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Alleen Pace Nilsen, Ken Donelson, and James Blasingame Jr.

As we looked at the books that found their way to the top of several 2001 "Best Books" lists, we were struck by how many were written from the point of view of "the other" or of "outsiders," people not in the mainstream culture. Time constraints mean that these books could not have been written in response to the events of September 11. However, we could not help wondering if their selection was influenced by the need we all feel after September 11 to gain a greater understanding of other people and other places.

A Step from Heaven An Na. Asheville, NC: Front Street, 2001. 156 pp. $15.95. Grades 7-up. ISBN 1-886910-58-8.

In an interesting technique, An Na lets her main character, Young Ju, tell her own story, which begins when she is a toddler being introduced to the ocean in Korea. It ends when she is a high school graduate in California getting ready to go to college. The title of the book, which won the recently established Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults, comes from Young Ju's misunderstanding when her Korean family emigrates to Mi Gook (America). Young Ju thinks they are going to Heaven, where she has been told her grandfather has gone. When they arrive at her uncle's house she does not find her grandfather. "Wait," says her uncle, "Mi Gook is almost as good as heaven. Let us say it is a step from heaven.

Lord of the Deep Graham Salisbury. New York: Delacorte, 2001. 184 pp. $15.95. Grades 7-10. ISBN 0-385-72918-9.

Shark Bait and Jungle Dogs proved that Salisbury could write first-rate adventure, and young people who enjoyed those books will find excitement packed into Lord of the Deep. Thirteen-year-old Mikey Donovan idolizes his stepfather, Bill, and works as a deckhand on Bill's charter fishing boat, the Crystal-C on Hawaii's Kona coast. Things are tough for the family. Mikey's mother is dependent on Bill, but so is Mikey's half-brother, three-year-old Billy-Jay, who weighed only three pounds at birth and who needs expensive medical care. Sometime in life we will all be faced with determining which position we will choose in a moral dilemma--flexibility and caring for the welfare of others or rigidity and playing God. Lord of the Deep asks the question but provides no easy answer, and that in itself makes the book worth the trip.

The Land Mildred Taylor. New York: Phyllis Fogelman Books, 2001. 375 pp. $17.99. Grades 6-up. ISBN 0-8037-1950-7.

Based on her own family history, Mildred Taylor's 2002 Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel is a prequel to Song of the Trees; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Let the Circle Be Unbroken; and The Road to Memphis, a series chronicling the generations of the Logan family, African American land owners near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The book opens in post-Civil War Georgia when Paul-Edward Logan is about to leave his childhood behind. He is the son of a white plantation owner and a former slave of African American and Native American heritage, and he is confused by his station in society. Paul-Edward learns that his rights as a free individual are unconditionally subject to the whims and and cruelties of white men. This novel is a worthy addition to the Logan series. Although the characters and the events are based on family stories passed down since the 1800s, the events have the feel of good fiction, not dry history.

Zazoo Richard Mosher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. 248 pp. $16.00. Grades 7-up. ISBN 0-618-13534-0.

Zazoo has lived eleven of her thirteen years with her French "Grandfather" in an old stone mill between a river and a canal. Grand-Pierre (as everyone calls the man who adopted her and brought her home to France after her Vietnamese parents were killed in the Vietnam War) is the lock-keeper of Canal Lock #43. Zazoo spends her days as a typical French schoolgirl, in spire of her obviously Asian looks. Then, one summer day, sixteen-year-old Marius comes into Zazoo's life. In a dream-come-true for teenagers, Zazoo and Marius manage to rekindle loving relationships among several adults who never should have been separated in the first place.

True Believer Virginia Euwer Wolff. New York: Atheneum, 2001. 264 pp. $17.00. Grades 9-up. ISBN 0-689-82827-6.

Fifteen-year-old LaVaughn knows that a man can ruin a young woman's future very quickly if she isn't careful, but when her close childhood friend Jody returns to live in her apartment building, she finds herself fantasizing about being held and kissed by a boyfriend for the first time. She eventually finds that real life seldom plays out like the fantasies in her head. Narrated in free verse and second in a trilogy that began with Make Lemonade, True Believer finds LaVaughn one year later, still living in a inner-city apartment with her widowed mother. The story is largely about adapting to the myriad uncontrollable and unpredictable events of a life. Her mother's blossoming relationship with a man and LaVaughn's own personal relationships, both new and old, are confusing. But as the book progresses, LaVaughn's ability to deal with conflicts and mixed emotions about people and situations improves almost as much as her vocabulary and grammar. The ending is uplifting and full of hope.

Seek Paul Fleischman. Chicago: Marcato/Cricket Books, 2001. 167 pp. $16.95. Grades 7-12. ISBN 0-8126-4900-1.

Rob (Robert A. Radkovitz) is given an assignment to write his autobiography for his senior English thesis and advised to "think of your autobiography as a letter addressed to your future self." Rob begins, "I grew up in a house built of voices." Radio becomes important to Rob, as it always has been to his family--opera, baseball, Spanish drama and soap operas, and music--particularly music because Rob learns that his long-absent father played the accordion and often worked on radio. Rob vows to set out on a mission--to find and maybe even get to know his father. Seek starts slowly, but it picks up as Rob begins high school. The book is written almost like a script, and Fleischman ends with performance notes for a readers' theater production. The notes are sensible and helpful, and a class might have as much fun doing a production as they did reading his Newbery Award-winning Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices (HarperCollins, 1988).

The Rag and Bone Shop Robert Cormier. New York: Delacorte Press, 2001. 154 pp. $15.95. Grades 9-12. ISBN 0-385-72962-6.

When seven-year-old Alicia Bartlett is found murdered only a few hundred yards from home, the local police have no physical evidence and no suspects. The only lead they have is the last person known to have seen Alicia alive, twelve-year-old Jason Dorrant. Jason was truly the last known person to see Alicia before her murder, and there are a few clues that he may be socially deviant and even violent. Like any shy twelve-year-old, Jason is impressionable, easily manipulated, and completely unprepared for the psychological assault of special interrogator Mr. Trent. The reader will be anguished by Jason's emotional turmoil and disgusted by Trent's dishonest coercion. Cormier's novels often reveal the dark side of human nature, and this one, published posthumously, is no different.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Ann Brashares. New York: Delacorte, 2001. 304 pp. $14.95. Grades 7-9. ISBN 0-385-72933-2.

The book is a coming-of-age story in four parts. Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen have been "best friends" ever since their mothers took the same aerobics class for pregnant women. Carmen had bought a pair of jeans at a thrift shop, and as the girls gather to help Carmen pack (she's the first to leave, going to South Carolina to spend the summer with her divorced father) each of the girls playfully tries on the pants. Even though the four friends have different body builds, they are happily surprised to find that the pants fit, and in fact, they make each girl feel beautiful. Now everybody wants them, and so the girls come up with the idea of taking turns. Part of the charm of the book is Brashare's writing, which lends credibility and interest to the four stories, but what is more important is the wish-fulfilling aspects of the supportive friendship.

Damage A.M. Jenkins. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 186 pp. $15.95. Grades 10-up. ISBN 0-06-029099-4.

Outwardly, Austin Reid seems to have the world on a string. But he has a secret that no one knows; Austin is clinically depressed. Unlike the narration in most stories told from the protagonist's point of view, Austin does not tell his story using first person pronouns and past tense verbs; instead, he tells the whole story in present tense, replacing I and me with the pronoun you: "You undo your chin strap but don't take off your helmet. Instead, you just stand there, staring out at the world framed by rigid plastic edges." Austin's abnormal sense of self tells the story as much as do the events in the plot. Austin's condition is both assuaged and exacerbated by his relationship with Heather, a beautiful girl whose aloof behavior has been misinterpreted as a superiority complex by her peers. Twenty pages into this book the reader will be hard pressed to put it down. What opens as another football hero and beautiful girlfriend story turns out to be something quite different. Although anorexia and the effects of abuse have been common topics in YA lit, depression, a very real mental illness, has not.

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