Beginning in February, my answer will be to hand them THE SIXTY-EIGHT ROOMS.

In the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a collection of sixty-eight miniature rooms called the Thorne Rooms. Each one is designed in the style of a different time and place, and they are absolutely perfect down to the most minute detail.  I have seen these rooms, and they are amazing. Mesmerizing.

While on a field trip to the Institute, Jack and Ruthie find a key that allows a person to shrink down small enough to enter the rooms and explore. Once they do, amazing things begin to happen to them. They learn that they are not the first visitors to the room, and they learn that some valuable things may have been left behind in the past. The discovery of the key sets them off on a fantastic series of adventures, with mysteries to solve and chances to take and things to figure out about themselves.

This review will be necessarily short, because I feel like almost anything I say would be a spoiler. I can tell you this: I LOVE THIS BOOK. I love this book hugely. I cannot wait to sell this book. I am going to get my fifth grade girls’ book club to read it; I am going to book talk it at any spring book fairs we might have. I am going to sell this book and sell it and sell it. I am going to buy it in hardcover and put it away for Molly. I am going to send it to my cousin’s daughter and the daughters of friends. Not that you can’t give this to a boy – I think there are some boy readers who will like it – but the premise of this book is one that girls often imagine themselves into. I used to wish all the time that I was small enough to fit into my dollhouse. Just sometimes.

While reading this book, the memory of that particular make-believe from my past came flooding back.

This book will make a great read-aloud. It’s good for classrooms and libraries and birthday party gifts for kids you don’t know (and kids you know). It’s a good grandparent gift; it’s an easy handsell. It’s smart with a strong female character and an excellent portrayal of friendship.

It’s only December 2009 and this is already one of my favorite books of 2010.

Did I mention I LOVE THIS BOOK? And it’s a debut! Well done, Ms. Malone. I can’t wait to see what you do next.

There are times I read books and I want to slap myself upside the head and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  There are also times I read books and I think to myself, “I would never have come up with that in a million years.”  INCARCERON is one of the latter.  The sheer originality of concept in this novel is breathtaking, and I’m going to have to be careful with this review so as not to spoil the beauty of it for you.

The story begins with Finn, who lives inside Incarceron.  Incareron is, without a doubt, the most perfect prison concieved; it has no passages in or out, and in its centuries-long history, only one man is rumored to have ever escaped.  Finn clings to the belief that somehow he did not begin his life inside Incarceron like everyone else there, and his intermittent fits of visions give him brief glimpses of another life.  It’s difficult to know what to believe, however, because Incarceron isn’t just a building.  Incaceron is alive, and it determines the fates of the creatures that live within it.  Are his visions real, or are they simply falsehoods, another way that Incarceron tortures him?

Claudia lives in splendor under the watchful, cruel eye of her father, the Warden of Incarceron.  Though she is intrigued by her father’s vocation, she has never seen Incarceron herself.  Quietly defiant of the rules of her house, Claudia spends much of her time with the sickly Jared, a Sapient (think scholar), and they have concocted a scheme to sneak into the Warden’s study in the hopes of understanding what it is exactly that he does.  While their heist works, and Claudia is able to steal a strange key from her father’s desk, the Warden is at work on his own plans, and he has made arrangements for his daughter’s marriage.

Their worlds meet when Finn steals a crystal key in Incarceron, which is an exact match of Claudia’s.  Through the keys, they can hear each other speak, and Claudia discovers through Finn that Incarceron is not the paradise her government told her it is.  She promises to help him escape, but her time is running out, as her impending marriage will essentially seal her within its own kind of prison.  A lovely addition to the main plot are the small boxed quotes that begin each chapter, which are excerpts from songs, poems, and secret documents regarding Incarceron.  My favorites were the legends about Sappique, who is the only prisoner said to have escaped.  INCARCERON is layered like a dark, twisted flower, and as the petals turn back and you come to the secrets at its center, you’ll likely do the same double take I did.  I literally had to go back and reread the sentences at the moment of revelation regarding Incareron itself, because I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Like all good first novels in a trilogy, INCARCERON can only take us so far, and we now await the next part of the tale, but I am anxious to see where Ms. Fisher takes Finn and Claudia after the conclusion.  Highly recommended for young adult readers of both fantasy and sci-fi, and I believe fans of THE HUNGER GAMES would find much to love here.

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