It’s leveled for teens but I’m not entirely sure why – the main character is 13, but this isn’t any more grownup or violent than either of the previously mentioned series.

Tormod is a seventh child (and we all know that the number seven carries magic with it, especially in families) and he does have visions which tend to come true. Since these visions became harder to hide, everyone treats him differently. It’s the evening of the village Beltane Festival, and Tormod’s switched jobs with his brother – who’s managed to mess everything up, and now it looks like Tormod’s going to take the blame. As usual.

Suddenly a Knight Templar shows up at the door of Tormod’s family home, and Tormod is the only one there. The Knight charges him with taking a message to the Abbot, which Tormod agrees to do. But one thing after another goes wrong that night, and Tormod finds himself on the run with the Knight and caught up in a web of espionage and danger that will carry him far from everything he has ever known – and show him that his visions are more than just the dreams of horror he always thought them to be.

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for tales of the Knights Templar (I’ve read Katherine Kurtz’s Adept novels I can’t tell you how many times) and I think this is a series that might start many a middle-schooler down the road to obsession. Black obviously did her research, and historical fact is woven in with fantasy and legend quite adeptly. (Hee. Look at what I did there with “adept.”) Tormod’s coming-of-age is drawn slowly enough that the reader does not feel thrust forward into parts of the story too quickly, but the pages are packed with enough adventure to keep the plot advancing at a satisfactory pace. In other words, Black’s writing is as good as her research ability. I look forward to the next chapter in Tormod’s story.

Preorder at Powell’s or find your local independent bookstore.

Honestly. Sometimes a book would come along in my bookselling life that I would absolutely love and be absolutely incapable of selling because I couldn’t describe it. Because I would open my mouth to describe it and this excited jumble of…well, crap…would come out. You could actually watch the kid’s eyes glaze over. Sometimes I gave up trying to sell the poor book, or I would make my friend Sarah read it and come up with a hook, because she could sell wind power to oil salesmen.

(Really. There are many customers who will only buy books from Sarah. She can make you want to read anything on the planet. If she ever starts posting here you will never read anything I write again.)

So what can I tell you about Lyonesse: The Well Between the Worlds that might make you want to read it instead of back away in horror? Because this is one of those books – one of those books I love that I feel incapable of describing.

I can tell you that Sam Llewellyn is a brilliant writer. This man is destined to be big. I know he has other books in print, including the Little Darlings series from Penguin, but I’d honestly never heard of him before. But this book – oh, this book is good. It is a very loose retelling of the King Arthur myth, which I didn’t realize when I began it (otherwise I might have rolled my eyes or something). It has a fairly intricate world-build to it, so you do have to pay attention while reading – I found myself backtracking more than once, making sure I was keeping various people and magicks straight – but the payoff if you do is a big one. This book has magic and adventure and myth and environmentalism and intrigue and shady government affairs and war and strong families and laughter and sorrow AND a strong female character in addition to the male main character.

Instead of describing this book horribly and making you all run for cover, I’m just going to quote the back cover copy off the galley and hope that it plus my sincere rave about Llewellyn’s writing makes you seek it out:

Long before King Arthur and the Round Table, in the land of Lyonesse, a sword stood plunged in a stone…

Once, this country was green and pleasant. Now the land is sinking, and the sea batters its walls. Lyonesse has become a place of poison and danger, and its people live in an uneasy truce with the monsters that inhabit its bottomless Wells.

Idris Limpet is an ordinary boy, until the day he is rescued from a terrible death and finds himself thrown into an astonishing new adventure.  Can it be that it is his destiny to save Lyonesse? And can one boy and one girl stand in the way of a colossal evil with its roots sunk deep in ages of wickedness?

There are going to be some happy sports-book-loving kids (okay, let’s face it – boys, for the most part) out there next year.

(My unscientific assessment that boys read sports books far, far, far more than girls do is based on over five years of working at an independent children’s bookstore and having…two regular girl customers that I can remember who ever wanted to read a sports book that didn’t involve horseback riding or ice skating.)

Anyway. MUDVILLE!

Great title, first of all. You wonder if it’s going to be about Casey. If you love baseball, that’s great. (If you don’t love baseball, you’re most likely not going to read this book.) If it’s not about Casey, that’s okay too – you know it’s about baseball because there’s one on the cover, which is also great. Love the jersey-like title font.

So. Great cover. Great title. And a first-time author, which always has me disposed to read in a good mood.

The good mood lasts, because this is a good book.

Roy lives in Moundville, where it has been raining for longer than the 12 years he’s been alive. It started raining 22 years ago in the middle of a baseball game against Moundville rival Sinister Grove, and it hasn’t stopped since. Roy loves baseball and would love nothing more than to play baseball in Moundville, but you can’t play in the rain. And the mud. So he has to go away to baseball camp or to visit friends in neighboring towns to get his love of the game on. It’s not enough, so he’s hoping to go further away to school next year so he can play on a real school team. Roy’s dad rainproofs Moundville houses for a living – clearly a thriving business – so the school thing should be possible.

Roy’s life is thrown into upheaval when he comes home from baseball camp to discover that his dad’s taken in a foster kid – Sturgis. No warning, and no real explanation. And stranger than that? A few days later the rain stops. Just like that. No warning, and no real explanation.

That’s okay with Roy, though, because it means baseball’s back on in Moundville! It also means that his dad’s business is all washed up, so there won’t be any private school next year. Roy consoles himself by starting up a team right in his hometown. Turns out Sturgis is a really good pitcher, and Roy figures that with Sturgis on the mound and Roy catching behind the plate, they’ll be ready to take on any team that comes their way. They might just be ready to finish that game that was started 22 years ago.

Sturgis, however, may have other ideas.

There’s a lot going on here. I’m a sucker for the smallest hint of magical realism in a book, and it’s here in spades. Why did the rain start? Why did it stop? Did Sturgis have anything to do with it? Who is he, anyway? What role did Roy’s dad play in that old game? What role will Roy play in the current one? And does the future of Moundville depend on the outcome? And what if the rain does start again?

Scaletta’s got a nice light touch with some of the harder issues of family in this book, which keeps it from getting depressing even when the subject matter might be. He also explains some statistical stuff as if a 12 year old were actually explaining it, which I appreciated – I got a C- in statistics in college.

(And did I mention I don’t really like baseball? You should see me when I get dragged to games and run out of food to eat and my husband won’t talk to me because he’s, you know, watching the game and keeping score in that weird old-school way. Once he asked me to keep up for him while he went to the bathroom. That was hilarious.)

Whoops. Back to the writing. The voice is great here – Scaletta’s really got the 12 year old thing down. The plot’s got a very nice flow to it – there are a lot of surprises in this book, and some of them could have been jarring. They weren’t. He weaves the sports and the family and the mystery together with the same careful stitches that close the leather on a baseball, with the same end result: a lot of game in one small package.

He’s got some really good characterization at play here, too. Roy’s a pretty normal kid surrounded by an awful lot of weirdness. Every player on his team’s got some little quirk or other. His dad’s a terrible cook and not the best communicator – he and Roy tend to talk mostly through baseball. His mom’s off being a flight attendant all over the world, anywhere but Moundville, anywhere out of that rain. And Sturgis? Well, Sturgis is a bit of a mystery – at least for awhile.

There are a lot of questions here, and some of them even get answered. I’m glad that not all of them do. One question I’m sure people will want the answer to: when is Scaletta’s next novel coming out?

Publisher: Random House

Pub Date: February 2009

11 year old Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson is obsessed with food and cooking and plans to go to culinary school as soon as she’s old enough. Her fairly ordered world is turned upside down when her father is taken off to jail and her mother wants to tell her story after story instead of explaining what has happened to their family.

Meanwhile, her best friend Frankie’s mother, who went on a fishing trip and never came back, has suddenly reappeared in his life. A former adversary of Groovy’s becomes a friend. A financial revelation rocks Groovy’s vision for her future. And while all this is going on, the swallows that make their annual migration to Groovy’s hometown of San Juan Capistrano are arriving early and no one can explain why. No one, in fact, can explain anything that Groovy doesn’t understand.

Groovy’s life is suddenly topsy-turvy and she must learn to rise and fall with it. How she does so is a story that I believe many will relate to and, in the end, love.

The mood in this book is exceptional; the characterization and voice true and original. Highly, highly recommended.

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pub Date: February 3, 2009

She takes the first step toward escape by convincing her parents to allow her to accompany an ailing visitor back to a neighboring village, one much stricter than her own. Here she manages to make an enemy of an incredibly cruel Elder as well as fall in love with a strongwilled village boy who helps her to escape to the city when the Elder accuses her of burning down the prayer house.

Life in the city is much more frightening and hard than Alis had anticipated and she ends up returning, nearly broken, to her village and agreeing to marry the minister. Her return sets off a chain of events that will change her life and those of her family forever.

With religious extremism so much in the news these days (and threatening to enter our White House) a lot of this book hit me pretty hard. As a staunch supporter of women’s rights, women’s freedom, freedom of religion and the separation of church and state it was difficult to not see a lot of this book as a metaphor for the more extreme parts of today’s world. Alis manages to grow up single-minded in a community that encourages anything but and find her own way in the world and her own happiness. Hers is a world that does not make that easy. Sometimes our world seems to be the same.

I think ALIS has a lot to say and is very worthwhile reading.

Publisher: Penguin (Viking)

Pub Date: February 19, 2009