There must be something about brothers that really interest readers and television fans. Supernatural is big on television, and Rob Thurman’s new series about Caliban and Niko are becoming big hits in the paperback arena. The first two books, Nightlife and Moonshine are out now, and Madhouse is coming out in February of 2008.

On the surface, the series looks like one of the many entries into the urban fantasy arena, but the books come with a twist. Caliban, or Cal, as he prefers to be called, is half-Dark Elf (Auphe) and has some kind of dark destiny that the brothers are only now starting to get a handle on. Cal’s mother had an affair – for money – with his Auphe father and he was born, a hybrid unlike anything that had ever been birthed before. Suffice to say that Cal wasn’t born into a nurturing home.

However, what Cal did have was his older brother, Niko, who is a self-styled samurai warrior and Renaissance man. Since Day One, Niko has been Cal’s protector and mentor, a super-parent that has more or less given up his life in order to make sure Cal grew up. Cal feels tremendous amounts of guilt over this, but there’s nothing he can do about it. His life has been entirely too strange – and that’s before you take into account the two years the Grendels (Dark Elves) kidnapped him to their world and did unspeakable things to him that he still can’t remember.

The relationship between the brothers is the foundation that makes everything else work. I could constantly see them around each other and in each other’s lives. Even those times when Niko wasn’t on stage with Cal, I was constantly aware of him.

The first-person narrative Cal treats us to is often sarcastic, but also touching. He is mocking and self-deprecating, but at the same time accessibly human and easy to feel sympathy for. He’s a loner, and he’s so much an outcast that he’s dragged his brother off into the same kind of horrible existence.

The plot of the first novel is loose. All Cal and Niko are trying to do is survive one more day. We get to see them doing that, and the peek into their lives and their world is a lot of fun. Author Rob Thurman has a lot to work with, given the creations she’s thrown at her readers so far. There’s a lot of backstory that hasn’t yet been explored.

Nightlife is a whirlwind adventure that doesn’t focus on the fate of the world, just the fates of the two main characters, which should be enough for any novel, though too many authors these days forget that. I also liked the addition of Robin Goodfellow, and I hope he hangs around as a series regular.

This book is pure pulp of the best kind. It offers no apologies or excuses for what it is. I enjoyed it from the first page to the last, and had very few places where I could rest comfortably. The story and the questions it launched kept pulling me back in time and again. That’s what the best ones do. Now I’m going to read Moonshine and anxiously await Madhouse.

If you haven’t discovered this series yet, you should. There’s no overarching romance story that keeps hitting you between the eyes. This is adventure on the purest level, and adrenaline will keep you turning the pages.

Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have reinvented Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, and Captain Hook so well that a generation from now no one might remember where J. M. Barrie’s original creation ended and theirs began. So far, the two have written three incredibly fat and action-packed volumes of Peter’s adventures with the “starstuff,” the magical fallen stars that gave him his power and – in effect – rendered him immortal, though as a boy doomed never to grow up.

Along the way, Barry and Pearson have also brought a multitude of other parts of the legend to life and to center stage. At present, they’ve authored two short novels on other characters in Peter’s worldscape.

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon finishes off the trilogy Barry and Pearson set out to write and fans of the series are already feeling the loss. The two authors succeed brilliantly in bringing their books to cinematic life within the pages. The pacing of all three books proceeds at breakneck speed.

As with the other books, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon jumps in with both feet and with three different storylines that ultimately converge in the trilogy’s final battle.

I love these books, and I love reading them to my son. There’s just enough going on all the time – enough chases and enough mystery – that it keeps him fully engaged. And me too. They’re even interesting enough for me to read by myself, then go back almost immediately and read them again to him.

Lord Ombra, Peter’s ultimate enemy in this book, returns and begins his machinations to bring about the end of the Starcatchers, those people responsible for keeping the “starstuff” out of the hands of bad guys. Ombra quickly links up with Captain Nerezza and the chase is on.

In the meantime, Peter becomes aware of a murderous group – the Scorpion Tribe – coming to Mollusk Island – to wreak havoc on everyone there. Peter almost gets himself killed doing that and Tinker Bell has to save the day.

Back in England, Molly Aster and her friends begin tracking down clues that ultimately lead them to Peter’s real identity and how he came to be at the home for wayward boys.

Talking about any of these plotlines too much will give away important twists and turns. Suffice to say there are plenty of surprises, and that Barry and Ridley really do justice to Barrie’s creation and invented world. In a way, the authors really set up Barrie’s initial novel by explaining many of the things Peter Pan fans have always wondered.

If you haven’t read this trilogy, you can’t wander through them. The books have to be read in order. Peter’s powers grow, as does the villainy of his foes. And readers are gently nudged out of the world that existed then and slid right into Neverland. If you like juvenile fantasy novels, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many better, more quick to read, or more inventive than these. The world is at once familiar and wondrous.

But the best time you’ll ever have is sitting down with these and reading them to your kids. Unless you’re a kid yourself. Then wait twenty years and read them then. These books are going to be timeless.

However, the movies can’t be far behind, can they?

There’s nothing that says CHRISTMAS like a pop-up book. I have become a believer.

I’ve loved the idea of pop-up books since they first came out. They tend to be expensive, but the writer in me can’t help but be curious how they’re made. The process has got to be a nightmare. Nothing at all like slinging a little black ink on a white page.

Pop-up books come in amazing colors, AND they have all those wonderful manipulatives that draw young eyes, hands, and minds (and those of us that are a smidge older as well).

Chuck Fischer is an artist who specializes in designs. He’s created wall murals, patterns for china and crystal, as well as wallpaper and printed fabric. He’s also created four pop-up books. One covered eight of the fifty states, another covered the White House, and there was one that centered on Christmas in New York.

Christmas Around the World is his latest foray into the pop-up book world, and it is a magnificent display of artistry and engineering. In these books authors really can’t work without pulling skills from both those professions.

In twelve fantastically colored pages, Fischer manages to take his readers around the world, just as the title promises. The tour includes England, Rome, Germany, France, Russia, and the United States. I was blown away by how tall the various displays stood up from the pages.

A lot of information is included in the booklets that accompany the pages, and youngsters of all ages will gather around to hear all the details and lore of Santa Claus in these different lands.

If you can get a copy of this book to give as a Christmas gift this year, you’re going to have a wonderful family present to give. If not this year, then I’d suggest picking it up for next year. When the tree goes up, this book should be tucked beneath it for anyone to peruse, or placed on a nearby coffee table for guests and kids to meander through.

Christmas Around the World has a good chance of becoming as much a family tradition as hanging lights, putting up the tree, and shaking the presents.

Meg Cabot is a high profile author whose books have gone on to become movies and television shows. Her series include The Mediator, 1-800-Where-R-You (which became the television show, MISSING), The Princess Diaries (which became movies of the same name), and others as well as many stand-alone books of romance and humor.

Avalon High was originally a stand-alone title but was picked by TokyoPop to become a 3-volume graphic novel series. The book is also in development with Disney to become a live-action film.

The story is very familiar, culled from the Arthurian mythos and brought into the high school arena. Arthur is now known as Will, and he quickly becomes the boyfriend of Elle, who is basically the character of the Lady of Shalott. All of the other Arthurian legends are represented as well: Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Modred, and Morgan Le Fey.

Jinky Coronado’s black and white drawings are a pleasure to view and up the frenzied pace of the book. Coronado blends the pure manga stylings with current, popular comic book art that creates an interesting hybrid on the pages. The sequential action draws the eye naturally. Several of the panels kept drawing my attention back to them because they were so well done.

Cabot’s story is pretty straightforward and simple. King Arthur has been reborn once more, but that means his enemies have also been reborn. The main problem: according to Mr. Morton (Elle’s history teacher and very probably Merlin the wizard), Will Wagner must recognize and accept himself as the rebirth of Arthur. That’s not going to be an easy feat because Will is certain he knows who he is. And he has to do it within a few weeks or the world will be destroyed.

The impending destruction of the world is such an easy thing to lay on teenagers! But Elle is quickly off and running as she tries to deal with being the new girl in school, being Will’s girlfriend, and dealing with the enemies they have separately as well as together. Morgan in particular doesn’t care for Elle.

Unfortunately, the first third of the graphic novel is more or less a summary of things that have gone on before. This choice really impedes the story for a while, and it takes up so many pages that by the time the tale gets underway, it’s practically over. Still, the cliffhanger ending should bring readers back around for a do-over.

I’m looking forward to reading the other two volumes in the series, as well as handing it off to friends of mine who are heavily into graphic novels. But now I have to go back and read the book as well, because I somehow missed that one. And I’m going to be interested in the upcoming movie as well.

If you want light, easy entertainment with some extended value (or at least something you can share with other and talk about quickly), Cabot’s new manga series is a good choice. It’s not as far out there as some of the Japanese manga, and it’s a great size to throw in a backpack or back pocket for on-the-road reading.

Minnesota-native Gary Paulsen has been one of my favorite middle-grade and YA authors for years. I can’t really remember which of his books I first read, but he’s written a lot of awfully good ones. His characters are always understandable, real, and – mostly – tied to nature in some ways.His most iconic figure is Brian Robeson, the star of Hatchet. In that book, Brian was a city kid who ended up crashing into the brush when the pilot of the plane he was in had a heart attack and died suddenly. With only a hatchet – no matches, no sleeping bag, and no supplies, Brian taught himself how to live in the wilderness. His personal growth spread over 54 days, and the book become one of the best-received middle-grade novels ever. If you haven’t read it, or your child hasn’t read it, you should.

Brian’s Hunt is the newest book in the five-volume series. Brian is 16 at the time of this novel, and he’s become more certain of himself. He’s out on the lakes in Canada, taking his time to get to the Cree American Indian tribe he became friends with during the course of his adventures. He’s very much a loner, and has even talked his parents and school into letting him try his hand at home schooling himself.

Paulsen’s attention to detail and the ways of nature may prove slow-going to most of today’s young readers (unless they’re already in love with the series), but you can feel the love the author has for such things. I learned a lot about fishing and hunting during the course of the book, though I intend to do neither, and I could tell my ten year old was filing away details while I read the novel to him.

However, Paulsen always delivers on the action in one of his books, and Brian’s Hunt is no exception. Before long, Brian wakes up to find a wounded dog looking for food and for help. Brian gives both, though those scenes are somewhat intense and carry a gross-out factor with them. The scenes are realistic, though, and very well written.

As Brian puts the puzzle of the dog’s mysterious wounds together with her behavior as he hunts, it doesn’t take him long to realize that the dog was mauled by a bear. Once that discovery is made, Brian learns bad news that sets him into the woods after the bear.

The details of how Brian tracks the bear, the skills and the observation necessary, are great. My son and I stayed glued to the pages, though we couldn’t help taking a break every now and again to discuss some facet of hunting lore we hadn’t been aware of. Although the material is mature, it’s written on a level kids can easily understand it, and it’s very honest. But if you have a youngster and you’re thinking about letting him or her read this one, you might want to read it yourself first to make sure it meets with your approval and that it won’t panic or bother your child.

I’m a big fan of Gary Paulsen’s, and this book really hit the spot. At 99 pages long, it’s a quick, intense read. Although Paulsen said he’d ended the Hatchet adventures after the publication of the last book, I can’t help but be hopeful there will be more. Brian is starting to get interested in a girl, and I want to see how that works out for him.

I can’t believe I haven’t read Andrew Clements before, but I’m really glad I discovered him now. He’s fast becoming one of my favorite middle-grade writers.Normally I’m drawn to YA and middle-grade fantasy, SF, and mysteries, and those remain my favorites. But lately my ten year old’s reading for school has necessitated stepping outside my favorite genre haunts and picking up books on other people’s reading lists. I’ve read and reviewed Clements’s The Janitor’s Boy, and really enjoyed it. So picking up The School Story was actually a no-brainer at that part.

I knew from my previous experience with Clements that he could hold his own emotionally in a story. I knew I’d like the characters and that they would have problems I could relate to.

What I didn’t expect was the education about the world of writing and publishing that is so much a part of this wonderful story. I know kids are interested in just about everything these days, but I didn’t know they would have been curious at all as to how a book gets bought, published, and advertised.

Clements does all these things in an interesting manner. Not only that, but he makes those facets of publishing a big part of the novel. Each one of those steps of getting a book to a publisher, into the hands of the right editor, and into reader awareness becomes a stumbling block for our three intrepid heroines.

Natalie Nelson is the writer. Her dad tragically died and she was really close to him. She wrote her book, called The Cheater partially in his memory, because she didn’t want to forget about him. And because she knows her mom, Hannah, is struggling with everything as well. She pours out her heart onto the pages and wins the support and enthusiastic belief from Zoe Reisman. Natalie wants her mom, an editor at a book publisher, to publish her book, but doesn’t want any special favors. So she invents a pseudonym to write under.

Zoe is the go-getter of the group. Her dad’s a lawyer and has always told her she could do anything. So she sets out to see if that’s true. She reinvents herself as an agent (after finding out what agents do), gives herself a pseudonym as well, declaring herself to be Zee Zee Reisman, of the Sherry Clutch Literary Agency (an agency she also invents and rents an office for), and goes to work making everything happen for Natalie.

Along the way, the girls become convinced they need to have an adult help them. They choose their young English teacher, Ms. Clayton, who is new to teaching and still unsure of exactly where her responsibilities lie in her chosen profession. One of Clements’s greatest skills as a middle-grade reader is his ability to write from the adult perspective in a way that doesn’t bore the younger readers or talk down to them.

The readers are elevated to the same level as the adult characters, and the adult problems are stripped of age, sex, and other modifiers that prohibit understanding by younger and less experienced readers. Ultimately in Clements’s view of the adult world, problems still confront characters who can affect them, but the question remains, should they? I agree with this philosophy, and it’s something that kids understand in a heartbeat.

This is a great book about friendship between kids and between kids and adults. Everything fits together nicely in the end, which makes it more fictional than the real world, but the book delivered exactly what it set out to do.

At the end of reading it together, my son said that he believes the book should be turned into a movie because he could see everything happening. I tend to agree. But don’t wait for the movie. Read this splendid book while you’re waiting.

I love history and I love pirates. Thankfully history never goes away and pirates are more popular than ever. I grew up on stories of Sir Francis Drake, the most prominent of her majesty the queen’s privateer, who took his letters of marquee and seized a place in legend for himself. But I never really got into the true story about the man until I was more grown up. By then I was majoring in history in college and found the stories even more interesting because I recognized them as men who had to overcome their fears before they became swashbuckling heroes.

I was, however, guilty of not thinking overmuch about the lady that gave men like Drake the chance to become my childhood heroes. Her journey, her decisions, were – upon reflection – even harder and more awe-inspiring than her privateers.

Called the Virgin Queen, and that must have been a hard one to deal with back in her day, Elizabeth I rose to the throne a month after she turned 25. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded at the order of her husband Henry VIII. A beheading served as a divorce at the time because the Anglican Church hadn’t instituted divorce as acceptable.

For a while, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and had no shot at the throne. That struggle was only one of many she faced, as well as religious problems within the nation and war with Spain.

Historian Susan Ronald brings all of the adventure and excitement of Elizabeth I’s life to the pages of her book. I’m ADHD and even though I love history, I oftentimes find wading through “scholarly” approaches to material I’m interested in very hard reading. My attention span wanders and I lose track in the middle of baroque sentences.

This isn’t so with Ronald’s book. She effectively nailed me to the pages with her engrossing spinning of Elizabeth I’s trials and travails. When I first hefted the book, and it is certainly hefty, I have to admit to being somewhat daunted. But then I began turning the pages. And kept turning the pages.

Eiizabeth I’s struggles to right the English economy, deal with controversy over her lineage and the religious changes she made, all became drama played out in my mind’s eye. Ronald painted sets with her words, and the people came to life. Reading this book is effortless, and it provides a splendid study of that time and the people involved.

I’d been fascinated by the Spanish Armada and how it was destroyed in 1588, but I hadn’t really felt all that was at stake if they’d won against England. The Cold War that played out between Russia and the United States between 1950s-1980s had nothing on the conflict that took place on the Atlantic Ocean during Elizabeth’s reign.

Although the book focuses a lot on the Queen’s privateers – legalized pirates by any other name – much time is spent with her relationship with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Liecester, Thomas Seymore – who was her guardian for a time, as well as those famous pirates, Sir Francis Drake, and Admiral John Hawkins.

Ronald’s book is an armchair historian’s dream and a keen, mostly unbiased, look at one of history’s most famous and most daring women. If you’ve ever been interested in pirates or English history during a most dangerous time when history could have flipped in any of several directions, The Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I, Her Daring Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire is definitely a book you should pick up.

Although almost 500 pages long, take heart in the fact that the book is heavily documents and several of those pages are reference. The layout of the book, wide margins and easy-to-read typeface, also make it extremely attractive in this time of microscopic fonts.

Andrew Vachss is one of my favorite tough-guy novelists. Generally, no one writes them meaner or leaner than Vachss. He’s got the inside track on a lot of sex crimes, particularly pedophilia and child-rape, which are special topics to him.When he’s not writing bestselling fiction about these two potentially stomach-turning subjects, he’s practicing law to save kids from these predators and put those predators away for ever. In some ways, in real life Vachss is an even larger hero than his iconic hijacker/gunman/profiler, Burke.

Vachss has been writing these novels since Flood was published in 1985, and I’ve been reading them since I found the paperback in 1986. Terminal, this year’s release, is the 17th in the series.

I love Burke. He’s a hardened criminal with no remorse in him for people he takes advantage of. He usually operates cons, selling information that’s no good or forgeries to people who intend to use it for evil pursuits. Burke justifies it, and I’ve always bought into his justification, though I wouldn’t do it myself. He was raised and mistreated by the State, in institutions as well as foster homes. He never had a chance and he knows it. He still doesn’t have one. So he lives his life in the shadows, and that provides a vicarious thrill that I haven’t gotten over even twenty-plus years later.

He’s also got a “family” of other people who were just as broken as he was, yet who refused to roll over and die. There’s Max the Silent, a deaf and dumb Mongolian martial arts master who is immediate death to anyone that he’s decided must die. The Prof is the black con man who taught Burke how to survive in prison, then on the streets. The Mole is a Jewish techno-wizard, a savant with anything electrical or explosive. Michelle is the ex-streetwalker transvestite who was surgically altered when she got the money together and serves as their social engineer. Wesley was the pistoleer of the group, and no one was more deadly with a firearm. Mama is the Chinese restaurant owner who’s always served as their bank and a place of operations.

Over the years, Burke and Vachss – and the readers – have added to that family. And, sadly, they’ve taken away.

With the publication of Terminal, Vachss has pushed his series into near-inaccessibility by new readers. The world Burke inhabits has just grown and gotten so large that newbies need a scorecard to keep up. Vachss tries to alleviate that problems with a lot of explaining and backtracking, but that effort gets in the way of long-time readers. I understand the characters and the world. I wanted the action to move a little faster in this book. I still enjoyed it a lot, but a lot of it was like having a good friend rework stories you’ve heard before. Still, I like the stories, so it’s not so bad.

However, the plot was a little late in launching and I became impatient at times. Vachss is still fun to read, though. But I’d really suggest reading the early ones first and doing some catch-up before tackling this one. That way you know who Clarence and Terry and Flower are.

In this book, Burke goes back to stalking the child molesters and killers in the shadows. Three men are guilty of raping and killing a girl over twenty years ago. One of their accomplices has come forward with a blackmail scheme. The sons of privileged families, they’ve all ascended into wealthy lifestyles.

Burke intends to blackmail them for the murder, make them pay financially, then with their lives. It’s what he does, and I’m one of his biggest fans.

The book takes a while to wind up to full speed, but it’s always a pleasure working the capers and the con with Burke. Vachss pulls you right into the middle of the action and explains how those operations work better than anyone else I’ve ever read. And he doesn’t flinch over the hard stuff like murder and torture either. He lays it out on the line. These books often aren’t for people with weak stomachs.

In addition to the Burke books, Vachss has also written standalones and graphic novels and comics. I really recommend his novels Shella and The Getaway Man to showcase some of his other writing.

Vachss is seriously THE crime writer you should be reading if you’re not.

Andrew Clements is a children’s author primarily known for his book, Frindle. Usually he writes for the third to sixth grade crowd, and a lot of time about fifth graders. Nearly all of his books involve “problems” for his main characters, situations and emotions that need some kind of resolution.I’ve read Clements before and always enjoyed him, but I picked up a book recently that I’d been told about and wanted to see if it was something my fourth grader would enjoy having read to him. We enjoying sharing books, and I enjoy the time I get to spend with him and the conversations we have after we finish a book.

The Janitor’s Boy turned out to be an excellent read on a number of levels, not all of which are going to be understood by kids. It touches, briefly, on the Vietnam War and how that conflict affected a generation of men. But the greater part of the story, in size and in design, is the tale of a boy who comes to understand more about his father than he knew existed.

Fifth grader Jack Rankin has always had a problem with his father John’s job as the school janitor. While other kids in second grade were declaring that they wanted to be policemen and firemen, Jack told everybody he wanted to be a janitor – just like his dad. That was when he learned having a janitor for a dad wasn’t as cool to other kids as it was to him.

By fifth grade, Jack had pretty much gotten over that. Until the school district was rezoned and Jack started going to school in the old high school building where his dad was still the janitor. In no time, Jack is back to being harangued by the others kids. Instead of working his anger out on them, Jack directs it at his dad. When he gets busted for defacing school property, Jack gets after-school detention and ends up having to work with his dad scraping the gum out from under tables and chair.

As always, Clements’s prose is entertaining and easy to read. He sets up the problem at the same time Jack is trying to get revenge on his father. I was instantly curious about what Jack was doing with thirteen pieces of watermelon bubblegum, but even when I found out, I was hooked on the story of how Jack and his dad were going to resolve their problems with each other. When Jack got caught by the principal, things got even worse.

Clements also does a great job of using the adult characters in this book. There are scenes that focus on Jack’s mom and dad that are really well done because they never get beyond anything kids can understand.

I opened the book up just to read a chapter or two. I like to do that to establish a “voice” that I use to read to my son. Instead, I got totally hooked on the story. The main problem was the lack of understanding between Jack and John, but there were also mysteries that needed solving, like where all the secret doors in the school went to. The answers were surprising, and you get a double surprise in the end because as you learn John’s story, you also learn his story about his father and how they didn’t get along.

I kept turning page after page, unable to stop. And I was done before I knew it. I’ll still share this one with my son, but we won’t both be surprised together, which is – in one respect – a shame. But I couldn’t resist.

The Janitor’s Boy is an excellent read if you like kids’ books, but it’s an even better book to share with the kids in your life. There’s plenty of heart and plenty to think about for both of you.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid just made my list of Top 10 Books of 2007. After listening to my fourth grader rave about the book, which he found on the internet of all places because it’s been published there, I ordered a hardcover edition of the book. I know that kids who find a book they love will read it over and over again, and the choice as a parent is whether to buy it in hardcover or buy it in paperback over and over. Since paperbacks don’t always stay in print and hardcovers sometimes appreciate dramatically in price, I opted for the hardcover copy.

It came in today. My son sat down with it immediately. Even though he’d read the whole book on the internet, he loved the idea of being able to hold it in his hands. He flipped through the pages and made certain all his favorite jokes were still in place, which was amusing to watch because I’ve done the same thing.

One of the amazing things I’ve learned since is that the whole book is available on the internet. You can find it at www.wimpykid.com. Feel free to preview the whole book if you like, the author has generously placed it there, but it’s gone on to be a #1 seller in hardcover and paperback all the same. Free on the internet is one thing, but books and portability are best.

Since most of the television shows my wife and I watch on Friday nights were suspended or repeats and I needed a mental vacation after the stress of pounding the keyboard all day, I picked up Diary of a Wimpy Kid and started turning pages. I didn’t stop till I’d devoured the last page.

The book is a flat-out laugh riot from page one to page 217. With pencil drawings that look like they were made by an early elementary school student, it was also an incredibly fast read.

The story is about Greg Heffley, which is kind of like Jeff Kinney if you look at it right. Greg’s in sixth grade and isn’t exactly a social butterfly or even much accepted by the other kids. In fact, he’s lucky if they notice he’s alive.

Greg’s got a regular mom and dad, but Jeff Kinney paints them so vividly with just little details that you can’t help feeling you know these people. His dad has a violent streak when it comes to punishing Greg on the spot. Greg even points out when there are good times to screw up and bad times to screw up. Hint: a good time is when his dad is reading the paper; a bad time is when his dad is building a brick wall. Line drawings accompany this. Greg’s also got an older and younger brother that helps drive him crazy at home. The younger brother, Manny, doesn’t really speak, but he’s into everything.

Greg’s older brother, Rodrick, has his own band and generally stays out of Greg’s life. However, the relationship between the two comes to the forefront every now and again. Rodrick doesn’t mind putting something over on Greg or making him look bad.

The things that make this book work the most, and kept me turning pages, are Greg’s insights on life. He’s not a good kid. He’s not a bad kid either. He’s just a kid. One part scared, one part “that’s not fair”, and one part selfish. It’s the selfish part of Greg that brings about observations about popularity, such as his acknowledgement that he’s number fifty-something popular among the boys, but he’s due to move up a spot because one of the other boys is about to get braces.

His efforts to get out of trouble without having to actually take responsibility for his actions are amazingly dead-on for the age group Kinney is writing about. The fact that Greg’s unwilling to give up trick or treating is good. The touchstones of elementary school life, like the Cheese that’s haunted the outdoor basketball court for a year and gave birth to the Cheese Touch myth that actually ended up making one kid movie way, are here as well.

There are literally hundreds of reasons to buy this book. Number one is that it is the perfect gift for kids who are reluctant readers. Christmas is upon us. Kids are going to be thrown in cars for trips to see relatives, and this book will guarantee some quiet time – except for snickers and outright belly laughs.

I had an absolute blast with it. Before I knew it, I was committing the unpardonable sin of reading sections aloud to my wife while she was watching television. Normally I enforce that one to keep my own television watching manageable. However, I was soon that guy. The book is just too good not to share, so here I am sharing it with you.

Do your kid a favor and go buy the book. But make time to read it yourself. This is one that I think a lot of people will read and tell friends about. Then mark February 2008 down as the release month of the second book, Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. I’ve already got mine on order.