If you are a Jane Austen fan (of any age) then you simply must take an hour or two and read the wonderful YA title, First Impressions. Author Marilyn Sachs is a major Austen fan (she founded the San Francisco branch of the Jane Austen Society) and she has clearly written this book out of a deep love for her subject. It's a funny long look at Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of a middle child who feels that Austen has long abused middle child Mary in the book. Alice is on a mission to "save" Mary and when she has to spend her Christmas break rewriting an essay on the book (her first stab was just too anti-Austen for her teacher) she allows the story to consume her life. But then the oddest things start to happen, both to Mary and Alice, and First Impressions ends up being a delightful introduction to Austen and wonderful coming of age story. It's a winner and it has a most bookish heroine - so expect to see more of this one in my column next month.

I finished Mark and Delia Owens's Secrets of the Savanna just in time to read an article in Time about how zoos are rethinking the sort of animals that should be kept in captivity, particularly elephants. As the Owens's write primarily about elephants in their book, I felt pretty comfortable with what the zoo article had to say. (And I also reached again for the wonderful Wild Lives which leads off my nonfiction column over at Bookslut this month and looks at the Bronx Zoo from the beginning.) Elephants need space, and they also need to be able to develop and maintain long term relationships with other elephants. The Owenses do not address zoos in their book, they write about their efforts to end poaching in Zambia, but the message is clearly there that we must respect how elephants live and find a way to allow them to live that way in our human dominant world. This message also seems to be a big part of One Kingdom, which I am just starting right now. I'm very interested in this idea of not just saving a species but allowing it thrive in the right environment for it - and not for us. More on this as I continue to read.

The Boyds Mill Press fall catalog arrived while I was gone and I am very excited by two different picture books. Castles looks gorgeous and has poems by J Patrick Lewis (who I love) and Rebecca Kaidotlich. Honestly though, it is Dan Burr's paintings that made me immediately choose this title - they leap right off the page and I can't imagine a better subject for young readers. My son loves the whole idea of castles and I'm really looking forward to seeing the whole book.

JonArno Lawson has done something very different with The Man in the Moon Fixer's Mask, another poetry collection but this time focused more on wordplay and the unusual. Sherwin Tija has done black and white illustrations for this book and they look surreal and otherworldly - like the oddest collection of strangeness and the unexpected. It should be a hit for the young people who find it and I'm hoping to spread the word.

(No links yet for these titles, but I'll pass them along as soon as they show - the pictures are just wonderful.)

Jenny D. points out a column by the wonderful Eva Ibbotson in the Guardian yesterday. You must go read it - she writes about why libraries matter (something I wholeheartedly agree with) and has a such a fantastic story to tell, it hardly seems possible it could be true; it's so perfect. Ibbotson is a great writer and her Journey To the River Sea is one of those books I am constantly trying to shove at people. It's a magical adventure book for readers of any age and a forever favorite for me.

I just finished Permanent Rose and I'm deep in Caddy Ever After both by Hilary McKay. I love the Casson family - the first two books in this series have been favs for a long time and these two just add to my Casson love. They are just the right kind of quirky and funny and down right British jolly for me; I'd love to spend a day with McKay and find out how she came up with this wonderful bunch.

I'm working on columns for the fall right now - October will be my "Something Wicked This Way Comes" column and Nov will be war books - both fiction and non, I hope. September is oddly still up in the air - I think it will be some teen angst but I also want to do an adventure column soon and I'm just not sure which will work best in September. None of this is a big problem - it's actually a fun sort of problem - but something to think about nonetheless.

Finally, for those of you following my Alaska flying book - another chapter will be on the 'net soon. Storyglossia is going to run "Mercy Flight" in the August issue. This one concerns a medevac flight that is more true than most readers will believe and hopefully it will give a good taste of the kind of insanity that it seems only happens in the Bush. More on that when the issue goes up. I'm working on the final revisions to the full manuscript for my agent and should have all of that her way in August. Hopefully we will both be happy and the book will then be on its way.