The new issue of Bookslut came up last week with a few contributions from me. My column this month includes a bunch of new graphic novels for teens, including Skim (hugely underrated and totally fabulous) (Betsy agrees with me), Coraline, Emiko Superstar and Token (the final two from the late lamented DC Minx line), the latest from Eddie Campbell, The Amazing Adventures of Monsieur Leotard, and also from First Second, Alan's War (a whole new way of looking at one man's life) and Sons of Liberty which is another entry in the excellent Turning Points graphic novel history line that read like a more indepth Johnny Tremain (and I mean that in the best possible way) and Holly Black's The Good Neighbors, first in a new scary fairies series that is Spiderwick for the older crowd and a great combination of cool, creepy and tongue-in-cheek snark.

My Cool Read is the highly illustrated One Million Things from DK. Here's why I think it's worth a second look:

You have snakes and lizards climbing up ladders, body systems such as lungs and digestion portrayed as knit-work crafts, a house of cards for the food pyramid and the work of artist Sean Rogg, who collected and displayed plastic water bottles from around the world, for a brief analysis of the planet’s most precious resource. Space exploration might not be a new subject but seeing a variety of international postage stamps displayed for historic milestones is very cool as is the glimpse of a paleontologist’s desk for a survey of fossils.

The design is truly superior and as I've been reading it a few pages at a time to my son for the past few weeks I can certainly attest to its curious kid appeal.

I also have two standalone reviews in the issue, the nonfiction Arctic exploration title Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of Elisha Kent Kane by Ken McGoogan and the novel In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld, published by Unbridled Books. Both are highly recommended (especially if you like books about polar explorers or bird lovers). (How weird is it that both are passions of mine?)

I also recommend the new column "Fascinating Writers" for its piece on Louise Erdrich. Wow - equal parts tragic melodrama and academic love story, this article leaves you with a bit of shock and awe by the time you are done.

Booklist also has a new issue out with reviews of several appealing sounding titles. For teens, there is Lauren Myracle's Bliss. Here's a bit of the review:

Myracle is running on all cylinders here, exercising an agile teenage drama, a Stephen King–like yarn of high-school horror, a cautionary tale of ’60s race relations, and some affecting social commentary: each chapter begins with a period media quote, and the startling mix of Andy Griffith and Charles Manson perfectly distills the nation’s teetering into terror.

Oscar Hijuelos has a new YA title out, Dark Dude:

When his parents threaten to send him to a military school in Florida, he runs away. Together with his best friend, Jimmy, who has just kicked a heroin habit, Rico hitchhikes to Wisconsin, where Gilberto, an older-brother figure from Harlem, has bought a farm that he shares with several hippie college students. In an unwavering, utterly believable voice, Rico details his midwestern year, in which he adjusts to rural life, falls in love, and pursues his comic-book-writing aspirations. Most of all, though, he searches for a sense of self, ultimately realizing that “where you are doesn’t change who you are.”

Christopher Barzak, whose first novel I adored, has received a starred review for his new collection of linked stories, The Love We Share Without Knowing:

Four American expatriates navigate the language and culture of their new home. Barzak mixes magical elements—such as unexplained physical ailments that mirror emotional ones—into his starkly realistic view of contemporary Japan. From its beautiful title to its sad and haunted characters, The Love We Share without Knowing limns the depths of the human need to be loved—and to be truly understood and accepted by those we love. A beautiful, enchanted book.

Gwenda has raved about Laura Miller's look at CS Lewis and Booklist also loved The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia:

Her description of Lewis’ fantasies as “a grab bag” is a good description of her own book, which is part literary criticism, part biography, part autobiography, part tour of the places Lewis knew, and part conversation with other writers such as Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Franzen, and Philip Pullman. Though quick to acknowledge Lewis’ occasional racism, misogyny, and elitism, Miller remains fascinated by his capacity to create an entire other world that helped form her own imagination and her life as a reader. As a result, her sometimes affectionate, sometimes analytical book will delight both skeptics and true believers.

And finally, TC Boyle's The Women is an fictional look at the very odd world of Frank Lloyd Wright:

Boyle’s rendering of Taliesin, the cursed Wisconsin home of Wright’s dubious Fellowship, is positively gothic, and for all the swift fury of the plot, this is a character-driven novel in which Boyle empathically portrays Kitty, Wright’s first wife and the mother of six of his children; radical and doomed Mamah; mad Miriam; and stalwart Olgivanna. And then there’s Boyles’ piquant narrator, the loyal Wright disciple Tadashi Sato, whose Japanese heritage introduces racism to the story, a theme that reaches fully tragic proportions in Boyle’s devastating take on the man who killed Mamah and her two children. Boyle is electrifying in this gorgeous novel of artistic conviction, exalted romance, and appalling moral failings.

That is a ton of great books to choose from - early holiday shopping, anyone???