(4) YA In this sequel to War of the Eagles, fourteen-year-old Tadashi Fukushima and his close-knit three-generational family are exiled from their Japanese-Canadian fishing village to internment in Vancouver during WWII. Some episodes strain credulity, and dialogue is awkward at times. However, Tadashi elicits empathy, and many of the details of the camp are vivid and realistic.

Reviewer: Frieda F. Bostian

(4) YA The orphaned daughter of a singer-philosopher, sixteen-year-old Marnie feels isolated at boarding school and finds solace playing an Internet game against an opponent called the Elf. When Marnie is kidnapped by a deranged woman, the Elf (coincidentally a student at a nearby school) tracks her down. The plot strains credibility somewhat, but Marnie's journey from alienation to reaching out to others is effectively charted.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta

(3) YA This disturbing, sensual, and image-dense novel limns a sexual relationship between love-struck fifteen-year-old Anna and Thorn, an intense, exploitative twenty-nine-year-old poet who uses her pain and beauty as art. As Anna learns her own boundaries, fate and the tarot cards point her toward Dylan, a teenager who loves her mutely and who sacrifices his own eye to save her.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam

(4) YA In addition to Carolina's typical teenage problems, such as a so-called best friend's trying to steal her boyfriend, she lives with the grief and guilt brought on by her older sister's and father's deaths in a plane crash a year earlier. While the first-person narration and other characters' voices sound artificial at times, Carolina's situation is moving and gracefully presented.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann

(2) YA Williams weaves two tales in the first-person narrative of twelve-year-old Shayla: the story of Shayla's older sister and her sexual awakening; and the story of Kambia, Shayla's soon-to-be best friend, whose fantastic stories of transformation hide her real-life abuse. Inventively voiced if not always convincing in its narrative particulars, this first novel serves notice of a writer to watch.

Reviewer: Susan P. Bloom | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2000

(4) YA Sold into slavery in ancient Ninevah, Soulai focuses his hopes and affections on Ti, a stallion he cares for in his job as a stable boy. Soulai's owner, Prince Habasle, sees signs of his own favor with the gods in Ti's markings--and then nearly ruins Ti in a disastrous lion hunt. Wilson's plot wanders dilatorily, but her characters are sympathetic and her setting well rendered.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam

(1) YA Each of the ten chapters in this thoughtfully structured novel is narrated by a different high-school student in Scrub Harbor--a town divided over a possible name change. The town's identity crisis is a nifty backdrop for the novel's main focus: each narrator's own crisis of identity. Wittlinger's characters struggle with who they are, discovering (or guessing) how others see them while figuring out how they see themselves in this intriguing, complex, and believable novel.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2000

(2) YA This compelling novel about three African-American brothers is oddly reminiscent of S. E. Hinton's early novels, with its streetwise, self-sufficient orphans. Although there is little action in a story that is told almost entirely through dialogue and thirteen-year-old Lafayette's thoughts and memories, the narrator's voice maintains a tone of sweet melancholy that is likely to hold the attention of thoughtful young teens.

Reviewer: Kathleen T. Horning | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2000

(2) YA When the young Queen of France asks eleven-year-old Nicola to be her "fool," Nicola believes that her one duty to the Queen--always tell her the truth--will be easier than the rough life she has led as an orphaned street performer. But as the years pass, she must use all of her wits to avoid being caught in the political intrigue that ensnares Queen Mary. The authors have woven fiction and historical fact into a seamless tapestry.

Reviewer: Anne St. John | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2000

(4) YA The author of Go and Come Back has written a more conventional story about a lonely girl coming to terms with her mother's impending death. As Mindy follows the downward spiral of her mother's illness, her isolation is palpable, and meaningful human connections are scant. Since the ending is a foregone conclusion, the static narrative centers on Mindy's development within a rather narrow framework.

Reviewer: Nancy Vasilakis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 1999

(1) YA Speaking out at the "wrong" time--calling 911 from a teen drinking party--has made Melinda a social outcast; now she barely speaks at all. While her smart and savvy interior narrative slowly reveals the searing pain of that night (she was raped), it also nails the high-school experience cold. Uncannily funny even as it plumbs the darkness, Speak will hold readers from first word to last.

Reviewer: Lauren Adams | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 1999

(2) YA Anthony seeks out a job at O'Dermott's after catching his girlfriend in the throes of passion with Turner, an O'Dermott burger jockey. Determined to exact revenge on Turner, Anthony kidnaps a promotional display from competitor Burger Queen, intending to make his foe look like the perpetrator. Anthony's sarcastic first-person narrative, related in staccato prose, serves up a lot of laughs.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1999

(3) YA Nearly three years after being abducted, sixteen-year-old Jeff is released by his kidnapper. The plaintive first-person narrative details Jeff's readjustment to family and friends, his guilt over the sexual abuse he suffered, and the continued presence of Ray, the abductor who continues to make ominous appearances even after Jeff is home. Not every aspect of this debut novel is fully convincing, but much is brutally honest and compelling.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta

(4) YA Living in Massachusetts in the early 1700s, Rachel falls victim to a vampire; three centuries later she walks the streets of Concord as Risika, trying to satisfy an eternal blood-lust. The novel alternates between the time periods. Risika's tale suffers from a confused plot, mundane writing, and a weak conclusion, but the story of Rachel's indoctrination into vampiricism is riveting in this novel written by a thirteen-year-old.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta

(2) YA Destined to be the empress of the Byzantine Empire, Anna Comnena finds her future profoundly altered in a power struggle over the succession. Exiled after a failed attempt at fratricide, she finds a way to continue The Alexiad, the eleven-volume epic story of her father's life. A coming-of-age story set in an exotic time and place, the book is a fascinating mix of history, mystery, and intrigue.

Reviewer: Mary M. Burns | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999

(2) YA In the fall of 1944, approximately one thousand refugees from liberated Italy were brought to a refugee shelter in Oswego, New York; Bat-Ami has used this little-known camp as the basis for a thought-provoking novel. Two story lines intertwine--that of fifteen-year-old Yugoslav refugee Adam and fifteen-year-old Oswego native Christine--in a timely story that probes the refugee issue with sensitivity and depth.

Reviewer: Martha Walke | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999

(2) YA Ivy wants to be a historian, a vocation that's getting quite a workout as she prepares a family history in honor of her beloved great-aunt Tib's eightieth birthday. As in Bauer's Rules of the Road, the central story is of a journey: Ivy hikes into the wilds of the Adirondacks to find her reclusive aunt Jo--and to find her own destiny as well. Persistent, mouthy, and good, Ivy is an admirable heroine who will be familiar to Bauer fans.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999

(2) YA Ben, whose football hero father has left him and his mom for "some guy named Keith," struggles to balance his own conflicted feelings about his dad with the messages he gets from the testosterone-infused world of male high school athletes. In this look at the emotional life of a suburban jock, Bechard gives readers a likable protagonist with a lot going on under the surface.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1999

(4) YA The son of a black blues musician and white college professor, Zack decides to do a research project based on artifacts he finds on his family's property. Without permission, he travels to Mississippi to explore his maternal family's roots and meet the grandfather his mother refuses to discuss. Despite numerous clichés, the novel is smooth and satisfying, sustaining energy and interest throughout.

Reviewer: Amy Lois Cohn

(4) YA Two high school girls, one a steely dark-haired aspiring moviemaker, the other a fragile blond dreamer, form an intense friendship, which acts as a lifeline when they get sucked into the soulless Hollywood scene. As usual, Block's glittery descriptions are out in full force, and adolescents will probably groove on all the high drama, although it often goes over the top to become almost corny.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann