Lucky Breaks

Author: Susan Patron

First line: Eleven, Lucky thought from her seat at the back of the school bus, eleven, eleven, eleven, and the idea of it, the sound of it, threw off sparks in her head.

Why you should read this book: Now that she's almost, almost eleven and has an officially adopted new mom, Lucky has big, grown-up things to worry about, like her best friend Lincoln disappearing to England on the basis of his superb knot-tying skills, and the coffin-like package delivered to Short Sammy's water tank, and a tragically romantic lost artifact at the bottom of an abandoned mine, and the gland inside her that occasionally makes her do something mean and shameful, and the self-conscious question of how her life appears to people from outside Hard Pan. When a group of big-city geologists show up at her mom's new cafe, Lucky finds something a growing girl needs: a best girl friend who can make her laugh until it hurts and doesn't mind a little adventure now and then. This sequel to the Newbery winner The Higher Power of Lucky is another smart, introspective voyage through the mind of an intelligent child forging her way across a rich and rocky landscape of youthful desire and wonder.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Fear of the rampaging wild donkey, devastator of innocent desert tomato plants.



(Note: Susan Patron kindly sent me an advanced reader's copy of this book, which will be commercially available March 10. Orders placed through Amazon before that date will be shipped next month when the book is released.)

Emergence: Labeled Autistic

Authors: Temple Grandin and Margaret M Scariano

First line: I remember the day I almost killed my mother and younger sister, Jean.

Why you should read this book: The renowned animal behaviorist's memoirs recount her arduous journey through autism to empathy, opening a window into the perceptual difficulties of an autistic child who craves affection she is unable to accept. Told with grace and good humor, the narrative is tied together by Grandin's quest for a device capable of inducing the sensations of safety and comfort, the controversial Squeeze Machine that became her life's work, her contribution to the world, and her salvation. An excellent resource for those seeking to understand the phenomenon of autism as well as those interested in the autobiography of a remarkable person triumphing over astonishing odds.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a militant vegan.

Slow Food: The Case for Taste

Author: Carlo Petrini

First line: In Bra, a small city in Piedmont on the edge of the territory known as the Langhe, a group of young people were involved in social issues in the middle of the 1970s.

Why you should read this book: Inspired by a group of left-leaning Italian youth intent on preserving the best of recreational culture and fired in the crucible of anti-McDonald's activism, the Slow Food movement is a radical expression only in regard to the radical degradation of modern global culture it seeks to cure. Based on an ideal of conviviality, Slow Food is a movement dedicated to the preservation of culture, flavor, and the environment through the recognition of promotion of exquisite, historical, local specialties, breeds, and cultivars. This book documents the history and ideals of the movement, showcasing the philosophy, literature, and above all, the work that emphasizes tradition and excellence in food production, which ought to be available to the entire world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're working in your garden.

The Rumpelstiltskin Problem

Author: Vivian Vande Velde

First line: Once upon a time, before pizzerias and Taco Bells, there was a troll named Rumpelstiltskin who began to wonder what a human baby would taste like.

Why you should read this book: The problem, as identified by the author, is that the original story just doesn't make sense: what would compel humans to behave as the humans do in this old tale? In six original, humorous, yet focused stories, Vande Velde finds six solutions to attribute believable motivations to the characters. Light-hearted, but intelligent fantasy for young readers.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've ever sacrificed your only child in a misguided attempt to make yourself look important.

The Higher Power of Lucky

Author: Susan Patron

First line: Lucky Trimble crouched in a wedge of shade behind the Dumpster.

Why you should read this book: Talk about misnomers: Lucky's father never wanted her; her mother accidentally stepped on a live wire, electrocuting herself while admiring the landscape after a storm; and Lucky's guardian, her father's beautiful, sophisticated, first wife, Brigitte, hates the hardscrabble town of Hard Pan (population 43) and is certain to abandon Lucky to an orphanage and run home to France any day. This is the rare book where the child narrator's voice dovetails seamlessly with exquisite writing, every sentence heavy with meaning, humor, and life, inspiring real characters moving through real landscapes to deal with real conflicts. Just a perfect novel (the Newbery committee thought so too).

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're offended by the concept of a Higher Power.

Half Magic

Author: Edward Eager

First line: It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to four children.

Why you should read this book: When Jane comes across a small coin that looks almost like a nickel stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, it turns out to be the perfect antidote for a long summer, a busy mother, and an authoritarian nursemaid. Whenever one of the family makes a wish touching the coin, it comes true, or rather, half-true: the wish takes you half as far as you want to go, or gives you half as much as you ask for. As the siblings learn to understand and manipulate the coin's power, they find that it has its own agenda, to fix all their problems not with magic, but with love.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Your children are all perfectly clean and obedient little comforts.

How It Happened in Peach Hill

Author: Marthe Jocelyn

First line: Mama taught me to lie.

Why you should read this book: Usually, Annie and her mom, Madame Catarina the clairvoyant medium, pull off their subterfuge with ease and profit, but after that nasty business in Carling, Mama settles on a new scam in Peach Hill. However, Annie is almost sixteen years old, old enough to bristle at being forced to play the idiot to her mother's omniscience, old enough to notice--and kiss--the handsomest boy in town, old enough to draw her own conclusions about her mother's clients and her mother's line of work. The only problem is that Annie herself is so deep into her mother's deception that truth and honesty are farther away than the spirit world, and much more difficult to contact.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't blow your nose without consulting your horoscope.

Someone Slightly Different

Author: Judy Frank Mearian

First line: I have two vivid memories of my father.

Why you should read this book: With her father long gone and her mother struggling to make ends meet, twelve-year-old Marty is a latchkey kid: home alone all afternoon, doing chores for her mom, and stinging under the cruel aspersions of her richer and more secure peers. Then along comes Flossie, her father's mother, the grandmother she's never met, who can bake bread, sew new clothes, and teach a cat to do tricks like a dog. Marty's dull gray world explodes with hope as she learns from Flossie lessons about integrity, happiness, and life.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You go around asking kids to sign pledges that they will refrain from vice for their entire lives.

A Wreath for Emmett Till

Author: Marilyn Nelson

First line: Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespear wrote:/a speech for poor Ophelia, who went mad/when her love killed her father.

Why you should read this book: The author, like many of her generation, found the story of Emmett Till, a black teenager brutally lynched in 1955, following her through life until she let it catch up and take root in the present. In a heroic crown of sonnets, she offers up remembrance for a life unlived, expresses the wish for a less tragic series of events, and uses the language of flowers to honor Till's memory. From pain and terror, she creates sparks of hope in the darkness.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Terrible, naked pain; descriptions of the worst that humanity has to offer; real life monsters and waking nightmares.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Author: Norton Juster

First line: There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself--not just sometimes, but always.

Why you should read this book: In a story that never gets old, young Milo, afflicted with the thoroughly modern disability of apathy, finds himself transported by means of a phantom tollbooth and an electric car to the astonishing and thought-provoking lands beyond, where metaphor shapes reality and speaking figuratively has unexpected consequences. But all is not well since the banishment of the princesses, Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason: their brothers, the respective leaders of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis cannot agree on anything, the ancient city of Wisdom is abandoned, and nonsense pervades the beautiful land. From the Sea of Knowledge to the Mountains of Ignorance, Milo, the faithful watchdog, Tock, and the usually useless humbug, discover how much there is to know and how interesting it is to learn as they quest to free the princesses from captivity.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You take everything literally.