Robert B. Parker’s sophomore effort into YA fiction delivers more action and better pacing than his first. The Boxer And The Spy is also set in today’s world rather than the 1940s as Edenville Owls was. As an older reader who’s been reading Parker’s books since the 1970s, the earlier time period was no problem for me, but I wondered how many actual YA readers really understood everything that was going on after World War II.

As in his first novel, Parker develops a mystery for his young protagonist, Terry Novak, that spills out of the adult world. Parker spends a lot of time getting the young heroes acquainted with the adult world, though I believe that today’s kids are a lot more acclimated to that world than Parker’s characters. Still, Terry Novak is a kid I would have loved to know back when I was a freshman in high school, and I bet there are prospective readers out there who would feel the same way. He’s got honor, vision, and a sense of himself that are characteristic of Parker’s heroes and heroines.

The mystery wraps around the death of Jason Green. Terry knew Jason as a friend, and the relationship takes on special meaning when Parker reveals the tie that bound them. While everyone else seems content to believe Jason committed suicide, Terry just doesn’t buy it. He (the boxer) enlists the aid of his best gal pal, Abby (the spy), and they set about trying to figure out what really happened.

The relationship between Terry and Abby takes on as much weight as the mystery. This isn’t surprising to those of use that know Parker the way we do, but I believe the actual YA crowd might like the interaction between the two, though a few of them might wonder about how naïve the two are. Today’s kids, while not always callous, definitely have an idea of how the real world works in many ways.

Parker’s trademark clipped prose and rapid-fire dialogue provides plenty of muscle and drives the story along at a good clip. The scenes are powerful and evocative, without being too demanding. The level the books are written on would serve teachers needing something with an easier reading mechanics while maintaining a high interest. Educations dealing with high-risk students should definitely look into Parker’s YA efforts. The short chapters make reading just one more page way too irresistible. Librarians and reading specialists should take note of Parker’s YA books for that aspect alone.

I really enjoyed the boxing angle of the story too. Any longtime reader of Parker’s works will know that his private eye, Spenser, has a history of being a boxer. The love that Parker obviously holds for the sport is immediately apparent during his accounts of Terry’s workouts and talks with George, the black boxer that trains him. However, I would have liked to know more about what brought Terry into the ring and what his mom thought about him boxing. I know the adults are supposed to stay pretty much off screen in a YA book, but this one really cried out for most exposure of Terry and his family life.

Figuring out who the villain is and what’s actually going on was relatively easy. The fun part was watching what Terry and Abby were going to do to get to the bottom of the whole mess. I watched how their minds worked as they narrowed toward instated the back, and that made me remember by own childhood. Parker serves up nostalgia for the adults and excitement for the YA readers.

Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves are both award winning writers.  They also both rose to prominence outside the novel arena.  Gaiman scripted the Sandman comic series that lasted 75 issues plus specials.  Since that time he’s gone on to script many other things, including novels, television shows, short stories, movie scripts, and continued working in the comics arena.  His work for Marvel Comics to create the 1602 universe when heroes similar to the present-day Spiderman, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, etc rose at 300 years ago has rightfully garnered a lot of attention.  He also helped flesh out the mythos of the comics industry’s best-selling title, Spawn.

Michael Reaves has written many television cartoon scripts, including Batman the Animated Series, Ghostbusters, and others. He’s also written short stories and novels.

According to the notes in the latest book they have out together, INTERWORLD, they got the idea for the book about ten years ago. Reaves joined Gaiman at his house and they sat down and wrote the book together. The idea had originally started out as a pitch for the television people. Since they had trouble explaining the concept to television executives, they came up with the idea of writing a short novel about it. Even after the novels written, television wasn’t prepared to make a series. Last year, the manuscript was given fresh life when it was shown around to some prospective publishers. Almost immediately, the book was greenlit for publication.

I enjoy a lot of Neil Gaiman’s work. His comics are great, his short stories haunt, and his novels are generally burst out loud laughing or truly epic. Sometimes both.

I’ve read some of Reaves’s books, but I’m not as familiar with his work. He seems to create some interesting worlds and some interesting characters.

When I heard about InterWorld, the premise sounded truly exciting. Imagine a boy, Joey Harker, who could literally run into several of his alternate selves on parallel worlds. I figured immediately that the book had kind of a Sliders or Marvel Comics Exiles feel. I had a lot of hopes for the book.

After getting the book in the mail today, I sat down and read it.  It’s an easy read.  The prose just sails right along.  And the story is simple.  In fact, it’s a little too simple compared to what I was expecting.  Granted that the book was written with a nine to twelve year old audience in mind, there was a lot of concentration on the architecture of the nothingness that stretched between the worlds.  And not enough focus on real character development or even a plot.  Both of those turn out simple as well.

I know the juvenile crowd will probably appreciate that, but this is the same market that has been reading Harry Potter books that were 1000 pages long with convoluted and heavily articulated plots. Still, this is Gaiman and there are flashes of brilliance as well as true emotion throughout.  When he talks about his teacher Dimas, he sounds so true I couldn’t help but wonder if Gaiman or Reaves really had a teacher like that.  The “class assignments” were terrific, and found myself wishing for more of those.

The book moves at high speed once it gets up and going, which is really very quickly.  However Joey tends to be left on his own through much of the book.  He always seems to be leaving people behind and not making any true and lasting friendships for a long time.  In fact, the story was depressing there for awhile because everybody he met seem to die.  Including himself.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the book. I wish there had been more. But it felt like an interesting cross between a Heinlein juvenile, an early Andre Norton adventure, and Roger Zelazny’s Amber series. InterWorld is a quick read with plenty of zip and provides a host of ideas with lots of action.

At Amazon

Spenser fans everywhere are going to love this book. Although Spenser was raised by his father and uncles in Laramie, Wyoming, 14-year-old Bobby Murphy almost comes closer to the childhood many longtime fans envisioned for Robert B. Parker’s signature character.

Bobby Murphy is a wonderful, though idealistic, protagonist. He’s more or less the brains and eventual leader of a five-man junior varsity basketball team called the Edenville Owls. They ended up calling themselves that because the only uniforms they could find were all yellow. He’s on the cusp of young adulthood, just starting to notice the finer intracacies of the world: such as the opposite sex and problems in the adult arena that normally stay behind closed doors.

After his last teacher was removed from the school, Bobby and his class got a new teacher: Miss Delaney. Miss Delaney is young and beautiful, the perfect teacher for a young boy on his way to becoming a man to fall in love with. However, Miss Delaney also apparently has some dark secrets. While in detention, Bobby and one of his friends sees Miss Delaney arguing with a man. After a heated exchange, Miss Delaney slaps the man. Bobby shouts at the man to leave her alone, then he and his buddy charge to the rescue but are made to return to detention. Later Miss Delaney asks Bobby to forget he ever saw anything. In just those few moments, Bobby’s plunged into a mystery that will tear away a lot of his remaining innocence as he pursues the truth of who the man is and exactly what’s going on.

Three main storylines weave throughout the book: the mystery involving Miss Delaney, Bobby’s work to bring his basketball team to the state tournament, and his evolving relationship with Joanie, a girl he becomes friends with that eventually comes between him and Nick, one of his best friends. Any one of the stories would be enough to keep a reader turning pages. That they’re all together and complement each other well is just excellent writing.

Parker is going to take a lot of heat over Bobby, though. Bobby thinks like Spenser. He acts like Spenser. And both characters are troubled over the same vagaries of life. But these are the themes that Parker constantly writes about.

Readers familiar with Parker’s work are going to find a lot of familiar ground here, though altered somewhat because the story is set in the 1940s and Parker does, for the most part, stay within the conventions of his youthful heroes. However, argument can be made that the Hardy Boys were taking on much more dangerous assignments on a regular basis.

The fact that World War II was only an eyeblink ago in the story’s setting is important. The villains are made more menacing because of that. And Parker is given a freer rein to talk about wickedness. Strangely enough, some of that wickedness is still in our world.

The writing is as pure and economical as always. There’s an innocence about Bobby that is endearing, but at the same time he comes across as older than his 14 years. Parker weaves his plotlines effortlessly and readers will cruise through this one. More than that, this is a book that adults and young readers can share and both enjoy. I’ve handed off my copy to my 18-year-old, whom I’ve also introduced to Parker’s work, as well as Crais’s and other writers.

I envy the young readers who will find this book. This will be their first Robert B. Parker novel and they’ll find so many more books waiting for them as they grow up. Hopefully Parker will find time in his busy schedule to pen another Bobby Murphy book.

At Amazon

I held off buying The Lightning Thief for a couple years. The market seems glutted with YA fantasy at the moment, and I read quite a bit of it with my 9-year-old. We’ve discovered several good series, but The Lightning Thief seemed too long to hold his attention when it first came out.

This year we noticed it in the book fair at school, then saw that it was an Accelerated Reader book. So I picked it up and read a couple chapters to try it out. I was 50 pages into it when I realized I needed to be reading this to my son. I did read it to him. We flew through the book (375 pages!) in 6 days because he kept pestering me to read it to him. We finished it up in a 5-hour marathon yesterday, hanging onto every page as Percy and his friends tried to save the world and put things to rights in their own lives.

The Lightning Thief is a great book for adults and kids. I’ve already recommended it to a couple of adult friends who experienced the same kind of can’t-put-it-down pull that I did.Percy Jackson, the hero of the book, comes across as every kid you’d ever meet or ever would. He’s no brainiac (he has dyslexia and ADHD) but he has friends who are. But he is courageous and clever, stubborn and loyal. He is the best he can be, and he’s getting even better. Riordan works in many of the Greek myths in the novel. There was a time when knowing Greek mythology was a pre-requisite for having a “classical” education. Many morals and philosophies are presented in the tales.

From the very beginning of the novel, we find out Percy is different when he ends up fighting a harpy in the museum while on a school trip. He’s been kicked out of 6 schools in 6 years, lives with his mom and step-dad, Smelly Gabe, an evil guy who deliberately makes Percy’s life hard.

Then, when he’s on a well-deserved vacation with his mom, he finds out he’s a Half-Blood, the son of one of the Greek gods. But his mom doesn’t know who his dad was and that’s just one of the mysteries Percy ends up solving.

The cool part of the book is peeling away all the mysteries of Percy’s life and who really took Zeus’s magic thunderbolt. Along the way he gains powers that set my son’s head to spinning with hope and delight. Percy’s a superhero without the costume, and there are plenty of villains in his world.

Riordan is a teacher who obviously loves kids as well as the subject matter. The Greek gods were a cantankerous lot, and Riordan delivers them well. Not only does he give his readers the stories, but he also brings the gods on stage and gives them personalities.

The series is supposed to run for 5 books. I think it will go on longer. I hope so. I’ve already ordered books 2 and 3, and my son and I are looking forward to them. The books take a while to read outloud to younger readers, but the effort is well rewarded. The story is rich and deep, and will keep your child’s attention. In addition, you’d be surprised how much you can talk about even when you’re not reading. And your child may just want to wander around the internet learning more interesting facts about Greek mythology. 

The Lightning Thief is well worth reading and is probably in most public and school libraries.

  At Amazon

Science fiction novels these days are an odd mix. Most of them tend to be tied into television or movie properties. A few have roots in video games. Others have science so ingrained and specialized that weaving a story through all the information overload can be tough.

I grew up on science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton that were inventive, inviting, and a lot of fun. Heinlein’s juveniles often stayed within the known solar system while Norton ventured far, far away. As a result, few children’s science fiction novels are being published these days. Thankfully, some authors and publishers are holding the line and producing new material.

Michael J. Daley’s Shanghaied to the Moon is a fun romp that’s often reminiscent of early Heinlein and Norton. Thirteen-year-old Stewart Hale wants to be a space pilot like his mom, who died in a fiery crash. Since that time, he’s been in the care of a virtual counselor that has been controlling his academic performance and actually keeping him from achieving that goal.

Stewart has started suspecting that something is going on that no one talks about. He’s become convinced that there’s a big secret the school, the virtual counselor, and his dad are keeping from him. With his older brother’s help, he discovers that the virtual counselor has altered his grads and is actually preventing him from remembering some events in his life and is keeping him from getting qualified for the Space Academy. I love conspiracy stories, and I really didn’t know there was one in this book until I landed squarely in the middle of it.

At the same time, Stewart’s dreams of those forgotten events start surfacing in dreams. Daley weaves a mystery about everything that happened to Stewart after his mother died. Although the book is crammed with action and interesting tidbits about the history of space travel and fictional exploits regarding the same, I found myself turning the pages faster and faster not only to see how things turned out, but to find out what the big secret was.

Even as Stewart’s dreams begin again and his curiosity propels him to solve that mystery, he meets a washed-up spacer who offers him a chance to go to the moon. Knowing that there’s a conspiracy to keep him out of space and wanting to go more than anything else in the world, Stewart takes the guy up on his offer and blasts off.

However, the spacer has an ulterior motive that Stewart hasn’t been able to guess at. I was constantly kept on my toes trying to figure out what was going to happen next and what was truly going on. The adventure takes some really interesting twists and turns along the way.

Daley has produced a book that’s a lot of fun to read. The first-person narration is first-rate and given more immediacy by the present tense spin. In addition to the adventures and dangers, the author also provides a lot of interesting details about the space program that got the United States to the moon in the first place. The rapid pacing guarantees readers will stay with the book, and the mysteries will solidly hook them.

Shanghaied to the Moon is a great read, and it’s a book elementary school and junior high school librarians should put on the shelves. Fantasy stories still dominate that market at present, but there’s plenty of room for science fiction adventures like this one.

  At Amazon

Although the historical novel for the juvenile and YA crowd seems to be going the way of the dodo (I expect mainly because the world has become so urbanized and suburbanized that kids can’t imagine what small town living was like in the 1950s—or earlier as in this novel), I still find the occasional novel to share with my nine-year-old that really rings true.

Darleen Bailey Beard’s Operation Clean Sweep is one of those books. It has the honest and wholesome goodness of The Andy Griffith Show but still manages to play out the push and shove of real emotions over real problems for youngsters.

I settled down to read this one to my son because it’s on the Oklahoma Sequoyah list this year, and I’m surprised I hadn’t found it earlier. It originally debuted in 2004.

Cornelius, “Corn” to his friends, is a welcome and genuine narrator in this story based on real political events early in the 20th century. It’s 1916 and women haven’t get been given the vote nationally, but a few states and territories have allowed them to vote. The world is all ready changing far faster than anyone at that time realizes.

Corn’s dad is the town mayor, but he doesn’t know that the women in town are tired of dragging their dresses through chicken poop in the streets and stepping over holes in the wooden sidewalks. Bailey paints a picturesque image of the town and the citizens. All of it feels real.

Unknown to anyone in town (except the women), a secret coup takes shape among the women as they intend to run for office. Corn is astounded to learn that. But even worse is the fact hat his mom is going to run AGAINST his dad for mayor.

The writing is tight and clean. It lends itself to being read aloud to young listeners. Corn’s troubles are the kind that every kid goes through, and he relates them in a matter-of-fact kind of way that’s endearing. His infatuation with Birdine is warm and funny, and progresses naturally. The conversations Corn has with his mom and dad are good, full of values without being preachy.

The friendship between Corn and Oatmeal (Otis) is a riot. Oatmeal has fallen in love with his tape measure and is constantly measuring things or poking people with it. They hang out at the gravestone of a town founder who was buried in the middle of the street. The grave wasn’t intended to be there, but the town just kept growing and that’s where it ended up. The boy humor is just as real as the historical setting.

I read this one aloud to my nine-year-old and he cracked up a lot at the jokes, the stunts, and the whacky way the characters had of solving their problems. Such as Oatmeal’s advice that Corn imagine girls with a million boogers in their noses so they don’t seem so perfect.

In addition to the political war at home, Corn’s problems with Birdine, and struggling to write his essay on the Great War (World War I), Corn also has to deal with Sticky Fingers Fred, the worst pickpocket in the area at the time. Although that part of the plot is predictable, it’s shoehorned right into the middle of the action at the election to pump up the excitement.

Darleen Bailey Beard has written one of those timeless books that school libraries should have on their shelves and parents should enjoy with their children.

  At Amazon

I discovered this series through my 9-year-old. I pick up books for him to look at, ones that I hope will catch his eye. While we were stranding in the waiting room at the doctor’s office awaiting results of my wife’s x-rays, he read the book to me. I’d packed both of us books in case we were there for a while, as I feared we’d be. My son and I read the Charlie Bone series and the Alex Rider series currently, and I thought – given the amount of pictures throughout the Wiley And Grampa #4: Super Soccer Freak Show — that he’d find it an easy read while we waited.

We quietly read our books. But only for a short while. Then he started giggling, and finally cracked up and howled in glee. Before I knew it, he was insisting on reading the book to me. That hasn’t happened before.

So I folded my book and I listened. He read for an hour before he finished it, pointing out the wordplay and the comic visual images (Merle the cat was his favorite). I have to admit that I was cracking up too. Guys have a tendency to never outgrow that juvenile funny bone, much to the dismay of their moms and wives.

The book is told in first-person. Wiley relates the tale of the school team’s journey to Carpathia Elementary School for a soccer game. (The books are set in Texas, where the author illustrator Kirk Scroggs is from. I’ve been to Texas on several occasions, but I’ve never seen Carpathia County. From the pictures, I know that it looks a lot like Transylvania!)

While at the soccer game, Grampa gets into a fight with the other team’s mascot. As it turns out, that’s something he does every time, and he has restraining orders from other games. Part of the humor of these books is seeing how far Grampa will go to get into trouble despite Wiley and Gramma’s best efforts to keep him from it. But something goes horribly wrong this time.

The mascot bites Grampa and he turns into a werewolf the very next full moon. Wiley doesn’t know what to do. The dogcatcher can’t catch Grampa and the ladies’ sewing circle that Gramma takes him to turns out to be octogenarian Buffys. They whip out their crossbows and get ready to nail Grampa’s hide to the barn. Not exactly the kind of help Gramma and Wiley went there looking for.

My son and I were dying laughing as we looked at the sewing circle ladies all decked out and ready to go kick monster butt. (I really think Scroggs should things about doing a book about them. I know we’d read it.)

Finally, though, Wiley discovers that the only way to save Grampa is for the soccer team to return to Carpathian Elementary and beat them in a rematch. But that’s impossible! Isn’t it?

The illustrations are a riot, providing plenty of visual humor in every situation. As soon as my son finished reading the book to me, he sat down and read it again, analyzing the pictures and finding new things he’d missed the first time through. Scroggs really outdid himself on the art because it’s layered with shenanigans.

The writing is truly awesome too, filled with wordplay directed at kids and adults alike. There are several jokes that kids won’t get but parents will.

I really recommend these books to school libraries and public libraries. They come out in hardcover and paperback at the same time. Parents who have reluctant readers at home, especially boys, are encouraged to get one of these books and put it in that kid’s hands. Read a few pages with him or her and they’ll be hooked. You may find yourself hooked as well!

  At Amazon

The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1 is P. J. Haarsma’s first novel, and the first in a new science fiction series for young adults. There is also an on-line game available that is set in the universe established in the book.

The central character is Johnny Turnbull, called JT by his friends. He’s thirteen years old when the reader meets him, and has spent his whole life on a “seed”-ship called the Renaissance. Due to a mishap during the voyage, all the adults are killed. Mother, the ship’s computer, cycles the embryos of children through, birthing them, then nurturing them to the best of its ability. None of the children have ever known their parents.

JT’s best friend is Maxine Bennett, called Max by everyone. She’s the brainy sort and is good with computer systems. Ketheria, JT’s eight-year-old sister, doesn’t speak and hasn’t since she was born. No one knows why.

Of the two hundred children of various ages on the seed-ship, JT is the only one that can directly talk to Mother, a fact that only Max believes. Mother won’t reveal that connection either, and JT doesn’t know why. He’s also learned there are files that Mother keeps hidden even from him.

When Renaissance originally set out, the parents had signed contracts with a world called Orbis. According to the agreement, they were going to work for a year on each ring, then be able to apply for full citizenship. Orbis circles a wormhole, a physical “hole” in space that reaches from one area of space to another.

But with the parents dead, JT and the others don’t know what kind of reception to expect on Orbis. As soon as they arrive, something goes wrong with the central computer that controls the rings. They also learn that they’re going to be expected to honor their parents’ contracts with the Orbis natives or be ejected out into the wormhole and presumably their deaths. It’s not much of a decision.

Even worse, their parents broke the contract with the Orbis Guarantors by having children on the ship. According to the agreements, no children were to be involved. JT and the others have no clue as to why that clause in the contract was broken.

Faced with their limited choices, JT and the other seed ship children quickly agree to the indentured servitude and get injected with hardware that accesses their brains and immediately teaches them all the languages used on Orbis. Furthermore, they’re able to go to school and directly download files they need to learn into their brains.

During the hardware upgrade, JT learns that he’s a “softwire,” a being capable of interfacing directly with computers simply by willing it, without having a physical connection. The ability quickly upsets many of the Orbis natives because it makes him more powerful than any of them are comfortable with. At first, many of the natives talk about killing him outright. In fact, Madame Lee, one of the Council members, kills a man as they’re discussing the fate of the seed-ship children. Two factions on Orbis’s rings fight for control.

After a while, he’s assigned to Weegin, a junk dealer. JT makes Weegin take Ketheria, too. The life sorting through the junk Weegin buys and separates into scrap and salvageable components is hard and without hope.

While in his sleep pod, using the dream enhancement hardware, JT begins having strange dreams about a girl living within a forest somewhere in Orbis. At first he thinks the girl is Ketheria, but he quickly determines that she isn’t. He also learns that she’s in grave danger, under attack by creatures all the time.

Only a short time after that, JT discovers the shattered remains of the Renaissance while processing junk. Weegin has bought salvage rights to the seed-ship and junked it out. Now JT knows for certain there’s no way off Orbis.

And that’s just the beginning of the mysteries and adventures posed by The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1. There are many more to come, and all of them fleshed out by the detailed mythos Haarsma has created for his world and his characters.

Reading the novel feels a lot like opening up vintage Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. The whiz-bang cutting-edge tech, like the sleepers and dream enhancement gear, as well as the idea of the softwire is pure Heinleinesque, only moved into the 21st century. But the worldbuilding feels more like classic Andre Norton, with touches like the immortal Space Jumpers and the way the Orbis rings and Council are established. Haarsma seems to have grown up on the best kind of science fiction and is determined to delivery it back into the hands of young adults where such fancies take flight so easily.

The length is another plus. Compared to the tree-killing deluge of so many of today’s popular young adult book, The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1 hits a comfortable 262 pages that reads incredibly fast. The pacing of the story is quick, too, even though a new, well-thought out world is being rendered for the first time.

The novel works great as a stand-alone tale. By the time the end is reached, all the threats and most of the questions have been answered. But it leaves the reader wanting more. Hopefully Haarsma won’t make his readers wait long before he delivers a second volume in this intriguing interstellar series.

  At Amazon

With all the fantasy novels filling the YA and teen racks of late, you can almost find anything you want.  The hardest problem I have is sorting through book to find one that really stands apart from the rest of the pack.  There are tremendously good reads out there, but after a while, even the good ones start to blur together.

I picked up Joseph Delaney’s The Last Apprentice:  Revenge of the Witch because of the cover alone.  It just looked different, old and somber, and – well – sort of creepy.  The setting of the book seems to be 300 or 400 years ago, in England.

The land is filled with small villages with interesting names and deep, rich histories.  Tom Ward, the protagonist of the novel, lives next to Hangman’s Hill where a lot of soldiers were hanged after a particularly fierce battle.  Sometimes at night, those soldiers can be heard moaning and their weight still bends the branches and shakes the trees.

Tom is twelve years old.  The story is told in first-person, which makes him immediately identifiable and pulls the reader in close.  He’s the seventh son during a time when primogeniture (the English law which stated that a farm was given to one son, usually the eldest, so the land wouldn’t be divided up till it was worthless) was in effect.  After the father gave the land to the firstborn, he tried to find apprenticeships for the rest of his sons.

By the time Tom’s father got around to him, he’d begged about all the favors he could from skilled craftsmen.  As a result, Tom gets apprenticed to Old Gregory, who is known as the Spook.

The Spook is responsible for chasing off ghosts and boggarts, and for binding witches.  No one in any of the neighboring villages truly counts him as a friend, and most avoid him when they see him coming.  Unless they’re beset by ghosts, boggarts, or a witch.Not only is Tom a seventh son, but he’s the seventh son of a seventh son, which marks him as something extraordinary.  He has powers beyond most men, and perhaps even beyond that of the Spook.

After he’s apprenticed to the Spook, Tom goes on a journey with him, going through a test, then ending up at the Spook’s house where many surprises await him.  One of those surprises if the living witch buried in a pit covered by iron bars in the Spook’s garden.  Tom also learns that many of the Spook’s apprentices ran away over the years, but that the last one was killed by the witch now imprisoned in the pit in the garden.

All of that becomes grist for the mill as Tom strives to understand the new life he’s taken on.  I absolutely loved the countryside and the world Delaney is building to take his readers through.  It’s calm and simple, and easy to understand what’s at stake.It’s also easy to see that Tom and the Spook are going to have a hard go of it against the supernatural enemies they make as well as the fact that the human world they’re protecting will turn their backs on them.

Delaney also does a really good job bringing Tom to life.  He feels like a real twelve-year-old boy caught in circumstances beyond his control.  The narration style is compelling and pulled me right through the story, making me read far beyond what I’d intended to.

I think the one element that truly sets this book apart from so much of the fantasy that’s out there is the genuine creepiness of everything that’s going on.  Harry Potter has all kinds of fanciful creatures, but that requires a bit more willing suspension of disbelief.

Delaney works with the fears we’ve all had since childhood:  ghosts, goblins, witches, and other things that go bump in the night.  Tom’s fights with the witch, Mother Malkin, and her sister Bony Lizzie and Tusk and even poor dead Billy, the previous apprentice, are scary things that came to malevolent life inside my head.

I read the book at night, to relax.  That was a mistake of sorts.  I ended up going to bed later than I’d anticipated and didn’t enjoy a restful slumber until I was deeply asleep.

I would caution younger readers and parents of younger readers to make certain nightmare-prone kids don’t get their hands on these books too soon.  The descriptions, the menace, and the atmosphere are all compelling, and just a little too real.  The other side of the coin is that this is the kind of book adults will love to read on their own or share with a younger reader to discuss and talk about.

The story’s pacing is excellent.I just locked into the book and couldn’t put it down.  Every page I turned, I learned a little bit more, and more was at stake.  These are the kinds of books readers want. 

The good news is that I already have the second book, The Last Apprentice:  Curse of the Bane.  Even though I hadn’t read the first book, I picked up both at the same time because of those wonderful covers!  I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ve learned that a third book is already on the way.

   At Amazon

Midnight For Charlie Bone is the first book in a five-book (thus far) series.  Originally it was touted as being only a five-book series, but evidently success has broadened the tale.

The story is about nine-year-old Charlie Bone, who turns out to be one of the descendants of the Red King, a mysterious personage who had amazing powers.  When the Red King’s wife died, he left his kingdom and his ten children.  As it happens, five of the children used their powers for good, and five used their powers for selfish reasons.  This set up the continuing war that’s been playing out for generations.

Charlie at first discovers that he has a weird power:  he can hear people thinking and talking in photographs.  He was planning to make a birthday card for his best friend, Benjamin, and ended up with the picture of a man and a baby instead.  Listening to the picture, puzzled by this strange ability, he learns that the baby was stolen away and remains lost to this day.

Charlie follows up on the hints provided by the picture to undertake the mystery of the missing little girl.  His travels take him to Ingeldew’s Bookshop, where Miss Ingledew is despondent over her missing niece.  Charlie knows that the niece must be the same one in the picture he saw.

Miss Ingledew also gives Charlie a robotic dog that her brother-in-law, Mr. Tolly, gave her.  There’s also a mysterious silver box (that doesn’t get opened for 200 pages and drives readers absolutely crazy!) that promises more mysteries to come.

Back home, Charlie talks to Benjamin and his dog Runner Bean, then delivers his gifts and his mysterious package.  Charlie’s Grandma Bone was a Yewbeam, and her sisters (a truly obnoxious trio of busybodies with incalcuable mean streaks) and that heritage marks Charlie.  Once they discover Charlie can hear pictures, they decide to send him to Bloor’s Academy.  Charlie and his mother have no choice because the aunts are providing for them.

In the academy, the mystery deepens.  Charlie runs afoul of Manfred Bloor, who has the power to hypnotize, but he finds a great friend in Fidelio and discovers there are other Endowed children.  He also finds out that Endowed children are part of the Red King’s extended family.

Many readers have compared the series to the Harry Potter books.  There is a lot to compare (school, creepy adults, magical powers), but there is a lot of difference as well.  The Charlie Bone series appears written on a simpler, easier to grasp level.

However, there are some jarring instances when the point of view shifts too abruptly, from one sentence to the next without a scene break between.  This causes some processing delays as the reader takes a moment to realize that the scene has shifted.

There are some great villains and some charming heroes.  Charlie’s Uncle Paton really comes through in the end when the chips are down and Charlie doesn’t know what to do.

I read the book to my eight-year-old over the past week.  He, and I, found Midnight For Charlie Bone to be fun, adventuous, and mysterious.  The kind of book we really go for when we want to relax.  However, I found myself reading longer and longer as my son wanted to know more and more of the mystery.  So be prepared to hang onto the reading experience for quite some time as you become enthralled with the story.