(2) YA When seventh grader Finn Connelly is caught on a surveillance camera kicking over a headstone in a local Lake Placid cemetery, little does he know it was the grave of Edna Grace Thomas, "Queen of the High Peaks," one of the first women 46ers: those who have climbed all forty-six Adirondack High Peaks. Edna's daughter, Kelly, sets Finn on a mission of atonement: to climb all forty-six mountains in memory of her mother. She suspects that Finn can use what the peaks offer: "The power to heal. / To help a troubled soul find peace. / Make a broken person whole." Finn begins a hero's journey, accompanied by Seymour, "the most slobbery, / drooly-faced, / smelly-furred, / farty-butted dog / in the world," along with a series of 46er "trail nannies," and soon realizes that "the trouble with long hikes / is that your brain has to come with you." He has plenty of time to think about the mess he has made of his life recently and about his anger and grief over the (unprocessed) loss of his father two years earlier. Messner relates Finn's story through an animated first-person narrative and through the poems Finn must write for a school project, mixing in text messages with his mother, letters to his English teacher, cookie recipes, and more. This verse novel covers a lot of ground, literally and metaphorically, and thoughtfully grapples with the big ideas of life.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2025

(2) K-3 From a red cabin in a forest, the young protagonist calls for her dog. "Peppermint! Where is that pesky pup? I'm going out to look for Peppermint! You come too." In the panel-style illustrations that follow, the girl takes readers on a tour of her favorite features of the forest, while the cagey Peppermint comments from a circle inset on each spread. When there are reminiscences (about the time, for instance, when Peppermint came home with a snout full of porcupine quills), the action appears as childlike drawings in the girl's sketchbook (Peppermint: "Maybe not my finest hour"). A mix of the informative and the homey, the narration encompasses elements of history and geology (how millennia earlier, glaciers dropped erratic boulders), botany, zoology (the time a coyote chased them home and they later returned to find its den), and folk wisdom (how to make a whistle out of an acorn cupule), in a visually inviting and intellectually stimulating way. When the naughty Peppermint is at last reunited with her owner, they're rewarded with one of the girl's life-list ambitions: the sight of an elusive fisher regarding them silently from high in a tree. The back matter includes a note from the author about his home and a map showing the Adirondack Mountains, sidebars about porcupines and fishers, and a list of "a few good forest books."

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2024

(3) YA Four very different teenage girls go from strangers to unlikely friends while sharing a summer home in the Adirondacks. In chapters that alternate between their perspectives, each girl also faces an individual challenge, such as dealing with a chronic illness or a public family drama. A vivid setting, light tone, and distinct characterization will appeal to fans of Ann Brashares.

Reviewer: Jessica Tackett MacDonald

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Sally Wern Comport. Horror motifs mingle with traditional Mohawk legends in this fast-paced, spine-tingling tale of a misfit thirteen-year-old and a vengeful maniac. Baron Braun feels friendless and bullied until the opportunity to use his vast knowledge of bears and his (more limited) outdoorsmanship enable him to save his classmates and a wilderness preserve. Bruchac's development of contemporary Native American identity issues adds heft.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(2) YA Should sixteen-year-old Mattie stay in her insular community and become a wife and mother, or should she strike out for the freedom and intellectual stimulation of the big city? A murder helps her make up her mind. Set in upstate New York in 1906, this ambitious historical novel incorporates the same real-life crime--the murder of a pregnant young woman--that inspired Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2003

(4) 4-6 Ecosystems in Action series. Occasionally dry but informative texts, illustrated with crisp color photos, use five specific locations (Adirondack forest, Sonoran Desert, Florida Everglades, Hawaiian rainforest, and Alaskan tundra) as examples of a particular ecosystem. The books discuss geological and climactic characteristics of each area, plant and animal adaptations and interdependence, and close with negative effects of humans on the ecosystem. Glos., ind. [Review covers these Ecosystems in Action titles: Life in a Deciduous Forest, Life in a Desert, Life in a Wetland, Life in a Rain Forest, and Life in the Tundra.]

Reviewer: Bridget McCaffrey

(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