Malice

“TALL JAKE, TAKE ME AWAY…”

Everyone’s heard the rumors. Call on Tall Jake and he’ll take you to MALICE, a world that exists inside a terrifying comic book. A place most kids never leave.

Seth and Kady think it’s all a silly myth. But then their friend disappears, and suddenly the rumors don’t seem so silly anymore…

Part thriller, part ground-breaking graphic novel … get into this story, and you may never get out!

Chris Wooding, a British SF/Fantasy/YA writer lives in London and is the author of MALICE. This hard to classify comic is about a horrifying world of tricks and traps, overseen by the sinister master of ceremonies, Tall Jake.Click here to learn more about Chris.

Click here for the book. For a chance to win a FREE copy of MALICE, send us an email from our "Win a Free Book" link on the home page of our website.

Winter Duty

E.E. Knight's cover of Winter Duty recently caught my attention in a local library. I'm swamped with reading other books, but this one looks worthy of investigation. Click here for a link to Winter Duty. Vampire Earth is E. E. Knight's dark fantasy series. To learn more about Vampire Earth, click here.

Border Crossing

BORDER CROSSING is narrated by fifteen-year-old Manz, a mixed-race son of migrant apple pickers who lives in the dusty town of Rockhill, Texas. Manz takes a summer job rebuilding a fence at a cattle ranch, working alongside his friend Jed. As the days wear on, he begins to suffer from an uncontrollable paranoia and becomes convinced that "Operation Wetback," a brutal postwar relocation program, is being put back into effect. This taut coming of age novel explores mental illness and border issues in an honest and clear voice. This unique story was written by Jessica Lee Anderson. Be sure to visit her website by clicking here.

Reviews to date have been good:

"Compelling . . . . A fast read, this book will provoke discussion and, perhaps, further research." - Booklist, Oct 2009

"Poignant." Kirkus, Oct 1, 2009

Click here for BORDER CROSSING.

Upon Secrecy

Selene Castrovilla brings a fascinating story from American history to life in Upon Secrecy, a suspenseful new picture book published by Calkins Creek Books/Boyds Mills Press. Set during the Revolutionary War, it shows how members of the Culper Spy Ring eavesdropped on the British, wrote secret messages, and fended off highway robbers to deliver crucial information to George Washington. This gripping narrative of the spies' most important mission keeps the tension alive, while period details and illustrations add to the drama. Extensively researched, the book includes a timeline, bibliography, places to visit, and even an explanation of the invisible ink, or "sympathetic stain," that enabled the spy ring to send messages undetected by the enemy.

Castrovilla's previous picture book for Calkins Creek, By the Sword: A Young Man Meets War also has a connection to the Culper Spy Ring. The book paints a suspenseful portrait of a young Benjamin Tallmadge as he and his beloved horse, Highlander, fight to defend New York against the British. As George Washington's chief of secret service, Tallmadge later organized and ran the Culper Spy Ring. By the Sword tells the harrowing dual stories of how Washington manages to save his men-and the American cause-by stealthily retreating across the East River, and how Tallmadge risks death by returning to save Highlander. Castrovilla found this account in Tallmadge's memoir, and knew it revealed an important human side of the revolution-one not usually addressed. By the Sword was a 2008 IRA Notable Book, a 2010 New York State Charlotte Award recommended intermediate reading selection, a Kansas Reading Circle recommended title, and a 2009 Moonbeam Children's Book Award gold medalist.

Click here for Upon Secrecy

The Boy Who Went Ape

THE BOY WHO WENT APE was illustrated by a prolific artist, Richard Jesse Watson. This is a very interesting book because the author is Richard's son, Benjamin. I hate to say this, but boys will go ape over this book. The plot is dead on target for boys with clever and punchy prose. It all perfectly comes together with Richard's magical illustrations. I had a chance to speak with Richard about his book. Below is what he told me:

"My wife, Susi, and I went to the Portland Zoo to sketch and photograph chimpanzees. We took about a thousand photos over a couple of days, and I did bunches of sketches. At first the chimps ignored us as just another gawker, but the longer we hung around, the curiouser they became. I would show the chimps my drawings, and they nodded or sniffed their evaluation.

I discovered a paper from Sri Lanka, made out of elephant dung, which I used to paint the illustrations on. Since the book is a whacky book, it needed a different approach for the illustrations. For instance, instead of straight lines to border the illustrations, I used drippy paint lines to get a more organic feel. I wanted things to be more "viney" or "jungly".

Working with Ben was such a hoot, but hard too. We both had different ideas at times in our vision of the book. Usually the illustrator and author are working separately. Doing a book together is like two different archeologists digging from opposite sides of the world and meeting in the middle, then trying to figure out how to get out alive. "Wow! It's hot in here, my shovel 's worn out, I'm disoriented... are those dinosaur bones? How do we wrap this up & get back to the real world?"

Also working on a book is a long and at times stressful endeavor. Add to that two strong willed people, stir into the mix the fact that both apples fell from the same tree (does that make sense?) and voila! You have apples trying to write! No, seriously, you have different points of view: the word-centric author, and the image-centric illustrator. And with father and son, its, well, what can I say, father knows best. Yeah, right. I quickly realized that my son often (don't tell him I said so) had better ideas than me. Oy vey!

Over all, all this was a blast, and I want to do more books like this."

I highly recommend Richard's new book and his school visit program. Click here for Richard's website.

If America Were A Village

America, with all its diversity, is not easily defined. David J. Smith's If America Were a Village takes a snapshot - past, present and future - to help define America for children. Using the same successful metaphor of the international bestseller If the World Were a Village, the book shrinks down America to a village of 100. The metaphor helps children easily understand American ethnic origins, religions, family profiles, occupations, wealth, belongings and more. Shelagh Armstrong's expansive illustrations imagine America as a classic, vibrant small town. Who are the people living in this vast and varied nation? Where did they come from? What are they like today? How do they compare with people in other countries? The book's simple statistical analysis provides a new way of learning about where people live in America, the state of their health, the shapes and sizes of families, what they use and more - forming a concise picture of a country.

Click here for David's book.

Let Slip The Dogs Of Love

LET SLIP THE DOGS OF LOVE by Eugene Kachmarsky is one of the most unique anthology of short stories, I've seen in sometime. I believe theses stories will appeal to many YA readers. They're written from a variety of ethnic perspectives—including one exploring the North American Native POV—highlighting the experience of natives transplanted from their indigenous lands to North America. Racial, cultural, sexual prejudice, socioeconomic injustice and personal emotional struggle are common themes explored in a number of genres—ranging from straight fiction, to psychological suspense, to crime drama, to fantasy (urban and magical), and in cases, fusions of all the above—all with an accent on the hidden beneath the apparent, the extraordinary behind the ordinary, while attempting to discover the causes of many of the actions that we often affect.

Some of the characters whose stories are told include: a controlled-substance addict; a heartless, ruthless, misanthropic yet patently cowardly municipal communications empire mogul; a biker with a missing testicle; a young, gay, black, radical civil disobedient with a bent for vengeance with flair; a professional hit man and biker-gang rat with a tragic sense of timing; a grown-up spoiled brat who thinks managing a network of government assassins makes him one; an eight-year-old boy who dies at an airport and ends up correcting a grievous injustice committed over 250 years ago; a despondent writer who writes his own epitaph moments before being murdered; a skateboarding boy whose leg is broken by bullies and the 10 year-old Punjabi girl with a miraculous healing touch who befriends him; a professional hockey player from Eastern Europe facing extorting murderers and fighting back with his computer-hacking genius.

To Learn more about Eugene and his unique book, click here.