by Nora Raleigh Baskin

ages: 10+

First sentence: “My Aunt Louisa, who is really my sister, snored like a machine with a broken part, a broken part that kept cycling around in a shuddering, sputtering rhythm.”

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Julia and Eliza are lots of things: the same age, aunt-niece (though it’s less complicated to say cousins), best friends. They’ve grown up together, spending summer weekends up at the mountain resort where Eliza’s father works. But this summer, the one before their seventh grade year, Julia is spending the entire summer living in the mountains with Eliza because Julia’s mother has been shipped to Iraq as part of the National Guard. It also happens to be the summer when Julia discovers boys; will she let them come between her and her best friend?

It’s a pretty simple premise for a book, but Raskin takes the premise, and exalts it to new levels, perfectly capturing the moment between girlhood and young womanhood, with all it’s anxieties and insecurities and hopes and tensions. She captures the first crush so heartbreakingly well; not to mention the balance a girl must find between the Boys and her own friends. Added to that is the worry and insecurities of Julia not only missing her mom, but concern that she might not make it back. In a very telling scene, Julia starts to freak out when seeing some dress military uniforms, wondering why the Army would come give her bad news at the resort at the same time fully expecting the worst, until she realizes that it’s all for a wedding. It’s heartbreaking, and oh, so real.

It’s a tender, sweet look at a wondrous time of change in a girl’s life.

by Jean Craighead George

ages: 10+

First sentence: “I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing I am here.”

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I’ve seen this book around for years, and known that I should read it. I didn’t really know what it was about, just that it was on lists of books by people I respect. That, and I’ve enjoyed George’s other stuff.

I’m quite glad I read it, though.

The basic plot for those of you (like me) hiding under a rock: teenage Sam Gribly is incredibly happy living in New York City. And so one day he decides to up and run away to the Catskills mountains to live on a piece of land that has been in the family (but unused) for decades. No one believes he can do it, and yet he not only does, he flourishes. He makes a house out of a tree, learns to trap animals and hunt and skin deer (using every bit of the animal). He raises and trains a falcon. He learns to live with silence and learn the language of the forest.

It’s a simple book, in so many ways. There’s not much going on plot-wise; it’s essentially a wildlife handbook of how Sam managed to make it work in the wilderness. And it’s a simple life he leads: he gets up, he forages for food, he stores for the winter, he swims and fishes, he walks and explores. There’s no rush, there’s no stress, there’s no rat-race. It’s a wonderfully idyllic life.

The thing that I found most interesting, however, was how much Sam learned from books. He kept saying things like, “I read in a book somewhere that” and “the book I read said that”. They really are useful things, books. It also made me quite sad that no one could up and do what Sam did today. It’s not just that there are no places to run to (or that anyone would actually let a teenage boy run away to the wild without calling the authorities), but that a lot of the knowledge in the book is lost. For some reason — and I find this strange, considering that I’m basically a city girl — I find this sad.

Thankfully we have books like these to remind us of simpler times and places.

by Frances Hardinge

ages: 10+

First sentence: “‘Read the paper for you, sir?'”

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Ah where to begin with the loveliness that is Frances Hardinge’s writing? I’ve compared it to a boulder. I’ve waxed eloquent on the way she handles words. And all of that is still true. This book, a sequel of sorts to her first book, Fly By Night, is huge (592 pages), slow to start and get into, but an absolute delight to read.

We meet up with our plucky heroine, Mosca Mye; her homicidal goose, Saracen; and her con man friend, Eponymous Clent a few months after they caused a revolution in the town of Medalion. They’re basically on the run, and due to some interesting and somewhat unforeseen circumstances, they end up in the unique (to say the least) town of Toll.

One of the most interesting things about Hardinge’s books are the way she invents and plays with religion. In this one, it’s the Beloved: icons, gods and goddesses that govern every hour of the day, every day of the year. Our dear Mosca was born under Palpatittle, the lord of the flies, and her name reflects that. An interesting side note: in this world where Mosca lives, you are not allowed to lie about your name, because that would offend the Beloved. She had found that while she sometimes comes under suspicion because of her name it usually doesn’t hamper her in any way. Not so in Toll.

Toll, for many reasons, has been divided into two towns: Toll-by-Day, in which the “respectable” people born under “respectable” Beloved; and Toll-by-Night, for everyone else. And, to add additional suspense, Toll-by-Night is run by the Locksmiths, an organization that operates on fear and isolation: when a town gets taken over by the Locksmiths, no one hears from them again. Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

It’s a complex story, one in which you don’t necessarily need to read the first book (though why wouldn’t you?) to enjoy. You would think that, being so large, there would be wasted plot points. Not so: everything in the book is there for a reason, all of which will be shown by the end. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle: you may not know how all the pieces fit together, but when they do, the big picture is amazing.

It’s not a book for reluctant readers, though. Or even one for those who are kind of half-hearted about their reading. It’s for those who want a challenge, who don’t mind wading through the words, putting together the pieces (I’m mixing my metaphors, aren’t I), and who want to work for the end result, which, like all things you work for, is very much worth it.