Scholastic Inc

Children's Bookwatch, March, 2005

Scholastic Inc.

557 Broadway, New York NY 10012

www.scholastic.com

Scholastic Press is always a best bet for lasting fiction, and their last set of publications holds some particularly choice leisure reads. Advanced young adults will find Jude Watson's Preminitions (04396-0995X, $6.99) a complex, engrossing read. Gracie has had premonitions for years and has tried to ignore them; but when her best friend Emily disappears, they're the only clue to the mystery. Her premonitions may bring her well into danger, though. Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider (0439456959, $12.95) is also recommended for older readers: three friends search for a legendary place where dragons can live in peace forever, journeying to magic lands in the process and uncovering friends and an enemy in the process. The same audience will also enjoy Kevin Crossley Holland's Arthur King Of The Middle March (0439266009, $17.95): set in 1202, a newly knighted Arthur becomes involved in the Fourth Crusade, and must decide whose side he is on when factions split. An intriguing King Arthur saga emerges. Pam Munoz Ryan's Becoming Naomi Leon (0439269699, $16.95) tells of a girl who must overcome shyness and strange attire to make friends. Her talent at soap carving doesn't help her achieve normality, and when her mother re-appears after seven years of absence, more trouble results. P.B. Kerr's 'Children of the Lamp' novel The Akhenaten Adventure (04396-70195, $16.95) presents twelve-year-old twins who discover they are descended from a line of djinn: they can grant wishes, make people vanish, and can evoke magical powers. An eccentric uncle helps teach them just in time, for they will journey to locate a dangerous pharaoh named Akhenaten, which may be trapping seventy lost djinn. An intriguing story of cross-cultures and acceptance. Suzanne Collins' Gregor And The Prophecy Of Bane (0439650-755, $16.95) tells of a strange Underland under New York City: once Gregor discovers it, he swears he won't return to New York--until a prophecy requires him to reunite with his bat, a rebellious princess and others in search of the dangeous white rat known as the Bane. A complex, involving dark fantasy emerges for advanced young adult readers of the genre. Susan Vaught's Stormwitch (1582349525, $16.95) is set in 1969 Mississipi, where Ruba has moved from Haiti to live with her grandmother. Ruba is required to do everything differently, from wearing new clothes to obeying white people: can she overcome her old life of beachcombing and learning magic to enter this strange new world? A strange new world is also experienced in Ana Veciana-Suarez's novel, Flight To Freedom (0439381991, $16.95), telling of a middle-class Cuban family who flees Castro but retains strong ties to their homeland even from Florida. Yara's struggles to learn English and understand Americans reflects her entire family's challenges in America. Judith Ortiz Cofer's Call Me Maria (0439385-776, $16.95) also tells of a girl caught between two cultures: native Puerto Rico and New York, where Maria now lives in a basement apartment in the barrio, with her father. Maria's family is separated and her struggles to find a place in her new barrio home are told in letters, poems and prose. Sylvie Weil's My Guardian Angel (0439576814, $16.95) is set in the Jewish community and tells of one Peter the Hermit, whose Crusaders are moving through town--and who are known to hate Jews. Set in 1096 France, as seen through twelve-year-old Elvina's eyes, the period and conflicts come alive. Brian James' deftly written novel Perfect World (0439-67364X, $16.95) presents the conflicts of Lacie, who doesn't fit in because she isn't pretty, perfect, or moving at the same pace as her friends. Despite the encouragement of adults, Lacie realizes her limitations--and needs to escape her life in this poignant novel of change.