January and February 2004

Bartimaeus Trilogy Book I: The Amulet of Samarkand (Hyperion, $17.95)
Written by Jonathan Stroud

Bartimaeus, the 5,000-year-old djinn with a flip tongue, dry sense of humor and distaste for all things human- including human magicians, finds himself bound by an ancient spell to the fate of eleven-year-old Nathaniel, himself an apprentice magician with a knack for getting himself into tight spots. Bartimaeus is forced into the service of the young magician in order to unweave a tangled web of murder and espionage and, hopefully, sever his fate from that of the budding magician. This book is among our very favorite fantasy picks. The young, impulsively, and understansdably angry Nathaniel, having set in motion a dangerous prank that quickly leads to mystery, murder and mayhem, is sorely in need of the wisdom and protection that can only be provided by his reluctant sidekick, Bartimaeus. You'll love the acerbic djinn hero and his many asides in the form of footnotes that fill the reader in on the "real facts" according to him as he makes every exasperating effort to save his master and in so doing save himself from eternity in a rusty tin box at the bottom of the muddy Thames. --Shawn Nocher

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Red Rose Box (Penguin Putnam, $5.99)
Written by Brenda Woods

This Coretta Scott King Award Honor Book presents some of our most profoundly life-altering experiences as it relates one eventful year in the lives of ten-year-old Leah and her younger sister, Ruth. This story can be enjoyed as the beautifully written, sweet story it is and provides a glimpse of life in 1953 Louisiana. The Red Rose Box offers a wealth of issues to contemplate. --Jennifer Williams

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Brundibar (Hyperion, $19.95)
Written by Tony Kushner, Illustrated by Maurice Sendak

In this delightful story, adapted by Tony Kushner from a 1938 opera and charmingly illustrated with Maurice Sendak's colorful drawings of a Slavic city, we learn from the doctor that the sick mother of Pepicek and Aninku needs fresh milk to get well. Without a father to help the children, the run into the town where everyone is "busy buying". With no money, the get the idea from Brundibar, a "bellowing" organ grinder, to earn money by singing. Only with the help of three talking animals and 300 kind school children singing a lullaby with Pepicek and Aninku are they heard over Brundibar's rackett. The adoring public throw coin after coin into the children's milk bucket and run Brundibar away. Meanwhile the children buy the milk, take it home, and reunite as a family. Sendak's beautiful illustrations show good (in the faces of the children) and evil (in Brundibar, with a moustache reminding readers of the villain of the time). This story leaves one with the reassuring idea that friends are for helping and evil can be defeated. --Debbie Nelson

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A Great and Terrible Beauty (Random House, $16.95)
Written by Libba Bray

When Gemma Doyle's mother dies in a bizarre accident in India, she and her father return to their home in Victorian England where Gemma is sent to the Spence Academy, a boarding school for young ladies. Not only is there some strange secret in the history of Spence Academy, but Gemma has been followed there from India by a mysterious young man who warns her against the visions she has begun having. This book is an exciting gothic Victorian novel with the many secrets and the explorations into the occult, it explores the strict morality and repressed sensuality of the Victorian era as well as the Spiritualist movement, but it is also a school story and a friendship story. At Spence Academy, Gemma befriends three girls, and with them forms a secret club. Each of the girls has her own problem to face: Ann is a charity case who can hope for little more than a position as a governess when she leaves Spence; neither Felicity's mother nor her father seem to want to visit her; Pippa's family is pushing her into an engagement with a suitor more than thirty years her senior. Gemma's story quickly drew me in, and I soon forgot my feeling that the narrator's voice was perhaps a little too modern, the ending is satisfyingly surprising, although it is somewhat open-ended (perhaps we can look forward to a sequel). (Ages 12+) --Emma Casale