A Work In Progress: 13 and Counting by Lisa Greenwald

"So, what's going on," I ask Ari over the phone.

"Bubbie's in the hospital. They think she had a mild stroke. But listen, I think this is happening right now for a reason."

"Why?" I ask her.

"The list, our new list, more stuff just keeps coming to me."

Kaylan remains quiet and waits. I know a lot is going on inside her head right now that I know is taking some time to get out, she thinks.

"And two more items came to me totally organically," Ari says. "One is, spend more time with Bubbie... because time is precious. We never know about the future." Ari goes on... "Also, figure out how we feel about God."

It's a tall order. Approaching their thirteenth birthdays, BFFs Ari and Kaylan feel as if everything is changing beneath their feet. School is hard, and it all doesn't come easily to them anymore. Family problems make even their attempts at lighthearted fun harder to enjoy: Kaylan's father comes to visit and announces he's marrying someone she doesn't even know; Ari feels her beloved grandmother sliding toward death.

And old friendships are shifting. Ari's camp buddies are off in various directions, Kaylan's lunch-table-girls are now unpredictable, and even Ari and Kaylan find their friendship tested. Kaylan's once-upon-a-time "boyfriend" is now Ari's. How did that happen? Kaylan is thrilled to be invited to spring break at a posh resort as the guest of Cami's well-to-do family, where she soon finds she'd rather be home, hanging out with Ari. Ari finds herself moody and dissatisfied with everything.

"I don't know what it's going to be. I am just in a weird place right now."

And both of them are planning to spend most of the next summer away, Ari at her Jewish camp and Kaylan at her stand-up comedy camp.

Working their way through it all, including "The List," thirteen aspirations before the school year is over, the two best friends have to find a way to remain close through the ups and downs, ins and outs, of life, in Lisa Greenwald's third book in series, Friendship List 3: 13 and Counting (Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins, 2019). Author Greenwald keeps it real in this book, and although there are plenty of laughs, readers will find these characters coping with a period of life when they begin to realize that their own world is part of a larger world. Ari and Kaylan find a way to be themselves and best friends as well, and readers of the first two books in the series, Friendship List 1: 11 Before 12 and Friendship List 2: 12 Before 13 will want to follow these relatable characters as they navigate being both themselves and best friends.

Friendship-Blendship? 12 Before 13 by Lisa Greenwald

Dear Ari/Arianna/Little Miss Cool Camp Girl/BFFAE,

How's camp? I still can't believe you're gone! I might never get used to it!

Sooooo, things here are fine. I've been hanging with the lunch table girls a ton. I feel like we're all really bonding! We went to the comedy night at the performing arts center. We had the best time! BTW--did you get the big P again?

I miss you more than those sparkly Mary Janes we had in fifth grade!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO,
Kaylan

Arianna is loving her first sleep-away camp, Camp Silver. Her bunkmates are like soulmates already, and she's beginning to get into the sessions on Judaism, especially since she's facing her Bat Mitzvah in the fall. There's even a cute, funny boy nicknamed Golfy who seems to like her a lot. But Kaylan is her BFF, and Ari can't help feeling a touch of jealousy thinking of Kaylan "bonding" with their lunch table girls and worrying about facing eighth grade alone if Kaylan comes to like them more than her while she's away.

And when Ari returns home, she does find it hard to get that special relationship with Kaylan back to the pre-camp level, especially since she misses her camp friends so much. She and Kaylan still work on THE LIST, thirteen things they want to achieve before their thirteenth birthdays, but Ari finds it hard to watch how much fun Kaylan is having with the lunch table girls and how hard it is to fit back into that group. Item #1 on The List is "Keep our Friendship Strong," and Arianna never dreamed that that one would be so hard.

"Let's just take a break from each other, okay?" yelled Kaylan.

I lean against the brick building and cry. I take the list out of my bag and rip it to pieces. Barely any of it even makes sense to me anymore.

I don't need to "tell a boy how I really feel." I need to tell Kaylan how I really feel.

Seventh grade means that it's not easy to mesh with two groups, where loyalty to one sometimes seems disloyalty to the other. School work is harder, and with Bat Mitzvah classes, she seems always to be rushed. But when her dad loses his job and Ari discovers that her mom is considering selling the house, she finds her emotions are torn three ways. One of the responsibilities of her Bat Mitzvah is to be a "woman in her community," and dealing with it all is making Ari realizes that her roles are changing, no matter how much she misses the security of her old life. Life was so simple back in sixth grade!

Lisa Greenwald's second book in her Friendship List series, both funny and serious, finds her two best friends turning thirteen and finding it hard to meet their own expectations, much less those of everyone else, in her Friendship List 2: 12 Before 13 (Katherine Tegen Books, 2019) narrated by Arianna. There is plenty of adolescent angst and teen drama as the two friends renegotiate their friendship and work their way toward maturity, but there is some powerful growing up going on as well. Fans of Greenwald's popular first book, Friendship List 1: 11 Before 12, written in Kaylan's voice will find this one a must-read, a moving and insightful page turner of the changing ways of being a friend, daughter, and "a woman in her community." And Greenwald's next in this series, Friendship List 3: 13 and Counting, is just out and ready for readers.

Harmonic Convergence: Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

"Do you have late pass for me, Esteban?" Mrs. Laverne asked. "Is everything okay?"

Esteban shook his head. "I don't have a pass," he said, his voice breaking. "We think they took my papi. Nobody knows where he's at."

While Ms. Laverne talked to Esteban, I thought about mine. I thought about handcuffs. I thought about fathers being taken way and uncles coming to the rescue and mothers gone.

Then that Friday afternoon Ms. Laverne does something unexpected. She takes the six kids in her special fifth-sixth grade class down the hall to an deserted old art room and gives them a strange assignment: they're to spend the last hour of class on every Friday there--talking.

"But I don't know what we're even supposed to talk about," Tiago said. "And to who?"

"Schoolwork, toys, TV, me, yourselves--anything. To each other. And it's 'to whom,' Tiago."

Amari said, "You trying to change the art room into the A.R.T.T. room--A Room to Talk."

Mrs. Laverne pointed to Amari. "You. Are. Brilliant."

Haley brings a recorder so they can remember what they talk about. And talk they do, little by little, about ordinary pre-adolescent feelings--Holly's embarrassment after she shows off her new sneakers--shoes the others point out are way too expensive for anyone else in the group to even think about wanting. But then Esteben talks about fears no child should face--his fears that his mother will also disappear and both parents will be deported back to the Dominican Republic. Amari talks about his sadness that he and his friends can't play with their Nerf guns outside because he's black and could be killed by police who think he's a shooter. Ashton is shocked but sad when he realizes that he can do things because he's white that Amari can't do. And it is only on the last Friday that Haley can talk about her memory, about how as the driver, her father was jailed when her mother was killed in an auto accident.

So much can change in a minute, an hour, a year.

And change they do. Esteben leaves with his whole family, and the remaining five realize how much they learned about each other and about themselves. The A.R.T.T. has been what Haley's uncle calls a harmonic convergence. And they will never be the same.

In her latest, Jacqueline Woodson's Harbor Me (Nancy Paulsen/Random House Books, 2018) plumbs the story of six young people who are given the time to bridge the distance between them in the gift of time and privacy to share their lives with each other. The multi-award-winning Woodson's easy, colloquial, but poetic prose shines here, as always, in a story that is both personal and global in its portrayal of young lives shared--and the strength they learn from each other. In their starred review, Kirkus summarizes, "This story, told with exquisite language and clarity of narrative, is both heartbreaking and hopeful. An extraordinary and timely piece of writing."

Unforeseen Consequences! Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down by Jeff Kinney

Mom thought that I belonged in Talented and Gifted, so she tried to convince the school to let me in. But I had to take a test to prove I was smart. I don't remember everything on the test, but I do remember one of the questions.

Fill in the blank:

Johnny is the best at math.
Johnny is the best at swimming.
Johnny is the best at reading.
Johnny is _______________.

I guess I was supposed to write down something else he was best at. But I really didn't like this Johnny character, so I wrote

Johnny is a show-off.

Greg doesn't make the Talented and Gifted class, but Mom doesn't give up on self-improvement programs for her middle son. But Greg seems to have a talent only for non-stop video games.

Then, as Halloween decorations start to go up, Greg finds a goal that will definitely improve his life--getting invited to Mariana Mendoza's Halloween party.

Mariana's parties are kind of legendary because her parents don't care WHAT goes on as long as it stays in the basement.

But this year Mariana's parents are putting the squeeze on the guest list to only kids in the band.

I got a genius idea. If I join the BAND, I can get invited. Mom was really excited that I wanted to challenge myself. Dad said instruments are EXPENSIVE and I wouldn't stick to it.

Greg winds up with left-handed French horn, because it has only three keys. Dad insists that he has to practice every night. Since Greg can't seem to get anything but really rude noises out of his horn, he comes up with a way to keep Dad happy. He goes to Youtube on his PC.

Luckily I found some video clips of a girl practicing HER French horn, which are doing the trick, a least for now.

But then Greg learns that Mariana's parents have limited the invitations to her section of the band, the woodwinds.

But then I realized I've got an IN. Rowley's part of the woodwind section, so I realized that if I make myself part of Rowley's COSTUME, then wherever he goes I go.

Greg's ever-eager mom is on it and cheerfully contributes two perfectly-good sheets to their costume, sewing them into it together so that Greg and Rowley can go to the party as a two-headed man. Mom, inspired by the Mendoza's laissez faire parenting and Family Frolics magazine, throws herself into leading the games, and to Greg's great embarrassment, she's the hit of the party. But even with his mom there, the party is a blast, and the double-headed dudes party hearty, dancing with all the girls... until Rowley makes an unfortunate announcement.

Right when the party was about to hit the next level, Rowley told me he needed to use the bathroom.

We didn't PLAN for that.The only way out of the costume was to cut it off. Neither of us was wearing pants underneath, so THAT wasn't happening.

Once more, poor Greg Heffley finds himself the victim of unforeseen consequences, in Jeff Kinney's latest, Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 11) (Amulet Books, 2016), in which Kinney's hapless middle-schooler's misadventures continue in the eleventh in his best-selling series. The author-illustrator has the knack of offering up hilarious episode after episode without losing sight of the human side of the whole Heffley family, as his hapless tweener makes his way through those hard-scrabble middle-school years. Like Peter Pan, maybe Greg Heffley will never grow up, keeping even reluctant readers flocking by the millions to his cartoon-illustrated best-sellers.

For more of Greg's laugh-out-loud adventures, see reviews here.

Brinksmanship: In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard

The telephone is on my side of the room, sitting on the dresser with its cord in a neat coil.

"Hello?"

Silence.

"Hello?"

Muffled sound in the background, of cars, or of people talking.

Suddenly, I know it's him, Hector, standing at the pay phone next to--where? Maybe the Dairy Mart, while Galen is inside shoplifting. My heart starts pounding, with the strangeness of it all; nobody has every prank phone-called me before, and I don't know what to do.

I set the phone back in its cradle.

In the dresser mirror my face looks the same, but I feel something happening around me,some change as palpable as weather. Stuck in the mirror are mementos from my childhood--red and yellow ribbons from various underachievments, a brown corsage from grade school graduation...

It's a stark feeling. Like getting to the last page of a book and seeing "The End."

In Jo Ann Beard's best-selling In Zanesville: A Novel (Little, Brown, 2011) nothing and yet everything happens.

The first-person narrator (who goes essentially unnamed) and her long-time best friend Felicia, called Flea, finish off the summer between eighth grade and high school being the world's worst babysitters for the world's worst family with their house on fire, and slip into small-town summer limbo until John Deere High School opens.

Both of them are middling, Midwest girls, no sure thing for the popular crowd, not noticeable enough for the loser crowd, clinging to each other and their three friends from elementary school as they drop into the abyss that is adolescence. Our narrator thinks of herself as the sidekick to Flea, who is more daring and less conventional. Her own family is a perpetual tragi-comedy, with a father who spends half his time half-drunk, yelling "I'll say this about that!" meaninglessly at her on-the-edge mom who chain smokes her way through countless cupcakes, mending, meatloaves, sarcastic asides, and shouting matches in the kitchen.

But out of all this miserable miasma, in a chance encounter in the girls' bathroom, our girl catches the attention of Patti the cheerleader, who inexplicably invites her to a sleepover. She inveigles an invitation for Flea, whom Patti grudgingly deems "kind of cute," and the two warily set forth to Patti's grandmother's palatial house, depending of each other to keep them from looking as out of place as they know they are among the otherwise all-cheerleader guests.

And then comes the watershed moment. Patti herds everyone into a pre-arranged sneak-out to meet boys in the park--a bunch of boys whom our girl knows only by reputation. There are thirteen girls, but only twelve boys, and when Flea pairs off with one of the twelve, she is left alone, mortified, in the dark. Flea's betrayal is almost more painful than being the only one rejected, and she knows nothing will ever be quite the same between them.

And yet, life goes on. Just being on the fringes of the popular note-passing, flirting-with-guys crowd gets her noticed by some boys, and despite all that happens, she realizes that some significant rite de passage has occurred and she has moved on into a new life. School is still the same; her family hasn't changed; but something, a different set of possibilities, is out there, ahead of her.

Beard is a master at using the minutiae of daily life to to reveal character and move the plot in understated but lyrical precision. In one telling scene the narrator watches through the kitchen window a scene with the neighbor's hopeless, always angry dog which speaks volumes about her father's life--and perhaps her own.

Outside my father is putting on what be brought down from the attic--trout-fishing boots. As he flips the canvas suspenders over his shoulders and fastens them, he seems to be talking to Curly, who is listening warily from the end of his chain.

He's going to try to walk him. Forget the gun. This is suicide by dog.

Where my dad grew up nobody ever kept a dog chained.

He takes a step, and Curly attacks him at the ankles and calves. Amazingly, the boots withstand it, and after a moment, the dog retreats, hackles up. Attack and retreat. Then, at the next step, there's a lunge but no bite. Still talking, my dad slowly reaches down, unclips the heavy chain from around the tree, and winds it around his gloved hand.

It's like pulling a car, getting him out of the dirt circle. It's been twelve years since he's been beyond that two feet. My father drags him along, inch by inch.

Then Curly is out ahead, hauling a tall man in hip waders through a shrub and down a terrace. The man has a look on his face I've never seen before. He looks happy, leaning backward as the dog strains forward, into the world.

Jo Ann Beard's portrayal of adolescence in the 1970s is right on target, well rooted in the time, yet universal, with its beginning coming-of-age narrative, at times painfully poignant, at others deep-down funny, but always frank and real. One not to miss.

The Fame Game: The Daughters by Joanna Philbin

Welcome to today's guest blogger, Julia Teal, well qualified by her love of reading, literary ability, and especially by the fact that she is a bona fide teen-ager, who will from time to time be reviewing new young adult books here.

Riding high on the wave of popular teen books set in New York's Upper East Side, Joanna Philbin’s The Daughters (Poppy, 2010) focuses on the lives of Lizzie Summers, Carina Jurgensen, and Hudson Jones, all of whom have high-profile celebrities for parents. Lizzie, the main protagonist, seems to have it the worst, though, with red hair “the texture of a Brillo pad” and a long crooked nose which force her to be forever in supermodel mother Katia’s shadow.

But when being the daughter of a “walking proof of God” becomes too much and the tape of her mouthing off gets leaked onto YouTube, Lizzie’s life spins even farther out of her control. Paparazzi begin harassing her on the street, publicist Natasha won’t leave her alone, and worst of all, she’s broken Rule #6 of being a daughter:

Never talk to the press about your parents. Especially when they’re hanging out in front of your house and yelling at you to say stuff.

Well, Rule #6 is deep-sixed now, but in the midst of all this drama, Lizzie manages to get “discovered” by photographer Andrea Sullivan, and is reunited with former best friend Todd Piedmont, whom she just might be crushing on. Readers watch with bated breath as Lizzie struggles to manage her new public persona as a model and still keep her private life intact--a life which includes failed English projects, forged signatures, and walking out of a major photo shoot with fashion mogul Martin Melroy.

Written along the lines of other series such as Cecily von Ziegesar’s best-selling Gossip Girl and Jen Calonita’s Secrets of My Hollywood Life, The Daughters also has the unique perspective of being written by Joanna Philbin, who did her background research growing up as the daughter of high-profile talk-show host Regis Philbin. Her real-time experience with the subject shows through, and in addition to the characters’ realistic goals and down-to-earth personalities, keeps the over-glamorized setting of the Manhattan elite fresh and believable.

Check in for Philbin's next book featuring Lizzie’s mountain-climbing, soccer-loving fellow-celeb daughter Carina Jurgensen and her struggles with her mega-star father in The Daughters Break the Rules, forthcoming in November of this year.

After the Fall: Freefall by Ariela Anhalt

"Hey, Luke, you remember that time freshman year? When you and I played that trick on Mr. Mayer, with the toupee. And we put it up the flagpole, do you remember?"

Okay, nostalgia. I guess now's as good a time as any. "I remember the three weeks of detention you got," Luke said. Luke, who had followed all the rules in junior high, had been impressed by Hayden's daring and had considered himself exceedingly lucky to have been included in the plot.

"You remember," said Hayden, "Mayer only caught me, but I didn't tell him you helped. I had your back."

Oh, shit. He's guilt-tripping me. Luke had to say something. "Look, Hayden, the thing is, I'm not exactly sure.... It's just...." The words refused to come out.

"I mean, Russell's dead. I mean, you pushed him."

For four years Luke has followed his popular prep school roommate Hayden's lead, sharing his classes, pranks, and place on the fencing team, enjoying the instant entrance into Hayden's wide circle of friends. But when a smug newcomer, Russell Conrad, takes Hayden's girlfriend and nearly bests him at his sport, Hayden is knocked off his game and responds to Russell's blatant challenges in what seems to Luke an immature and manipulative way.

And then, when teammate Tristan is injured in a car crash caused by Hayden's drunken driving and Russell is moved into his slot on the competitive sabre team, Hayden unexpectedly volunteers to accompany him on the traditional rite of initiation for the team, a midnight jump from a low cliff into the lake. Luke reluctantly goes along against his better judgment, questioning his roommate's motivation and warning Russell that he should pick another teammate to witness the jump.

Then, when Russell hesitates at the edge of the lake, the two rivals quarrel and Hayden's hasty shove and Russell's stumble take him over the cliff to his death on the rocks below. Luke realizes that his testimony will change his friend's life forever, and he must decide whether Russell's death was merely the result of an impulsive accident or a premeditated murder.

Ariela Anhalt's forthcoming first novel, Freefall (Harcourt, 2010) takes on the familiar issue of conflict between responsibility to friendship and to the truth, as did John Knowles in his classic novel, A Separate Peace. But Anhalt also broadens her theme as Luke comes to see that responsibility for Russell's death goes beyond Hayden's momentary act in the same way as did John Green in his recent powerful novel, Looking for Alaska (see my 2008 review here.)

These are difficult issues for any novelist to navigate, and although there is occasional awkwardness in her exposition, Anhalt, a young college writer herself, does an admirable job in exploring this theme in a setting for young adult readers.

Going for It: Front and Center by Catherine Murdock

That's the thing. When I said that it sure felt good to be going back to school, I didn't mean just going to school. I meant having everything go back to the way it used to be. The way it's always been. With D.J. Schwenk in the background, just like always. In the background where I belong.

But instead, it was the exact total opposite. Instead of being a nobody, now I was front and center.

And let me tell you something. Front and center sucks.

Front and Center (Houghton Mifflin, 2009), the long-awaited sequel to Catherine Murdock's best-selling Dairy Queen (review posted here August 7, 2007) and sequel The Off Season reviewed here, finds D. J. Schwenk in a quandary. She's got what she wanted. She's back home after two hard months coaching her partially paralyzed brother Win into giving life another chance after a catastrophic game injury; she's recovered from her own shoulder separation in football and is ready to concentrate on snagging a basketball scholarship, as her mom puts it, as "the only way out of Red Bend;" and she's sure she's put all thoughts of onetime boyfriend Brian Nelson behind her:

I was done with all that boyfriend crap. Finished with the 24/7 Brian Nelson cable station that had been running nonstop inside my skull since July. No more feeling like I was some fluttery girl who doesn't have anything better to do all day long than think about her boyfriend. Because I did have better things to think about, thank you very much, because I am not the kind of girl who has boyfriends.

But when the conveniently tall Beaner Halstaad asks her on an actual date, D.J. reconsiders. Beaner is a basketball player, too, funny, comfortable in his own skin, and popular with everyone, even teachers, a kid who has the knack for smoothing over D.J.'s shyness and making her feel at home with anyone as long as he's around. He's the perfect boyfriend substitute, except that she can't talk to him about what really bothers her like she could with Brian, not to mention that there's no thrill, even when he kisses her.

Guy problems aside, though, D.J.'s big problem is with the expectations of her coach, her classmates, and her brother Win, who's made her scholarship with a Division III school the focus of his rehabilitation. A college football superstar before his accident, Win has an in with all the Big Ten coaches, and D.J. finds herself deluged with letters from all over, from Wisconsin to San Diego to little St. Margaret's College, and as Red Bend's team takes the court, she is horrified to discover scouts in the stands and a coach who expects her to take charge of the team on the court. Schwenks are anything but talkers, and the best D.J. can bring herself to do is to mutter quick instructions to Kari, her mouthpiece point guard, on the fly during a game.

A visit to a University of Minnesota game doesn't help, as D.J. watches a player she knows miss two foul shots and lose the game in front of ten thousand fans. She's angry at Win's constant meddling, and her coach's constant pressure. She knows she can't handle being front and center in that bigtime arena, and, fearing to fail everyone's hopes for her, D.J. takes refuge in her resolution to take any scholarship she can get to a lowly Division III school.

I already knew I was a loser. Someone who didn't measure up, not when the pressure was on. Now it was just a matter of everyone else figuring it out.

Oh, wouldn't that be fun.

Slowly, though, D.J. realizes that this is her game to play. Taking charge of her fears, taking charge of the Red Bend team, and taking charge of the rest of her life is--as the season nears an end--squarely on her own strong shoulders. She digs deep, pulling up an alter ego whom she nicknames Darey, to speak for her on the court, and when that begins to work for her in the game, D.J. finds her own voice--to break up with Beaner, to make the call to Brian Nelson and begin again with him, and to make that call to the Division I coach and take the chance of being the best player D.J. Schwenk can be. To herself, she admits that her brother was right to push.

Win, you say I saved your life. Well, you didn't save mine; you got me one. You've found me a better life than I ever imagined I deserved.

Critics and readers alike have rejoiced at the honest, authentic voice of Murdock's main character, so unlike the hyper-sophisticated heroines of many teen novels. Tall and strong, strong enough from her dairy chores to arm wrestle most potential boyfriends to the ground, D.J. offers up her frank but funny confessions about what it feels like to be a different kind of girl heroine, winning the love of readers of all ages. It will be hard for fans to say goodbye to D.J. Schwenk, if indeed this is the last we hear from that wonderful "Dairy Queen."

In the meantime, for readers there's Murdock's funny femme fairy tale/fantasy novel, Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of her Recollection, in Four Parts.

Spenser Comes of Age: Chasing the Bear by Robert B. Parker

I've always saved the latest Robert B. Parker mystery--especially those of his hyper-macho Boston detective Spenser for downtime reading--beach bag fare, the post-Christmas-week treat, the school's out celebratory read--but it looks like Parker is determined to make Spenser part of my daily reading grind, as in his latest young adult novel, Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel. After getting his feet wet in the junior novel trade with two other well-received titles, Edenville Owls and The Boxer and the Spy, Parker has gone for a prequel (a way-back prequel) to his best-selling Spenser Mystery series, a young adult novel in which he relates the coming of age of the fourteen-year-old Spenser.

In his characteristic terse style, Parker frames the scene with a casual conversation between the mature Spenser and his lady love Susan Silverman, as they pass a lazy afternoon watching the swan boats ply the pond in the Boston Public Gardens.

"I was just thinking how well I know you and how close we are and yet there are parts of your life that I know nothing about," Susan muses.

"Like?"

"Like what you were like as a kid; it's hard to imagine you as a kid."

And prompted by Susan's questions, Spenser tells her some of the events of his fourteenth summer--his defense of a diminutive Hispanic boy against local bullies and his rescue of his friend Jeannie Haden, kidnapped by her drunken, abusive father and held hostage in a primitive camp on a small island in the local river.

Raised by his father and two maternal uncles, Spenser recounts the independent, masculine influence of these three quiet but strong men who schooled him in self-reliance and a unique moral code. "There's legal," his father says, "and then there's right," and it is this advice that governs the seminal event in Spenser's own coming of age.

When the terrified Jeannie mouths "Help!" to Spenser as she is driven by in her father's battered truck, he trails them to the river, where he sees Jeannie's father force her into his bass boat and head down river. Spenser follows in a small skiff, helped only by a broken paddle, and drifts downstream until he spots the boat tied up at a wooded island. By night he steals through the woods to their camp, where he waits until the drunken Haden passes out and is able to lead Jeannie back to his boat. In the darkness they push off and follow the current down the stream, hoping to find help before her father awakes and finds Jeannie gone.

But after following the river all night, the two hear the sound of Haden's motor upstream. Spenser rigs the paddle and Jeannie's blanket to approximate a human shape inside the skiff and pushes it into the current as a decoy, while he and Jeannie climb up a train trestle and she runs for the woods. Then, noticing a metal sign warning of dangerous falls ahead, Spenser removes the sign and hides, watching the intoxicated Haden speed after the drifting boat down the river to his death.

Back home, Spenser's father feels he did the right thing and should remain quiet about his part in the man's death, but tells his son that the decision is ultimately his.

"If you need to tell the law everything that happened, and I can't talk you out of it, then I'll go down to the station with you and go the whole way, whatever way it goes."

"It's never a mistake to do what you think is right," one of his uncles adds.

"Every person is afraid sometimes." his father says. "Thing is not to let it run you. Thing is to go ahead and do what you need to do."

"I think I got to tell the truth," Spenser says.

It's the familiar personal ethic that adult readers find in the final chapter of each Spenser mystery, but not a bad one for young readers to mull over as well. Some teens may find the interspersed Spenser-Silverman ruminations on life and love a bit tedious, but Parker's trademark brisk dialogue and fast-paced action will nevertheless carry the young reader along swiftly. As always, Robert B. Parker knows how to tell a tale with minimal fuss and bother, and his young adult fiction is no exception.

Going Softly: Behind You by Jacqueline Woodson

Author Jacqueline Woodson, whose novel Feathers received a Newbery Honor Award recently, is one who writes for all ages and whose books have earned Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and other notable awards. Reminded of her work by her recent awards, I've recently read some of her earlier work. Here are two related books for young adult readers.

Ellie and Jeremiah are fifteen years old, the children of well-to-do, successful New Yorkers, both students at Percy Academy, a prestigious private prep school in Manhattan. When they seem to fall in love at first sight, it would seem that the course of teen love would be smooth for them. It is not, mainly because Ellie is white and Jeremiah is biracial. There are family problems, as well: Jeremiah's parents divorce when his father falls in love with another woman, and Ellie's parents, modern and liberal though they think they are, cannot quite picture their young daughter as part of an interracial couple.

In If You Come Softly,Woodson's intimate look at first love, its depth and pain, is a sensitive story of the fleeting beauty of this beginning relationship between two beautiful young people whose feelings come up against the ugliness of society's reaction to their being together.

In her stand alone sequel, Behind You, Jeremiah is killed by police in a case of mistaken identity, and Ellie, his parents, and his close friends all find it hard to accept his death and go on without him. Jeremiah's spirit, too, is bound to the people he cannot forget and cannot really leave behind.

Woodson traces the history of grief in the separate voices of Ellie, his parents Nelia and Norman, and his friends Kennedy and Carlton, as they gradually turn from isolation and toward each other for solace and a way to go forward into a different life without Jeremiah. As Jeremiah says at the conclusion,

"When you die, you turn away from the world you've always known and begin the long, slow walk into the next place. And behind you--everyone you left is taking a step deeper into their new world. The world they're learning to live in without you.

When you die, your voice becomes the wind and whispers to the living...."

As in all of Woodson's books, there are no sudden and easy revelations, just the slow return of hope and the joy of life.

For my earlier posts on Jacqueline Woodson's Newbery Honor books Show Way (Newbery Honor Book) and Feathers, look here and here.