Mister Boots by Carol Emshwiller - Here's the quote from Ursula K. Le Guinn: "A wonderful story about a man who is a horse and a boy who is a girl - about fake magic and real love...I love it." Matthew Cheney really loved the hardcover edition - here's a bit of his review for the SF site:

Mister Boots is a tough book in the way the original Grimm stories are tough. Pain and death fill the fictional world as much as they do the real world. The story and characters don't moralize, but the effect is not amoral, and there is no sadism here, no revelling in the nightmares. The characters' struggles all lead them to a greater understanding of each other and the world they struggle through, to a kind of peace achieved by perseverance, an earned ability to live with contradictions. The characters who make it all the way to the end learn to embrace the complexities of the world, the messiness of living, the way happiness and pain so often accompany each other.

Yeah, I'm all over it!

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson: She's always great and everyone knows it, but the tagline this go-round is "Everyone told him to be a man. No one told him how." I love that idea - that truth - being explored by an excellent author. I'm interested to see how Tyler Miller becomes a man and what we all learn along the way.

Resurrection Men by TK Welsh: It's London in the 1830s and children are dying because "fresh subjects" are worth good money. "In this dark underworld, Victor must uncover the identity of the ghoulish murderer who is at the heart of London's furtive trade in human corpses." Creepy and historical - I'm looking forward to it.

The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig: An update to Hamlet - 11 year old Philip's father is dead but appears as a ghost at his funeral and introduces his son to the Dead Father's Club. Philip learns his uncle was responsible for his father's deah and now has designs on his mom and the family pub. I am on a revinventing Hamlet kick lately (still basking in the glow of Ophelia) and this sounds quirky. (Gotta love the quirky, right?) Worth a look, for sure.

Digging for the Truth by Josh Bernstein: Okay, "he travels the globe, seeking answers to some of the most enigmatic mysteries of the ancient world." Holy crap, I think we have a real life Indiana Jones here, people! We've got who built the pyramids, what may be buried under the Sphinx, the trail of the Lost Ark of the Covenant, remote monasteries and churches of Ethiopia, and more. It has color pictures and while it's published for adults this sounds fantastic for curious teens. I hope it's as cool as it sounds.

I'm signing off until next week now - be back here on Monday. Hope you all have a great holiday weekend and all that stuff. Much eating and shopping and whatever you do for remembering the Pilgrims and honoring the Indians who got screwed.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

Cheers!