himself the Trademaster, an evil force with dark powers who offers her a terrible trade–her youth for the chance to see her son again, and so she finds herself transformed from a strong and beautiful young woman into an old crone, bent and racked with the pains of age.

Her son Gabe is now a young man, also restless in the community of refugees from the dystopic
community from which he was saved by Jonas, now an elder of the town. Gabriel is drawn
to the river, obsessed with building a boat which might take him back to discover his own source and perhaps his true mother. Claire is at first content just to watch Gabriel from a distance, feeling that he could never believe her story, but as she nears death, she shares her account with Jonas, who alone can guide Gabriel to overcome the Trademaster and restore his mother to her true age and place in his life.

Lowry’s final tale in the series is totally absorbing, as Claire’s world expands to unite the earlier characters, Kira from Gathering Blue, Jonas from The Giver (Giver Quartet), and Mentor from Messenger,-in the final confrontation,  which comes down, as all such sagas must, to a showdown of good and evil. Lowry has developed this series as a river grows from its source to its final merger with the sea, using the narrative and metaphoric skills which have made her one of the most versatile and notable authors of her time. Hers is a brave theme, that human love can overcome the darkness arrayed against it, one told and retold through literary history and recently culminating most famously in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7). Dedicated readers of that series who came of age after Lowry’s The Giver won its Newbery Award in 1994 will find it worthwhile to read this and the other books in the Giver Quartet, which absorbingly tell the same venerable story in a much different but no less meaningful way.

"…A beautifully wrought political fable... [this] rare concluding volume will send readers back to the first," says The Washington Post. Kirkus Reviews puts it simply, "Bravo!"

Killer Thriller? Hero by Mike Lupica

"POWERS?" Kate said.

"Yeah."

She smiled then. not the way she did when she was making fun of him. Just a smile that told Zach that she believed him.

It was the kind of smile that made him feel as if everything was going to be all right, even though he knew that probably wasn't true, that nothing was going to be the same for him ever again.

"I guess that leaves me with only one question," Kate said.

"Shoot."

Kate Paredes smiled at him again and said, "Are you going to have to wear a cape?"

Zach Harriman is devastated when the father he idolizes dies in an unexplained plane crash, returning from a special mission for the government, presumably against foreign terrorists. But when Zach is drawn to the site of the crash far out on Long Island, he meets a strange old man who calls himself Mr. Herbert, a man who seems to know everything about him and why his father died.

"You should trust me because I was the one who first told your father he had the magic in him," Mr. Herbert said.

"Don't be afraid, boy." the old man said. "You've got the magic, too."

And, then, just like that, the old man was gone.

Zach ran after him, ignoring the high grass, feeling as if all the wind of the day were at his back now. Closed his eyes and ran, faster. Feeling like he was the one flying now.... Like he'd become invisible.

When he opened his eyes--Zach saw that he was running across the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. As if he'd texted himself home.

As if by magic.

It's a kid's dream to be suddenly reborn a hero, a superhero, the inheritor of his father's supernatural powers, the hoped-for avenger and redeemer to vanish the forces of evil, here known simply as The Bads. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson are just two recent heroes who struggle with assuming the mantles of their renowned fathers in an eons-old tradition going back past Beowulf to Jason and before, and Mike Lupica, master of the middle-school sports hero story, has decided to cast his current literary lot with these supernatural second-generation heroes.

He partly succeeds. Lupica is skillful in writing credible dialog and creating believable boys, torn by the responsibility to remain true to their powers, be it fast ball, hail Mary pass, or sudden superheroics and of reconciling their ambitions and drives to the vicissitudes of growing up in the world in which they find themselves. Lupica's parental figures are supportive and sensitive, and yet detached enough so that his characters operate pretty much without their interference within their own world. His characters are often blessed also with lovely, dewy-eyed girlfriends who are smart, independent, but unquestioning, and unfailingly unselfish and supportive as well. In his latest, Hero, (Philomel, 2010) Lupica offers up both of these stock characters as fairly-fleshed out minor characters in the form of Zach's mom and his friend Kate, not to mention another staple, two conflicting mentors, the mysterious Mr. Herbert, with "powers" of his own, and "Uncle John," an avuncular family friend who somehow knows of his father's powers and who also seeks to control his super skills against the nebulous "Bads" who threaten Zach daily.

Some kids will love the vicarious thrill of suddenly inhabiting a body equipped with supersonic speed, super-sharp vision and hearing, the ability to detect evil before it appears, and the overwhelming rush of transformative fighting power when it does. After all, it's better than Peter Parker morphing into Spiderman; it's like realizing that you're Superman or the Incredible Hulk with no need for those uncomfortable tights.

Of course, some kids may see through this formulaic novel, finding it all too familiar, with an uncomfortable "Here we go again" feeling. Additionally, unlike Harry and Percy and their literary cousins, Lupica's hero has no intriguing alternative world, no Hogwarts or Camp Half-Blood populated with like beings, in which to mature his powers, and unlike Harry and Percy, whose dark lords are the very essence of good gone wrong, the vision of evil against which Zach is supposed to contend remains fairly nebulous, limited for most of this novel to the occasional goombahs who try to rough him up. Are they the henchmen of some evil but earthly empire, suicide terrorists, minions of some Machiavellian overlord, or spirits from some as-yet undelineated other world? Tune in for the sequel, sure to follow, for further enlightenment.

Leaving Cades Cove: Autumn Winfred Oliver Does Thing Different by Kristen O'Donnell Tubb

So there I stood, on something akin to a big, bald behind. Mighty appropriate circumstances, considering what came next.

Autumn Winifred Oliver is a girl who prides her self on "doing things different," so when her reverie on the Smoky Mountains' Gregory Bald is interrupted by the tolling of eleven tolls of the church bell down in Cades Cove, she gets scary prickles down her spine. That sound can only mean that someone eleven years old had just died--and Autumn is the only eleven year old resident of Cades Cove, Tennessee, so far as she knows. Her own death sure is something different, all right!

Down the mountain she finds the answer to her mystery. The tolling of the bells was for her Gramps, John Tipton, who, being pronounced dead, suddenly began to wheeze and breathe, stopping the bell ringer in mid-toll and returning abruptly to his usual cranky, headstrong ways. Suddenly her mama uses her father's near-death experience as reason to move into his generations-old log cabin and look after him. This is not necessarily good news for Autumn, who has been looking forward to a move to the big city of Knoxville, where her Pops is working. It's a decision which Autumn intuits is just her mother's way of staying out of the big city and inside the security of the Cove and her family circle.

But that safe haven is fast changing. It's 1934, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is taking shape under the guidance of John D. Rockefeller and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Promised that the park would stay clear of Cade's Cove, Gramps is full of big plans to make money off the hoped-for tourists and stays on the go convincing his neighbors to approve the takeover. His enthusiasm keeps Autumn and her fifteen-year-old sister Katie hopping as they transform their ramshackle barn into a tourist trap of a hotel, a job which is far too dirty and boring for Autumn's taste. To her mind, Gramps is way too happy to have the girls around to do his chores. Assigned to keep his flock of geese from cleaning out the garden one morning, Autumn is rankled that her planned day of fishing is interrupted and takes matters into hand her own way.

"I managed to snag every single goose out there, despite a lot of flapping and honking and stinking. And then came the hard part. I pried open their horrible beaks, snipped of a bit of twig, and propped open each goose's mouth like a pup tent.

Boy, what a sight! Those stinking geese couldn't close their mouths, let alone do so around a juicy tomato plant. Problem solved."

Autumn, for sure, is a girl who does things different, and she manages to find herself some adventure when a flash flood washes the local undertaker's privy, chicken coop and chickens, and a brand-new coffin down Abrams Creek. Autumn and her sidekick Cody climb aboard to pioneer the first white-water coffin trip nearly all the way downstream to Townsend.

Rescued after a cold, damp night in the woods by some CCC workers, from them Autumn learns some surprising and saddening facts: the Cove is indeed to be included into the national park and her own family's house is already being demolished in the drive to return the Cove to its pioneer appearance. Convincing her grandfather and mother that they have been misled takes a bit of trickery on her part, but her family finally realizes that their old way of life is on its way out. Autumn is consoled by her Pops, whose sawmill job will also end when the park closes down the lumber companies. Pops describes the terrible fate of the hills denuded of their forests, their creeks fouled, by the lumber companies which are racing against time to cut as many trees as they can before the park service shuts them down.

"So, if we do have to sell out to the park--which it sure sounds like we do--well, then, we might lose a few buildings here and there. But I'd say we all agree that's better than stripping bare our land. Let's thank heaven our land was spared the saw."

In the end, with her Gramps really dead this time, the Park Service claims his cabin, fated to become the "Tipton Cabin" exhibit in the Cove, and the family belatedly make their move to Knoxville, where, with all those sidewalks, Autumn at least looks forward to being the roller skating champion of East Tennessee.

Despite the sad story of the diaspora of the Cades Cove community, Kristen O'Donnell Tubb's Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different is a joyous and humorous story of a resilient and spunky girl who finds a way to put her mark on everything she does. Tubbs works a lot of historical information about the displaced mountain communities of the Smokies into her narrative, admittedly compressing some events for dramatic effect. Although a bit more editing could have winnowed out some speech anachronisms (for example, Autumn speaks of being "grounded" for her mischief) in the text, Tubbs' characterizations are strong and memorable, putting human voices and faces to those shadowy "pioneers" of the Smokies National Park.

National Book Award Finalist: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Hugo is a desperate orphan, living inside the walls of a Paris railroad station with the broken, flame-singed, and corroded figure of a mechanical man, an automaton created by his father. Hugo also lives with persistent mysteries. The automaton and a notebook of related diagrams and drawings are all that are left of Hugo's father, who died in a fire in the museum where the robotic man had been warehoused, and the tiny apartment within the station is all that is left of Hugo's uncle, the drunken timekeeper of the station's clocks who disappeared suddenly, leaving Hugo alone to carry on his work.

Fearing life in an orphanage, Hugo conceals his uncle's presumed death by keeping the clocks running and survives by stealing food from the station's shops. When he can, Hugo also steals mechanical parts from a crotchety old toy maker's kiosk to repair the automaton, a seated humanoid figure which apparently was designed to write or draw when wound up with a now-lost key. When Hugo is seized during a theft, the storekeeper confiscates his notebook and warns him to stay away. The toy maker's goddaughter Isabelle, however, secretly returns the notebook and, discovering Hugo's hideaway, becomes involved in solving the mystery of the robot's design and purpose.

The clues begin to fall together as Hugo realizes that Isabelle is wearing the key to the automaton as a pendant, and when the two children finally make the machine work, they determine from the picture it draws that the machine was indeed made for a work of the renowned early filmmaker Georges Melies. Investigations by the two determine that Melies is in actuality Isabelle's godfather, the irascible toymaker, and when the French Film Academy becomes aware of their findings, Melies is paid for his long-unclaimed work, adopts Hugo, and presides over a gala showing of his 87 early works which had been unrecognized for years. At this glittering affair a new automaton, created together by Melies and Hugo Cabret, proceeds to produce a complex work of 159 illustrations and a story of 26,159 words, entitled, voila', The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

What has made this tale a sensation among reviewers is not simply the story itself, but the way it is told in text and in an intricate series of graphic illustrations. The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been described as part graphic novel and part film, a masterwork which may change the nature of children's fiction.

Selznick's book was a 2007 National Book Award Finalist and is likely to be considered for one of the Newbery awards as well.

Peter Pan Prequel: Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

An unlikely pair of authors, Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize humorist, and Ridley Pearson, suspense/thriller writer, have combined their considerable talents to write prequels (or prequel and prequel sequel) to James Barrie's classic fantasy Peter Pan.

In the first of these solid novels, Peter and the Starcatchers Barry and Pearson introduce us to Peter and a group of unfortunate orphans being shipped off to be servants to the evil King Zarboff III of Rundoon aboard the worst ship in the British merchantile fleet, the Never Land. Also aboard is a curiously light and heavily guarded trunk with mysterious powers for anyone who touches it, a pretty young girl named Molly, who seems to know the secret of the trunk, and a crew of slovenly and potentially murderous sailors led by the evil First Mate Slank. Also setting sail from the same port is the British Navy's fastest sailing ship, the Wasp, upon which is also being loaded an identical secret trunk accompanied, strangely, by Molly's father, Lord Aster.

Both ships are shadowed by the notorious Black Moustache (Stache for short), a cruel pirate captain who plans to outrun the Wasp and seize its mysterious cargo. Stealthily foraging for food when the boys' shipboard ration of worm and mouse soup is inedible, Peter meets up with Molly and learns of her magical locket filled with a substance which enables her to fly. As the pirate ship threatens, Molly tells Peter of the hidden trunk containing a huge cache of this magical starstuff which embues mortals with great peace and joy, strength, health, intelligence, and the ability to fly at will. Molly is a Starcatcher apprentice, and her father is dedicated to keeping this life-enabling treasure out of the hands of the evil Others, who seek its powers to dominate mankind.

As the pirate ship nears and a deadly storm breaks the Never Land apart, Molly and Peter push the magical trunk into the sea and are washed ashore an island, along with the other orphans and assorted crewmen and pirates, where they are captured by natives and barely escape being eaten by their giant crocodile, Mr. Grin. Aided by mermaids and dolphins summoned by the starstuff, Molly, Peter, and his boys dodge Slank, Black Stache, the natives, and the crocodile through many twists and turns of plot until at last Peter lays hands upon the gold box which holds, but cannot quite contain, the much-sought starstuff. Although the dangers are at last resolved for the moment, Peter learns that his handling of the magical substance has both endowed him with the permanent power of flight, but has also arrested his growth and rendered him eternally a boy who can never grow up.

Ridley and Barry know how to keep a story moving suspensefully and humorously through many a peril and twist of plot. Greg Call's full-page black-and-white illustrations, a retro blend of art deco and Howard Pyle-like style just right for this fantastical adventure, add to the spellbinding magic of the story. At last we find out where Barrie's "Red-skins" and crocodile came from, and we find out why the ever-youthful Peter can fly. We even find out how Peter got his fairy guardian (Tinkerbell), but I still wonder how that alarm clock got on the island and into Mr. Grin's tummy!

Peter's story is continued in its sequel Peter and the Shadow Thieves and the story of the lost boys is continued in a parallel story Escape from the Carnivale.

For a short and funny video featuring Dave Barry interviewing his co-author (and fellow musician in "the world's worst rock band") Ridley Pearson about his just published thriller, Killer Weekend, follow this link and scroll down to play the interview.

From the Valley of the Dragons: Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

In a misty Scottish valley a remnant of the once mighty dragons has sought refuge, but human sprawl has begun its relentless encroachment even there. Filled with legends of a mountain haven to the east, a young dragon named Firedrake sets forth, with his brownie friend Sorrel, to find the mythical sanctuary of dragons, the Rim of Heaven.

Firedrake flies first toward London to obtain a promised map devised by the famous rat cartographer, Gilbert Graytail, and there makes a friend of a homeless boy named Ben who agrees to join the quest. On the first leg of their journey to the far Himalayas, Firedrake and his two riders acquire a homunculus, a tiny manikin named Twigleg, and have their first brush with the ultimate evil, Nettlebrand, to whom Twigleg was formerly enslaved. Nettlebrand, a Frankensteinian monster created by an alchemist's experiment gone horribly wrong, is driven by his nature to destroy dragons, whose visible shape he wears like a misshapen veneer. It is Nettlebrand, whose golden scales are invincible to dragon fire, who had in eons past driven the dragons out of their mountain redoubt in Asia.

Firedrake and his companions meet many fabulous beasts on their flight--a basilisk who threatens, a djinn who offers prophecy, a sea serpent who carries them over the Indian Ocean--and human helpers who also give physical and metaphysical aid--Professor Greenbloom, an archaeologist with a penchant for finding mythic beasts, and Zubaida Ghalib, a dracologist who creates an elixir which enables Firedrake to fly without the nourishment of moonshine.

Eventually the dragon and his riders reach the Himalayas, where they meet Professor Greenbloom and family, Lola Graytail, ace pilot and niece of Gilbert Graytail, and the lama of a monastery which reveres dragons and names Ben the reincarnation of the Dragon Rider of legend. Just as the quest seems to have its goal within grasp, the allies find that Nettlebrand and his dwarf armor polisher have tracked them to the Rim of Heaven and lie waiting within its sacred lake, the Eye of the Moon.

As the final battle looms, the dragon-riding allies come up with a plan in which they slyly trick Nettlebrand's dwarf into substituting a flagon of brownie spit with magical dulling qualities for the polish which keeps his scales brilliant enough to repel dragon fire. When Nettlebrand is lured into the dragons' vast cavern beneath the Himalayas, his defenses fail and he is melted into a mass of molten gold. Ben and Twigleg find a home with the Greenblooms, and Firedrake and his dragon kin are now free to retake their sanctuary and live free in their ancestral home.

Cornelia Funke, better known in North America for her more mature fantasies The Thief Lord, Inkheart, and Inkspell, has in this earlier work created a fantasy of Dickensian detail and near glacial pace. For lovers of dragon lore and adventure, it is a sweeping saga best savored slowly and patiently, for the rewards are not so much in its destination as in the wayside pleasures of the journey toward that end.