The Thrill of the Chase! Follow That Frog! by Philip C. Stead

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Dutiful niece Sadie enters her snoring Aunt Jane's chamber, bearing a tray with teapot and cup. The rooster is already on the foot of the bed crowing and the rest of the hens are pecking and grooming and squatting here and there. Aunt Jane protests!

CLOSE THE CURTAINS, SADIE! THAT COULD BE A SUITOR, BUT MY DAYS OF ROMANCE ARE JUST A MEMORY."

But the knocking persists, louder and more insistent, and reminds Aunt Jane of a memory of being bivouacked in the Peruvian jungle, cataloging amphibians for science when a giant frog swallowed the Admiral's quirky son.

"FOLLOW THAT FROG!"

"I DIDN'T CARE MUCH FOR THE ADMIRAL'S SON, BUT IT WAS MY JOB TO CATALOG THAT FROG!"

With devotion and not a little distress, Aunt Jane commandeers a motorcycle and gives chase, switching to tortoise back when the frog takes a bad turn at the Panama Canal. Aunt Jane switches her vehicle of choice to a seagoing bathtub headed for the Canary Islands, where indeed, there were an excess of... canaries, and where Aunt Jane takes the next blue whale going her way!

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Ignoring the increasingly loud noises at the door, Aunt Jane continues to describe the chase, past the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids and the ruins of Rome, and even gay Paree, where she says she and Sadie will one day see

"FOLLOW THAT FROG!" SHE WENT ON.

"ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO GET THAT DOOR, AUNT JANE?" VENTURED SADIE.

"I MAY NEVER, EVER, FIND THAT FROG, SADIE!" SAYS AUNT JANE, RESIGNEDLY.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

But Aunt Jane may see the giant frog sooner than she thinks, in the hilarious new picture book, Follow That Frog!(Holiday House, 2021)

With a jolly, cumulative, and outrageous plot, this new one from the award-winning Philip C. Stead, illustrated in the scratchy fine-line illustrations of Caldecott illustrator Matthew Cordell in the style of Quentin Blake, this story makes a good read-aloud in which kids will be chiming in with ever louder KNOCK! KNOCKS! throughout the charmingly ridiculous story. Says Horn Book's review "Text and art duel with each other to make the antics more and more outlandish, and every page-turn yields an unexpected and wonderfully ridiculous plot development. . . . All the while, someone keeps knocking at the door, where the perfect ending awaits on the other side."

Brave Enough for Two (A Hoot and Olive Story) by Jonathan D. Voss

Hoot was Olive's very best friend in all the whole wide world.

But, as you know, best friends don't always like the same things,

Take, for instance, ADVENTURE.

Olive liked adventure, as long as it came between the covers of a good book.

Hoot preferred to find his outside in the wide world.

So, one fine day, Hoot persuaded Olive to put down her book and take him outside to find something daring.

And their finds were exciting. Olive found an abandoned laundry basket (which on its own was not exciting) but the bunch of helium balloons tied to it suggested a great adventure to Hoot--a virtual hot air balloon ride!

"I'm not brave like you," said Olive."Don't worry," said Hoot. "I'm brave enough for both of us."

So they step into the basket, just as the breeze lifts them high off the ground. Olive is worried when she sees how far they are from the ground, while Hoot rejoices that he feels how a cloud must feel.  What an adventure to float across the sky!

But clouds do more than just float, and the real clouds darken and rain begins to fall. There's thunder and lightning and wind, and.... Olive is afraid that they will be blown far and get lost.

"We can never be lost so long as I'm here," said Hoot.

It's brave talk from Hoot, but Olive has had enough of high-flying adventure. She begins to untie the balloons, one by one, and they drop down, the basket settling in the fast-flowing river. Their basket is tossed and then blown to shore, torn by the current. Hoot is soaked and heavy with water. It's getting dark, and now Hoot is afraid. And now Olive sees that her friend needs for her to have courage.

"As long as you're here and I'm here, we can never be lost," said Olive.

And now Olive comes through with courage for two as she carries the sodden Hoot until they find their way home. All's well that ends with two adventuring friends safe and sound, in Jonathan D. Voss' Brave Enough for Two: A Hoot and Olive Story (Henry Holt and Company), a beautifully illustrated story of a great adventure ironically set safely within the covers of a picture book. Voss's illustrations, done with strong, flowing lines and deep but glowing colors, have the feel of movement, and his story of courage shared is heartwarming for young readers. "[A] supportive story of friendship and taking chances, illustrated in burnished-toned compositions that take on a cinematic expansiveness," says Publishers Weekly.

Half-Empty, or Half-Full?The Epic Adventures of Huggie and Stick by Drew Daywalt

Rain falls on the just and the unjust--and upon the Always-Cheery and the Ever-Grumpy!

What started out with being smooshed in the kids' scruffy backpack turns into a global circumnavigation for a crosspatch toy rabbit improbably named Huggie. Huggie's seen better days, but today is a memorable day for him and his unlikely companion, Stick, a stick with an annoying penchant for hyper-optimism. When the kid's bike hits a big bump, the improbable partners fall out and are left behind to irritate each other through an unlikely adventure.

Stick congratulates himself for breaking his companion's fall. Huggie, however, is less sanguine about the landing.

“Dear Diary, There’s a stick up my butt.”

And so this unlikely odd-couple buddy road trip begins.

This is their story. It isn't pretty.

The two world travelers are washed out to sea, stuck on a desert island surrounded by sharks, and meet up with pirates who make them walk the plank. Stick does a jolly cannonball off the plank, while Huggie just gives the buccaneers the hairy eyeball. They get swallowed by a shark, meet up with wild men in the rain forest who want to use Stick for a blowpipe, hitch a ride in a kangaroo's pouch, and pursue any conveyance to get back home.

Stick slept through the llama ride, the train ride, two bus rides, the small plane trip, and 200 miles on the back of a determined Chihuahua..

In the style of his best-selling The Day the Crayons Quit, author Drew Daywalt has penned another another rollicking epistolary road trip tale, The Epic Adventures of Huggie and Stick (Philomel Books, 2019). This hilarious story is a surefire giggle generator, especially if read aloud by someone who loves to do voices for these comical characters. Artwork by David Spencer is also lively and right on target for this age level. Says School Library Journal, "Spencer's illustrations are sharp and polished, while his cartoon-heavy character design keeps the tone comedic."

Not What It Seems! The Thief Knot: A Greenglass House Story by Kate Milford

Marzana and Nialla are dissatisfied. Desperate for some excitement, they had lurked at a sidewalk table with their coffees, surveilling what they earnestly hoped was a robbery about to take place inside the jewelry store. Instead, it appeared to be the purchase of a surprise engagement ring for a happy young couple.

So the guy had looked a bit shifty. A high percentage of who lived within the city-within-the-city of Nagspeake called the Liberty were shifty--or had been to one degree or another in a previous life," thought Marzana.

"I should have known it was nothing...because... we live in the Liberty, and this is the place where nothing happens."

The neighborhood of the Liberty should be an intriguing environment, being the sanctuary city of former seafaring smugglers. And when talk spreads of the kidnapping of ten-year-old Peony Hyde, and Marzana's sometimes investigator parents receive a copy of the ransom note delivered by the mysterious Emmett, who brought up the possible involvement of someone called "Snakebird," Marzana seizes on solving the case as her remedy for ennui. With Nialla as co-sleuth, she organizes a group to help in their investigations, even calling their friend Milo, resident of the peculiar Greenglass House, where they had been previously involved in a puzzling Christmas enigma, for advice.

Marzana and Nialla recruit fans of fantasy fiction from Lucky's bookstore--Emilia, privy to many secrets of their school's historic building, Ciro, a self-declared born camoufleur, J. J., a magician, and Milo's offering, Meddie, a sometimes visible ghost resident at Greenglass House whose talents including invisibility, walking through walls, and supernatural sight and hearing. When the crew of six discover that their substitute math teacher is the great nephew of Andrew Cormorant, called "the Snakebird," they suspect that the kidnapped Peony may be hidden at the apartment of their real math teacher and indeed they find a little girl chained there--one who turns out to be a counterfeit Peony Hyde, whose real name is, interestingly, Tasha Cormorant.

Now, as Sherlock would say, "The case is afoot!" Marzana's crew, self-named the Thief Knot, discover an undercover conductor on the mostly abandoned Nagspeake subway system, the Belowground, who takes the young sleuths to a nightmarish abandoned station, overgrown with the ornamental ironwork which infests the Liberty, overgrowing buildings, walkways, and especially subway tunnels, where the real kidnap victim is perhaps to be found.

With a plot with as many convolutions as the enchanted ironwork of The Liberty, Kate Milford's forthcoming third book in series, The Thief Knot: A Greenglass House Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), nothing or no one is quite what it seems in a place where time and setting overlay each other. Like the Harry Potter series, the plot draws on the strengths of the young friends to solve a puzzle with many pieces, a band of unlikely mates--differently-abled in abilities, knowledge, and exceptional powers, but one in loyalty.

This is no quick-read Nancy Drew mystery, but one to be taken slowly, savored for its atmosphere, its murky clues, and shifting plot. In the Liberty, the haven for old secrets, Marzana not only helps solve the mystery of the missing student, but also some of the mysteries of her own parents' hidden histories. Milford's over-arching theme of connection, the links between people, places, and their joint history, provides a part-fantasy/mystery tale perfect for middle readers who like to solve puzzles that range from relationships to crimes of the past.

Previous books in this series are Greenglass House (read review here) and sequel Ghosts of Greenglass House (read review here).

Go West, Young Man! Oregon Trail by Jesse Wiley

It's a double blast from the past--1850 and 1985!

The pioneers who braved the dread Oregon Trail, the wagon train journey from Independence, Missouri, over flooding rivers, snowbound and avalanche-prone Rocky and Cascades Mountain passes, and parched deserts, all the way to the West Coast, have been celebrated in history, novels and movies, and--in 1985-1995--in some of the very first classroom video games, to be played on the latest technology, the Apple II-e computer!

It was a real breakthrough in audio-visual teaching materials, joining the venerable 12mm film and filmstrips of old--a computer video game in which, instead of a Pacman scoring by chomping, the young player was challenged to role-play a wagon train family making their way through real hazards. Like the real pioneers of history, some of the hazards proved deadly or turned the would-be West Coast settlers back. American history had never been taught with this kind of fun and games, which also used another 1980s-style interactive literary venture, the multiple-outcome "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"series, in which each choice sent them to another section of book or game to achieve success or meet disaster.

And indeed, in Jesse Wiley's new four-book series, The Oregon Trail (paperback boxed set plus poster map) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), middle readers will find that going westward was often a "doomed-if-you do, doomed-if-you-don't" proposition, with as many ways to fail--fatal snakebite, wolves, starvation, quicksand, river-fordings, outlaw gangs, and a malevolent moose--as faced the intrepid real pioneers themselves. Even precipitation could be hazardous to your health:

You sink back against the tree trunk and huddle into a tight ball. Your arm is on fire; it might even be broken. You wish you'd followed Tatsa to her village.

Suddenly a hailstone the size of a baseball knocks you in the head. You are concussed, and it will be days before you wake up. Your journey ends here.~THE END~

Amidst the page-turning adventures, there's a strong dose of reality which establishes a theme which is true for all times in history--CHOICES MATTER!

With different characters and episodes, the four choose-your-own pioneer accounts in this boxed set are Gold Rush!, (7) (The Oregon Trail) Alone in the Wild (The Oregon Trail), The Wagon Train Trek (The Oregon Trail), and Calamity in the Cold (The Oregon Trail Book 8), all with bibliography, maps, and guides to making it all the way, with famous real mountain guides who intercede, e.g., Jim Beckwith, John Bidwell, and Lewis Southworth, and this set is page-turning and engrossing introduction to a significant period of history.

The Gorm Is Rising: The Beasts of GrimHeart (Longburrow) by Kieran Larwood

Back in the first days, it is said, the goddesses Estra and Nixha banished Gormalech the World Eater underground and set about filling the place with life (and death, because that was Nixha's job).

They chose rabbits to run the world, walking and talking as the Ancients before them once had. They gave them fire and shelter, even twelve magic Gifts. But something was missing.

Estra realized that living is nothing without the power to think, talk, and sing and to pass on those thoughts and ideas. Life, the goddess thought, is one big story, and she needed someone to tell it.

But the Old Bard is dead and his pyre has been lit, and the bard and his apprentice Rue have been taken prisoner by the Bonedancers who will sacrifice him to their pit beast for, as he explains to Rue, "telling the wrong story to the wrong people."

The Bonedancers of Spinestone are displeased that he has told a tale about them, but by the gift of his words, the bard gets them to agree that he will tell the whole tale and let them judge if his words are true.

"Off we go," says the bard. His eyes are shining bright green.

And so the bard seats himself in front of the pit and begins to to tell the tale he knows is true.

Once an aimless and lazy little rabbit, Young Podkin One-Ear with his sister Paz have twice put down the dark forces of Gorm, the worshipers of the Gormleach who rule by the power of iron and are driven to consume the creation. Avenging their father's death, they have won victories and gained the Gifts of the copper dagger Starclaw that cuts through all but iron, the silver brooch Moonfyre that enables it wearer to hide in moonshadows, and the hammer Surestrike which can forge Gorm-piercing weapens,, and Aifew, the sickle that reveals poison. But now word comes from warrens near the edge of the Grimheart forest that the Gorm are coming, with a fearsome armored horde and giant tree-shredding iron beasts, to destroy the entire forest and slaughter the inhabitants of every warren.

Podkin and Paz, with their baby brother Pook, flee deeper into the forest where they have heard they may find another of the Gifts needed to destroy the Gorm. There they meet Mo Grim and the Wardens and the chief of the giant rabbit Wardens and receive Bloodcrun, the twisted crown that enables the wearer to read minds. Wearing Bloodcrun, Podkin One-Ear is able to speak with the giant saber wolves of the deep forest, and astride the alpha wolf Truefang, rides back to rally all the warrens for a final stand against the encroaching Gorm army.

The giant wolves are ravenous fighters, and the assembled warrens' warriors fight courageously, but their weapons are weak against the iron-clad Gorm and their machines. Then the war council determines that their only hope is Soulshot, in the possession of Pokkin's uncle, Hennic, the bow that never misses its target and the three arrows forged by Surestrike to kill Scramashank, the leader of the Gorm. But Podkin is too young to draw Soulshot. The blind warrior Crom is chosen to pull the bow, and Podkin, wearing Blodcrun, must meld his mind with Crom's strength to guide the last arrow to Scramashank's head.

"I see him, Crom!" Podkin shouted. "Draw now! NOW!

Soulshot creaked as Crom heaved the string back to his ear.

Quickly Podkin summoned up every memory he had. Scramashank drawing his sword to kill his father, all those memories, all that terror overcome--Podkin let it flood through him... until he reached out a finger and touched the taught bowstring.

In that moment he felt the bow leap. Suddenly it knew its target. He leaned down to Crom's ear.

"Now."

It is this story that is told by the bard to the Bonedancers, so well told that he and Rue depart safely into the wood to continue to tell their story of how Podkin saved them all. Story, as we see, must always be told, and as readers learn at the closing, especially if it is told by the  bard, Pook, younger brother of Podkin.

Since J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, there have been a seeming multitude of fantasy novel series, (viz. Harry Potter) set in invented societies, human, alien, and animal, with a hero or heroine who is forced to lead in the iconic battle of good and evil, often within the medieval settings that Tolkien drew on so so vividly from Britain's ancient history. Few such stories move as naturally and compellingly as this one, short on warfare scenes and long on emotional understanding. Podkin himself is a wonderfully sympathetic hero for young readers, compelled by birth and circumstance and perhaps by prophecy to make himself a leader despite his lack of skill and experience, his own reluctance to lead, and his own very real fears. Unlike many such fantasies with heroes with super powers, this young rabbit, the unlikeliest of heroes, owns no powers of his own, save for the courage to do what has to be done, acquiring instead the Gifts left at the beginning of time. Podkin's sacrifice is all the more appealing and understandable for middle readers who may worry about their own powers and who can only hope and believe, like Podkin, that, despite the Dark that is always rising, the universe bends toward the Good.

Kieran Larwood's forthcoming The Beasts of Grimheart (Longburrow) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019), the supposed finale in the Longburrow series, is an accessible read and a good preface for middle graders who may soon move on the classics of this genre waiting for them. Other books in this series, cleverly also set in a frame narrative as bard's tales as the story within a story, are Podkin One-Ear (Longburrow) (see review here) and The Gift of Dark Hollow (Longburrow)

The Sky Is All One Piece: Spark by Sarah Beth Durst

Mina had always been quiet.

She'd been born without a cry on a peaceful night when the stars over their family farm sparkled brighter than usual, or so her mother liked to say.

With calm, capable farmer parents, sandwiched between her affectionately playful older brother and the ebullient toddler twins, Mina is happy to listen quietly to the happy talk around her--until one morning she has something important to say:

"I think my egg is going to hatch soon."

Only one in four children in the land are give weather-beast eggs at the age of twelve, with a charge to nurture them until they are mature enough to go to the school where together they train for duties controlling natural energy for the utopian land of Alorria. There are sun beasts and rain beasts and wind beasts who maintain perfect temperature, breezes, and perfect rainfall for perfect crops for their land, but only a few of those beasts are storm beasts, who with their child guardians astride them, fly into storms to gather the electricity that provides the energy source for the entire land. But when her egg hatches into an energetic scale-sparking storm beast, Mina fears that she and Pixit must be mistakenly mismatched.

But Mina loves her beast and goes bravely off with Pixit for their training at Mytris Lightning School. She is overwhelmed by her daredevil roommate Jyx and their adventurous classmates Ferro and Zek, and most of her conversations are the silent mind-to-mind kind she shares with Pixit, who loyally helps her hide her inability to collect lightning for Alorria's power grid. But when the novice students are sent out to intercept a giant electrical storm on the boundary of their land, Mina and Pixit are lost from the others over the mountain peaks and fall from the sky into the forbidden land beyond Alorria's border.

Hurt and terrified, Mina and Pixit are rescued and cared for in a family outpost of the borderland people whom they have been taught to fear. And what they tell Mina reveals that the perfection of Alorria exists at the expense of those surviving outside their perfect world, and Mina realizes that she must find her true voice and speak what she has learned to her own people--and soon!

"All weather is connected and the sky is all one piece."

Sarah Beth Durst's forthcoming Spark (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019) chronicles Mina's coming of age as she learns that her utopian Alorria is actually a dystopian state maintained at the expense of the rest of their planet. Young readers familiar with the Harry Potter canon will recognize the parallels of both the boarding school setting and the premise of the battle between good and evil in this well-imagined other-worldly fantasy with a real world sense of the responsibility to speak truth to power. Mina's own spark of courage and sense for environmental justice makes her a most appealing realistic heroine in this inventive new fantasy novel.

Looking for Love: Love, Z by Jessie Sima

A little robot named Z goes out one day hunting for adventure and finds a message in a bottle. All that is still legible on the letter are two words.

LOVE,
BEATRICE

Little Z doesn't have a clue what "love" means and who or what "Beatrice" might be, but they sound important. At bedtime he asks his family of rusty robots, as they sweetly tuck him in to bed with a story and a clanky kiss. They can only say...

DOES NOT COMPUTE

But Z cannot leave the question unanswered. Setting out on a quest, he spots a sturdy sailboat with a kitty for a captain.

"Hello, I am looking for Beatrice. I am looking for what love is, and she will have the answer."

But as they sail on, nobody has a clue.

"What's a Beatrice?"

But everyone has a different definition of what love is. The crow says its sharing delicious food--even if you want it for yourself. Kids playing in the park all have their own ideas. One says it's butterflies. One says it's a million puppies, and another thinks of snowflakes on his tongue.

All of these don't really compute for Z either. Beatrice must be the only one who knows. He has to find her. Z and Kitty Captain sail on until, weary, they spot a small island with a cozy house. They disembark and knock at the friendly-looking blue door. A woman opens it.

"Hello. I'm Beatrice," she says.

She brings Z and Kitty in beside the fire and Z explains the object of their mission. Beatrice says she has to think about that query, so she does, while she offers fresh baked cookies, plays a game of checkers with Z, and they dance to her old Victrola. At last she explains.

"You'll know it when you feel it,"

Z is unsure what to make of her answer, but as he prepares to power down, there's a sudden knock at Beatrice's door.

It's Z's whole family of old rusty robots who've been searching for him, bringing his favorite bedtime story, his night-light, and good-night kisses from all, and at last Z has a feeling that does compute, in Jessie Sima's Love, Z Simon and Schuster, 2018).  A sweet story in which Z goes looking for love in all the right places, Sima's soft and simple illustrations extend the storytelling, right down to Z and the rusty robots shoving off for home, leaving Kitty and his flotsam bottle, tagged "Love, Z" with Beatrice. Sima's other books include Not Quite Narwhal, smf Harriet Gets Carried Away (read reviews here).

Robin Hood, Revisited: The Forest Queen by Betsy Cornwall

Silvie's life as the privileged daughter of the Lord of Loughsley Abbey is perfect. She enjoys the luxuries of a young noblewoman, and yet her older brother John, who rules in place of their aged father, allows her to ride and hunt and run free in Woodshire Forest with her best friend, Robin, called Bird, son of the Huntswoman of the manor. But when Silvie learns that the Abbey's healing nun, Mae Tuck, has been jailed for ministering to the pregnant Little Jane, she begins to see the suffering that lies behind her easy life.

"See. Silvie, it's not your brother John you are defending. It's your family. It's yourself," said Bird. "You want to believe that you are not complicit in this, in all the ugly things nobles do."

I looked back at Little Jane, pale and trembly, and I knew that I'd never done anything in my life that wasn't at least partly selfish.

Silvie suddenly sees the injustice of her brother John's rule. As sheriff of the shire, he sets burdensome taxes on all, tradesmen and farmers, and anyone who crosses him is imprisoned or cast into his grim oubliette to starve to death on the decaying bodies and bones of those already dead. With Bird by her side, she frees Mae Tuck and Little Jane, and they escape to their secret cave deep in Woodshire Forest.

They survive by Robin's ability to trap small animals and the prey his falcon brings to them. But they are soon followed by more and more of the townspeople of Esting. The colony of runaways thrives, helped by Silvie's midnight raids on the larders of Loughsley Abbey and confiscations of valuables from occasional nobles traveling through the forest. Little Jane's baby comes, the first freeborn citizen of their commune, and Silvie and Bird's benevolent rule continues to attract more followers to their colony. So successful are they that Silvie mounts a daring raid on John's ill-gotten treasury and distributes the bounty to the suffering people of the whole county round.

But Bird and Silvie grow too confident. Disguised, the men dressed as women and the women as men, they attend the May Day festival, only to return to their forest home to find that John has attacked the colony and set their trees and houses ablaze. Most of their friends are dead, and Bird and Silvie are captured by John and thrown into his grisly oubliette to starve. Days pass and both grow almost too weak to stand.

Then Silvie is visited by what she first takes for an angel. But it is her hunting owl, Scarlet, floating down from the small opening in the ceiling of the dungeon above.

... there was a small and tightly rolled piece of paper. One line. I knew the handwriting. Mae Tuck.

We are coming. Take heart.

Sophisticated young adult readers will soon recognize Betsy Cornwall's The Forest Queen (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2018) as an inspired and inspiring feminist rewrite of the Robin Hood legend. Like the original, it is a passionate statement of the cause of freedom from tyranny, but Cornwall's gender reversal puts feminine characters in the familiar roles of Little John, Alan-a-Dale, and Friar Tuck. Silvie and Bird (Robin) share aspects of the role of Robin Hood, but it is clearly Silvie who is chief of this merrie band in the greenwood, and, humorously, even Will Scarlet and Much-the-miller's-son appear as female owls. Stirring adventures led by girls and women are now a staple of movies and novels, but Cornwell's novel makes clear the association of personal liberty, the theme of the Robin Hood legend, with a women's right to choose her own social role in society.

While this novel stands well on its own, its reading will be enriched by knowledge of the Robin Hood legend. Howard Pyle's strikingly illustrated The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Digireads, 2017) remains the gold standard for lusty Robin Hood tales, although Roger Lancelyn Green's colloquial The Adventures of Robin Hood (Puffin Classics) is more accessible for middle readers.

And for girls who prefer a female leader, Nancy Springer's Rowan Hood: Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest (Rowan Hood (Paperback)) offers another feminist alternative as the crusading outlaw heroine (read my review here), full of medieval flavor and with a bold charismatic feminine hero, Robin Hood's daughter Rowan. But where Rowan is a solitary heroine with few followers, Betsy Cornwall's Forest Queen Sylvie is a social reformer who rouses the poor to help overthrow the rule of her brother John, the parallel character to Pyle's Black John, whose cruel rule in the absence of his brother King Richard ended in the signing of the Magna Carta. Told in the first person, Silvie's metamorphosis from pampered noblewoman to a brave and able spokesperson for equality becomes central. All readers will find Cornwall's new queen of the greenwood a powerful and sympathetic hero for our time and all times.

Back to the Future--Again! Sparks of Light by Janet B. Taylor

Bran and I shared a smile. A blaze of heat and tenderness and something else I couldn't yet name began to flood through me. What existed between us had survived through time and space. I thought ... maybe...we could become something legendary.

But the thing about legends is that they rarely have a happy ending.

And Hope and Bran have more than young love in common with those legendary lovers Romeo and Juliet. Hope is now a member of the Viators, a family dedicated to fighting the forces of the dark, usually in the form of the rival gang, the Timeslippers, traveling back in time to forestall events which could destroy the world of their own time. Bran is the estranged scion of the Timeslippers, controlled by his evil mother Celia. When, after a long absence, Bran appears at the Highland games, Hope knows that there is more than a manly Scots contest afoot, and she soon learns that Bran and the members of her Scots family have a new mission, to go back to 1895 and disable an "enhancement" invented by Nicola Tesla which would give the Timeslippers immense power over the past.

Time is short. There is no time for martial training, as there was before their earlier visit to rescue Hope's mother from captivity from the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, so with some frantic dressmaking and lessons in Victorian manners, the Viators descend to the subterranean tunnels beneath their manor to the magical point where the nexus where the magical ley lines intersect, forming their own "wrinkle in time," through which they must pass into the past.

I'd allowed myself to forget the part that comes just before the gray lassitude that whispered. "Give up, give in."

Wouldn't I give anything to avoid what came next: bone and nerve and flesh knit together by a force greater than any that had ever existed. Oh God, the pain...

But after the initial inconvenience of being chased by stampeding cattle into a Victorian abattoir, Hope finds the Gilded Age fascinating. Despite her constricting undergarments, the fashions are flattering, and she finds it easy to move through the upper crust of New York society--Vanderbilts, Astors, and all--as they search for a way to get close to the genius Tesla and his secret "enhancement" to destroy it before the Timeslippers capture Bran and gain the gadget for themselves.

It all comes down to a nip-and-tuck, slash-and-dash, shoot-and-scoot confrontation, chasing down subterranean tunnels and walking the plank between two Victorian edifices, despite the hazards of Victorian corsetry, along with the tragic death of the head of their family in the explosive destruction of Tesla's earth-shaking device.

In this sequel to her well-received first in series, Into the Dim (read my 2016 review here),  Janet B. Taylor's forthcoming Sparks of Light (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) offers romance and rip-roaring adventure in the dark and dim corridors of history. Fast-paced, in Taylor's sometimes rococo language, there's rarely a dull moment in this historical sci fi thriller, with side divergences into appalling aspects of the late 19th century such as Hope's confinement in a Victorian insane asylum for women and her discovery of the calculating bartering of rich young brides among the fabulously wealthy upper class. Still, through it all, there is the strong undercurrent of family loyalty and Hope and Bran's continuing love story.

Keep your Way-Back Machine warmed up. Occasional flashbacks to ancient times in which Hope and Bran bond as children foreshadow a third book which may tie up the loose ends to this page-turning, century-roaming series.

A Walk on the Guile Side: Guile by Constance Cooper

Yonie Watereye lived under false pretenses in a stuffy garret overhanging the Petty Canal, in one of the cheaper districts of Wicked Ford. Dry land never showed there, even in the midst of summer, and the rickety buildings roosted upon wooden stilts that would have long since rotted away if not for the water's high concentration of guile.

In that particularly July afternoon Yonie's hair was crawling with sweat underneath her kerchief. She longed to strip it off.

But instead she sat sedately in her chair, sweltering, because she had a customer. The kerchief made her look older, according to LaRue. Although at sixteen she'd already grown to a remarkable height, it still took the right clothing and dim light and her most imperious High Town accent to impersonate a grown woman. Even then, she might not pass as a pearly.

Orphaned and unwanted by the rest of her kin, Yonie travels downriver to Wicked Ford, eking out a spartan living pretending to be a "pearly," a part-amphibian seer who can interpret the guile found in objects left to steep in the waters of Skulk Swamp. In truth, Yonie's talking cat LaRue does the real "seeing," passing her wisdom on through Yonie on to their customers. Pearlies are shunned and feared, hiding their scales or gills under their clothes, but patronized by people with objects that seemed to have cunning powers, and a cat known to possess such powers would needs be killed if discovered.

And a customer from Damnable Swamp has a mysterious object he claims came from inside a fish. Following LaRue's vision, the object is revealed as a boat gong, probably looted from a flooded tomb. LaRue warns Yonie not to cause it to ring, but when she accidentally strikes it, she learns what its sound can do--it send folks forth, even against their will, to find their true home.

Yonie whimpered. Not since her parents' death had she felt so out of place and alone.

They had left Vile Basin behind, but Yonie was still digging in her paddle until her muscles burned.

"Yes, of course," said LaRue. "We must get home."

The bayou home where Yonie lived with her parents is gone, burned to the waterline, along with them, and Yonie sees she cannot find her home there. But with the guile-soaked gong driving her, she sets out to discover her mother's family history in High Town. She learns that her mother was a honor student at the prestigious Belflower Academy for Girls before she left before graduation to marry the man Yonie had known as her father. But Yonie's search reveals that her real father was another man altogether, and the guile drives a search which takes her and LaRue far up the Skulk River, to discover the frightful history of how guile came to flood their land and what it takes to break its hold on her.

Constance Cooper's forthcoming Guile (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2016) takes place in an alternate world, one reminiscent of the bygone Creoles and bayou Cajuns of Louisiana, a world which has endured an ancient flood and remains inundated in the magical miasma of guile, a power neither quite good nor evil, but unnatural, as murky and turgid as the greenish scum that floats upon the slowly rising waters. Cooper's narrative is as slow and meandering as the River Skulk itself, but leading implacably back to the source of guile itself. Yonie Watereye and LaRue are quirky but engaging characters who inspire loyalty, ones who make the reader follow along on their magical journey to its end.

The Open Door:: The Rosemary Spell by Virginia Zimmerman

"What are you going to do with the lower cupboard?" Adam asks.

"It doesn't open, remember? We did this already," I protest. "It's stuck." I kick the little door.

"I'll get the toolbox." I said. I push myself up and the wide floorboard shifts underneath my hand. Adam's eyebrows arch. He presses it with his hand and it rocks. "Do you think...."

I lift the board. Something black catches my eye. It's a handle, I'm sure. I push the cool metal to the right. For a heartbeat the small handle resists and then, as if with a sigh of relief, it gives.

The cupboard door swings open.

Her friend Adam is helping Rosemary move her things to her dad's old study, and they can't resist the mystery of the floor-level cupboard with the handle that doesn't open the little door. But when it opens, it reveals a greater mystery, a large, very old leather-bound book, printed on vellum, with the name of the region's famous poet, Constance Brooks, written in elaborate cursive inside. Faded spidery writing appears on  several pages, a list of herbs,  but the only other inscription they can decipher has a likewise cryptic sound:

Rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray, love, remember.

Eighth-graders Adam and Rosemary have read novels of magical books with secrets hidden within, and they show the book to Adam's sixteen-year-old sister Shelby, who used to be the ringleader of their adventures. Sixteen now, busy with classes and a boyfriend, even Shelby seems to feel that there is some enticing secret, something of a magic spell within the almost invisible inscriptions in the old book, which reminds them of a book they shared three summers ago, Seven-Day Magic (Tales of Magic), in which a found book contains secret powers. Later, alone with the book, Adam and Rosemary come upon a clue, in Geraldine Brooks' faded handwriting, something they had not seen at first, the name "Wilkie," written over and over, filling the page, and one brief sentence:

Father says we need the rosemary so that we can remember.

And later, another inscription appears where it seems not to have been before, and Adam and Rosemary struggle to decipher the pale spidery script.

Ah, treble words of absence spoken low
For ears of fam'ly, friend, or willful foe.
Speak thrice to conjure nothing on the spot.
Who harkens here will presently be forgot....
Void and nothing, void and nothing--all strife.

They read the final line together.

Third's the charm, to void and nothing turn life.

Intrigued, the two share the verse with their English teacher, who agrees the lines resemble the form of an old spell and suggests that they visit the poet Geraldine Brooks, alive but in her nineties, living in a residential home in town, to ask her about the book. But when they visit, they find her lost in dementia, unable to explain the book or the rhyme, although she repeats her memories of her father planting the rosemary on the island. and keeps reciting, "Father says we need the rosemary so that we can remember," and the phrase from the rhyme "void and nothing, void and nothing."... and "Wilkie, Wilkie." the name of her little brother, she remembers, who died very young.

With Shelby in on the mystery, the three decide to row out to the island where they used to play, one where a large patch of wild rosemary has flourished for the many years since Gwendolyn Brooks' family home burned. Surrounded by the rosemary, trying to capture the meaning, the conjuring, in the rhyme, they read it aloud once, twice, and then, as Shelby points out the verse commands, thrice.

And in an inkling, Shelby is gone--so gone that Adam does not remember that she was just there or that he ever even had a sister. Back at his house, Shelby's room is now a nondescript spare bedroom and there are only three places for Adam's family at the kitchen table. But perhaps because of her name, Rosemary somehow holds on to a fleeting memory of Shelby, and always when she reads the line, Rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. she knows that only she can find the rhyme that will bring Shelby back.

Virginia Zimmerman's forthcoming fantasy novel, The Rosemary Spell (Houghton Mifflin Clarion Books, 2015), reveals a mystery within a conundrum, a book whose story is to uncover the story within a book within the story, one that can only be fully revealed to young people of just the right age. Well within the tradition of children's fantasy, stories like Harry Potter and his sorcerer's stone and Will Stanton of The Dark Is Rising series, Zimmerman creates two young people who are able to release the vague memories of an elderly mind and decipher the conundrum concealed within the old book.

With many literary references, from Edward Eager to William Shakespeare, this is a riveting tale that will fascinate young readers who love an intricate mystery. In a gripping story of life and memory lost and found, Zimmerman's tale reveals two characters at childhood's end, on the cusp of growing up, still able to sense the essential nature of any work of fiction, that sort of literary magic which creates a whole believable world which exists first in the mind of the author and then only in the mind of the reader when the book is opened. Time and its passage, love and life's passing, and the magic of words, all combine here to make a absorbing tale for young adult readers.

A Mole at the Automaton Inn: The Ire of Iron Claw (Gadgets and Gears) by Kersten Hamilton

In a flash, I knew two things without a doubt.

The Dusketeers had shown me his evil purpose. And Gizmo's garbled "Waaaamussssnoooootllllll...k-k-k--!" clearly meant, "Walter must not launch his kite!"

I wheeled, wagging frantically in an attempt to reach the roof before Wally set the kite aloft. But I was too late.

The kite was racing skyward as my paws touched down next to Wally. I heard a harsh metallic clang, followed too quickly by a deafening explosion as the shock knocked Wally from his feet and sent me tumbling to the base of Tesla's tower.

"I told you he was going to blow something up," Mrs. McDivit announced as concerned citizens rushed past her. "Mad Mars has returned! Flee for your lives."

Despite the best efforts of loyal automatons--housekeeper Gizmo and the house-cleaning troop of rabbity Dusketeers-- and the services of his loyal flying dachshund Noodles, some evil force has attempted yet again to destroy boy inventor Wally Kinnewickett and his mentor, scientist Nicola Testa, the Wizard of the West, along with his magnum opus, the towering Atmospheric Electron Collector which will be capable of using the earth's magnetic field to generate endless electricity. Tesla has many powerful enemies--Thomas Edison, whose dream is that his direct current will power the world, and his rival advocating alternating current, George Westinghouse. But it is clear to Wally and his parents Calypso and Oliver Kennewickett that the explosion proves that their Automaton Inn has a mole, a person spying for Mad Madini, the master of mesmerism, and his evil henchmen, the Mesmers.

Noodles, whose wings are powered purely by his wagging tale, knows that if the Mesmers can overcome the Kennewickett's staff of electrically charged and programmed automatons, his purely doggy powers will be needed, and sure enough, as the family sets forth to apprehend Madini in Italy in their steam-powered airship the Daedalus, the flight is uneventful only until they set out across the Atlantic. First they are pursued by pirates, in a coal-powered, paddle-powered airship that manages to fire upon the Daedelus and cause a slow leak that threatens to bring them before they reach the water's edge in France.

"Gizmo!" Oliver called. "Speed and distance calculations?"

"We will make it to shore, sir," the automaton said.

"But what then?" asked Melvin.

"One conundrum at a time, dear." said Calypso. "Prepare to disembark."

I whirled to find myself face-to-face with a nightmare. An enormous spider was stepping over the tree. Its shovel-like palpi were waving wildly.

"Bonjour!" it boomed cheerfully. "Do you require assistance?"

Although the Kennewicketts are rescued from the privateers of the skies by their fellow French scientist, their troubles continue when Monsieur Fevre's eight-legged, coal-burning Arachne transport arrives to ferry them over the Alps to their destination.

But Noodles cannot rest easy, especially when they disembark. The city streets are infused with the smell of popcorn and there are far too many pigeons about for Noodles' mind to be at ease, remembering vividly as he does their last encounter with Madini and his automaton pigeon Iron Claw. And when they meet up with cousin Melvin's Grand Touring parents, Wentworth and Mame, Wally's aunt and uncle seem somehow not themselves.

"Why don't you stay awhile?" Wentworth said. "We'll hop right over to see the mayor."

"Hop?" Melvin asked.

"Strut. I mean, stroll. Lovely day for a stroll." He tilted his head and watched a bug scurry across the sidewalk.

"Mother! Are you both... quite well?"

"Of course, dear," the materfamilias said. "We're both in fine feather. Er, fettle."

Suspicions confirmed, Noodles gets ready to wag up his wings. He knows that there is another climactic struggle with Madini and Iron Claw in the works, in The Ire of Iron Claw: Gadgets and Gears, Book 2 (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2015).

In the second book in her series, the author takes her early twentieth-century electronic wizards into another quirky steampunk adventure. A creative look at what were thought at the time to be mad scientists, Kersten Hamilton builds this tale around the real persona of Nicola Tesla, whose work met with great disbelief in his time, but which has powered modern science into new inventions and even has an electric car corporation now named in his honor. As narrator, the power-wagging flying dachshund Noodles serves as both comic superhero and lexicographer for middle readers offering definitions of the most arcane of early twentieth-century terms. Saved again by Noodles' quick-wagging tail and courage, it looks as if Wally Kennewickett, with his family and friends Teddy Roosevelt and Nicola Testa, will probably have young readers as guests at the Automaton Inn yet another time in this continuing series.

Kersten Hamiton's first book, also wittily illustrated by James Hamilton, was The Mesmer Menace (Gadgets and Gears) (see my review here.)

Slipping the Scaffold! Wild Rover No More (A Bloody Jack Adventure) by L. A. Meyer

THE BOSTON PATRIOT
Nov.10, 1809--Special Edition

NOTORIOUS PYRATE AND BRITISH SPY JACK FABER HANGED

THE CONDEMNED SHOWED NO REMORSE AT END OF LIFE.

Protesting her Innocence to the last, the Criminal Jacky Faber, also known as Bloody Jack, the Scourge of the Caribbean; La Belle Jeune Fille Sans Merci; the Lily of the West; and the Belle of Botany Bay was hanged today by the order of the State of Massachusetts, having been Convicted of High Treason against the United States. Incriminating Documents concerting detailed plans of the Fortifications at Fort McHenry had been found in her possession.

The beauteous and bold Jacky Faber, still only a lass of nineteen, has sailed both oceans as a privateer, amassed a fortune as head of Faber Shipping Enterprises, posed for a famous scantily-clad portrait painted by Goya, flatboated down the Mississippi, and undertaken various undercover espionage for assorted governments, seems to have come to the end of the road.

It  had seemed things were going well for the wily Jacky. Having vowed to have nothing further to do with men and live single, amassing an even larger fortune from legal merchant trade, Jacky is unexpectedly reconciled with her love, Jaimy Fletcher. But when jealous conspirators plant a map of Fort McHenry in a British diplomatic pouch with Jacky's name on it, she becomes a traitor hunted down by her state and country. But Jacky always takes care to know where the back door is, and, disguised in her well-worn midshipman's sailor's togs, makes an escape in her sailboat Morning Star and, leaving Boston Bay behind. makes for the port of Plymouth in a howling gale.

In Plymouth Jacky looks about for a job that will allow for deep cover and, as Annabelle Leigh, she takes employment as a governess. But a snoopy Plymouth postmaster reads her mail, and soon the federals on on her trail again. By chance, Jacky encounters a traveling circus troupe and hires on, using the skill she exhibited during her Paris sojourn, as Princess Natasha Annasova Romanoff, Aerialist. Garishly made up and costumed in spangled tights, high on the tightrope wire, she feels safe for the moment as the circus continues its travels toward Provincetown.

But Jacky's fabled luck seems to fail her this time, and she is discovered and returned to Boston, summarily tried as a British spy, and slated for hanging as soon as her scaffold is completed.

I sigh and look about me. All my thoughts of escape have been in vain. There is a lock on my shackle, a lock on the cell door. I have no metal to fashion a key. No, I am truly lost. This is one cage that Jacky Faber will not get out of... until, that is, they take me out for the final time.

"All right, boys, let's give 'er a try," I hear one of the carpenters say outside my window. There is the rasp of a lever being thrown and the sound of something falling with a whump.

They have completed the gallows and are testing the trap that will fall from beneath my feet.

I crawl into bed, my ankle chain rattling on the bedstead as I do it.

Oh, was I ever so bad as to deserve this?

But while Jacky Faber is bravely composing herself to meet her maker, she has friends hard at work to help her yet again cheat the hangman, in the rousing conclusion to L. A. Meyer's just published, series-concluding Wild Rover No More: Being the Last Recorded Account of the Life &Times of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack Adventures) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Meyer's characters are crisp and true to the times, the plotting is gripping but never improbable, and Jacky Faber herself is a wondrous heroine, fearless and intelligent, a strong woman born out of her time who does not scruple to use her beauty, quick wits, and endless energy to find adventure all of over the globe. A fine fictional character with the combined qualities of such historic femmes as Cleopatra of the Nile, Mary Queen of Scots, pirate queen Anney Bonney, spy Mata Hari, and exotic danseuse and World War II spy Josephine Baker, Jacky's rip-roaring escapades never fail in this twelfth book of the much lauded Bloody Jack Adventures series. Says Kirkus in their starred review, "Meyer offers an impressively accomplished heroine, suspense as taut as a hangman's rope and a satisfying conclusion. A solid and sentimental entry in an underrated series."

Fare ye well, and a fair wind to your back, Jacky Faber!

Nothing Ever Happens Around Here! Codename Zero by Chris Rylander

There I was in the parking lot of my school, minding my own business, when some mysterious dude shows up and hands me an even more mysterious package. Okay, so I wasn't so much minding my own business as I was putting the finishing touches on the fourth biggest prank in Erik Hill Middle School history. But the point was the same--I was busy.

"Hey, kid," the guy said. "Take this."

Suddenly I was holding a package. "What am I supposed to....?"

"Just listen," he said, glancing over both shoulders. "Guard this with your life; the fate of the world depends on it. You must deliver this to Mr. Jensen.Trust no one."

Carson Fender is bored. Nothing ever happens in Minnow (a.k.a., Minott),  North Dakota. Or when it happens, it's the same old thing that always happens, like the annual circus with the same old tired tiger and tilt-a-whirls.

To maintain his joie de vivre, Carson is forced to carry out ever-more elaborate pranks at school, and he's right in the middle of a doozie involving a herd of fainting goats on the lawn in front of the school while his co-conspirators Dillon and Danielle use the distraction to glue down everything on every teacher's desk in the school. And then the dude in the black sunglasses appears in his life.

Now Carson can't even enjoy the chaos engendered by his prank. There's that mysterious package, in plain brown wrapper. He's supposed to deliver it to Mr. Jensen, but which one?  There are two Mr. Jensens at his school. That night Carson can't sleep until he finds out what is inside that package, but then... when he loosens the paper at one end, he triggers a warning that makes him wish yesterday had just been a regular, boring day.

YOU NOW HAVE FORTY-FIVE HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TO INITIATE FAIL-SAFE MEASURES BEFORE SELF-DESTRUCTION.

Carson Fender discovers that his weirdo conspiracy nut friend Dillon has been right all along. Things are not what they seem in Minnow, North Dakota. Below the boring surface, literally, underground below their favorite sledding hill, is the world headquarters of The Agency, the mega-spy system from which the CIA, FBI, and NSA take their orders. The two Mr. Jensens are, of course, Agency secret agents. Carson is deputized as Agent Zero, given cool spy gear like night-vision contacts, fog shooters, and small explosive charges disguised as fruit chews, and assigned to protect a Russian twelve-year-old named Olek until his parents can testify against a ring of terrorists on trial at The Hague.

The terrorists who have infiltrated the area know Olek is in hiding in Minnow, but they don't know who he is, so Carson is given the task of making Olek look like an average North Dakota kid, invisible in the crowd of other dark-haired seventh graders. But of course, the plan goes awry, Olek is captured, and Carson finds himself on his own to save his friend ...and the world.

At least, it's not boring.

Chris Rylander's latest Codename Zero (The Codename Conspiracy)(Walden Pond Press, 2014), offers middle readers a witty and game main character who gladly exchanges seventh grade ennui for international espionage, at least until the game gets a bit more deadly than he expected. Plenty of bad-guy spies from central casting, a couple of best buddies who are up for anything, and a Russian kid who does Russky stand-up comedy like a young Sacha Baron Cohen doing Borat make for a funny and fast-moving read in the best Spy Kids tradition. Just the thing for those summertime blahs.

Chris Rylander is also the author of a comic middle-school big operator series, The Fourth Stall. Fans of James Patterson's best selling Rafe Khatchadorian Middle School series will find Rylander's books suits their common comedy core to a T.

Exit Exam: Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau

Everyone here at the University was chosen to lead. But what I will need to know is that those on my team believe as I do that The Testing must be ended. That those who have worked for the rebellion, thinking they were bringing change, must be saved. That we need new leaders who will change the system to secure the futures of those younger than us who dream of someday being selected.

And if the people I decide to ask to participate in this terrible task are willing to fight for those things, there is still one question that must be answered.

Can they be trusted?

Tomas and I have only one choice. We will need to stage our own Testing.

"Trust no one," Valencia Vale's father had whispered to her as she left for her own Testing in Tosu City, the trial that would determine if she would be admitted to university studies. In the time after nuclear war and environmental collapse have made most of earth near uninhabitable, the leaders of the United Commonwealth have fashioned the Testing and university studies to select for those who are ruthless enough to kill to become part of the ruling oligarchy. Cia believes that failure leads to redirection, which means execution, rather than reassignment of remote colonies. But now she learns that perhaps an even worse fate follows redirection--being used as subjects of genetic studies on the results of the radiation and toxicity that followed the apocalyptic Seven Wars.

Cia had known that her older brother Zeen is one of the leaders of a rebellion planned to overthrow the ruling caste and longed to join with him, but now she also learns the Dr. Holt and Dr. Barnes, directors of The Testing, have spies among the rebels and plan to use their uprising as the premise to take over the government and oust the few leaders who oppose The Testing. And as her trusted intern, Cia was chosen by President Collindar to assassinate Dr. Barnes and seven other leaders who might thwart the ruling Chamber vote to end The Testing.

Now Cia must devise her own testing to make sure that the students she recruits to carry out the assassinations can be trusted to be with her to the death. And Cia knows that her final test will be when she has to face an unarmed Dr. Barnes and kill him in cold blood. Is there no way to avoid doing evil to do good?

But even as she makes that choice, Cia meets one last test when she faces Dr. Barnes.

I wrap my fingers around the gun. I could never have imagined that Dr. Barnes would stand quietly in front of me asking me to take his life.

Is he the monster I have always believed, or someone who is now making the ultimate sacrifice as a means of righting wrongs?

Everything depends on this moment. I need to fire.

I need to kill.

In a post-apocalyptic world in which a society is fighting an uphill battle to restore health and security to its citizens and its reclaimed lands, a benignly-intended but flawed government can easily become dystopian. To provide for survival of the many, some may die, and leaders must be selected who can make those hard choices. It is Lincoln ordering Sherman's March, Truman dispatching the Enola Gay to Hiroshima. Conventional morality and trust are often the first victims in human history, as in Joelle Charbonneau's final book in her trilogy, Graduation Day (The Testing) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

This series might facetiously be called Hunger Games for Dorks, a fierce life-or-death competition to determine future leaders through academic and intellectual competitions which test rational decision-making rather than gladiator-style combat. Even so, there is plenty of direct conflict in this series, along with intrigue, espionage, booby-trapped devices, and murder, institutional and personal, along the way to keep the pages turning. Charbonneau's gripping first-person narrative reveals Cia's inner coming-of-age as she deals with issues of ethics and the nature of leadership and governing, the big questions of human society. Wisely, the author's closing is no conclusion, as the task goes on. For young adult readers who think about these issues of civil society--equality and justice and the hard choices that governance requires--this series is not to be missed.

Earlier titles in this series are The Testing and Independent Study: The Testing, Book 2 (see reviews here).