(2) YA Based on family history, Leavitt's coming-of-age story is set in an 1890s Mormon settler community in Southern Alberta, Canada, at the eastern edges of the Rockies, and focuses on seventeen-year-old Rebecca. In an opening both startling and humorous, Leavitt begins: "Rebecca had heard her father and others call this land God's country often enough that she wasn't as surprised as she might have been to come upon him... He was dressed in his work clothes, but you knew God when you saw him." It's fitting that many of Rebecca's consequent ups-and-downs are driven by the desire to own the very piece of "God's country" that she finds so beautiful--an ­outlandish ambition for a woman. With her mother's support, she determines to earn the exorbitant $480 it will cost to buy the quarter section; in the meantime, her close-knit family and community offer rich, unpredictable ground for her efforts to learn and live with integrity--and without complaining. Ventures into midwifery and nursing with her mother; ­calamities of weather, domestic violence, and a devastating flu; ­competition for romance and talk of women's suffrage: all are fodder for Rebecca's articulate, funny ­self-examination and deepening growth. Always sensitive to the ­beauties of earth and sky, Rebecca longs for a return of the elk and buffalo, part of the author's tacit acknowledgment of local Indigenous peoples and the damage wrought by white ­expansion. Leavitt's writing is suffused with the beauty of the earth and sky.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023

(1) YA Seventeen-year-old Calvin, recently diagnosed as schizophrenic, believes that his life is inextricably linked to Bill Watterson, the reclusive artist of comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. On a pilgrimage to find Watterson, Calvin sets off across frozen Lake Erie, and girl-next-door Susie insists on accompanying him. A more accessible, not-as-dark treatment of teenage mental illness than Shusterman's Challenger Deep but just as memorable.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2015

(2) 4-6 Mankind encroaches upon the bighorn sheep's habitat; wolf and puma feed on their dwindling herd. Biggest lamb Tuk must save the herd by finding a way west to "blue mountain," a place he sees in visions and may not be real. With its omniscient third-person narrator and mythic feel, the book celebrates the power of story and the beauty of the mountain world.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2014

(1) YA In dramatic free verse, sixteen-year-old Angel tells of her almost accidental yet inevitable slip into drugs, prostitution, and abuse from older men. With startlingly few words and deliberate use of white space, Leavitt re-creates the experience of exploited teens in powerful detail. Each poem is a brief exposure of painful memory, stark observation, or comforting fantasy. A stunning, haunting portrait of exploitation and redemption.

Reviewer: Jessica Tackett MacDonald | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2012

(2) YA When sixteen-year-old Keturah is taken by Death, she uses her storytelling skills to bargain with the lord. Caught in the web of her story, he grants her a day's respite so he can hear the rest and promises that if she finds her true love, he will let her live. This unusual blend of folktale, myth, and romance has an unexpected, thought-provoking conclusion.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2006

(1) YA When troubled, Heck draws superheroes to console himself. And when his mother goes into "hypertime," or periods of disorientation where she drops all responsibilities, Heck tries to alter that reality by becoming a doer of good deeds, a flesh-and-blood superhero. Desperate and homeless, Heck undergoes a memorable struggle to reconcile reality with his own need for optimism.

Reviewer: Betty Carter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2005