In Loretta Ellsworth's new book, In Search of Mockingbird, sixteen-year old Erin jumps a Greyhound bus on a quest for Monroeville, Alabama and meeting with Harper Lee. The need for this pilgrimage comes on suddenly and strong, shortly after she discovers a heavily annotated edition of the book that was well loved by her long deceased mother and is then given her mother's old high school diary. It seems like she has been misunderstood her whole life by her father and two older brothers but in those two books she discovers the mother she always needed - a mother that is so much like her own teenage self that it is startling. Finding Harper Lee is a way to find her mother - or maybe find out exactly who she is and wants to be. It's a classic coming-of-age story idea, but the fact that it takes place almost entirely on a bus is pretty darn innovative. I couldn't help but think that if you paired this title with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird you'd have a perfect set for a bookish girl. And then I got thinking you could do the same thing for certain boys with Catcher in the Rye and King Dork. Or for the true crime obsessed teen, you could buy In Cold Blood and Capote in Kansas.

I could go crazy with this.

Maybe there's a new column in this somewhere, or a feature, or maybe a nice list for Christmas this year. Something to think about though - any other pairings you know of? I will be including In Search of Mockingbird in my June column for sure though, part of my super duper list for girls this summer.

I also just read A Samurai Never Fears Death, the latest entry in the Seikei series about a samurai apprentice in early 18th century Japan. (Pair this series with Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai maybe?) I love these mysteries; they are a great match-up of adventure and history and the authors, Thomas & Dorothy Hoobler, really do their research. In this outing Seikei is in Osaka where he ends up investigating a murder (or more) in a puppet show. There is also a group of smugglers, some illicit trade, a Romeo and Julietesque romance and a really creepy puppet guy.

Why are the puppet people always freaky?

Seikei is just a cool detective - he knows who he wants to be (a samurai) and he's determined to do the right thing to become that kind of person. But he's also just a teenager and he makes more than a few mistakes. I've seen comparisons to the Samurai series and Sherlock Holmes ("Think Sherlock Holmes in the land of the shoguns!" according to the Washington Post), but that seems a bit too easy. Seikei is not a young Sherlock, or a young James Bond or a young anybody else. He's a smart and determined young man who desperately wants to become the best samurai he can be. I love how he learns and how he acts and who he is slowly becoming. It's great to see his evolution from the first book and I really think this is an excellent under the radar series for boys. (Although of course history minded girls will love Seikei too!)

And on top of everything else you get to learn about Japanese history while you're reading - how cool is that?!