May is Mystery Month
over at Booklist Magazine and they've compiled their Top 10 Crime Fiction for
Youth list for 2012. Below are select reviews for books on their list—to
read multiple reviews for titles on the full best book list subscribe to CLCD.
The Case of the Deadly Desperados
Caroline Lawrence
The Case of the Deadly Desperados is a first-person narrative of P. K. Pinkerton.
Twelve-year-old P. K. recounts his/her (the gender is never clearly revealed) adventures
through writing on ledger paper. The setting of 1862 Virginia City, Nevada, provides
the perfect backdrop to the wild adventures. P. K. is an orphan who on his/her twelfth
birthday experiences the shooting death of his/her foster parents. P. K. flees the
scene in possession of a deed that will grant him/her a large area of land. Because
of this, P. K. is on the run from Whittlin’ Walt and his gang. While assuming various
disguises to evade Walt, P. K. encounters an interesting variety of people in the
Wild West. He/she meets a Soiled Dove (prostitute), spends time in an opium den,
and learns to read nonverbal cues from poker players. The book is quick paced and
engaging, moving from one escapade to the next without ever slowing down. Although
not presented in expansive detail, the allusions to prostitution, the opium den,
and the killing of P. K.’s foster parents at the book’s start all suggest that this
book should not be read by the youngest of readers. Overall, Lawrence has written
a gripping book that leads its way nicely in becoming part of a larger series. 2012,
Putnam/Penguin, Ages 11 to 15, $16.99. Reviewer: Ursula Adams (VOYA, April 2012 (Vol.
35, No. 1)).
ISBN: 9780399256332
Chopsticks
Rodrigo Corral
If a picture
is worth a thousand words, this venture in visual storytelling contains volumes
worth of detail. Photographs (some featuring posed actors), news clippings, screen
shots, character-drawn sketches, and artfully arranged everyday artifacts (tickets,
concert bills, backpack contents), aided by occasional superimposed
lines of dialogue, present a love story between Glory, a piano prodigy whose mother
died nine years ago, and Francisco, an artistic, lonely Argentinian immigrant who
chafes at the condescension he encounters at his new school. Their romance is told
as an extended flashback, framed by urgent news
reports of Glory’s disappearance eighteen months after the two met. As Glory’s fragile
mental state becomes increasingly clear, however, it throws the very nature of the
story into question, and a clever, intricate buildup of visual clues (including
a neat overarching musical metaphor related to Glory’s repeated playing of “Chopsticks”
in concert as a symptom of her breakdown) suggest that Francisco may not exist at
all. The layout is dynamically composed, making the most of a single image per page;
photos are saturated with color and light, and print excerpts set against backgrounds
of varying textures and colors sustain visual interest. Each page conveys not just
information but emotion; romantic scenes are warmly luminous and suffused with hope,
while dark or lonely moments are shadowy or overexposed. Narrative clues are scattered
throughout, but only the most observant readers will catch their implication on
the first readthrough. For those willing to pore over each page and weigh each detail,
though, this ambitious, beautiful work satisfies both intellectually and emotionally.
2012, Razorbill, Grades 9 to 12, $19.99. Reviewer: Claire Gross (The Bulletin of the Center
for Children’s Books, April 2012 (Vol. 65, No. 8)).
ISBN: 9781595144355
The Girl is Murder
Kathryn Miller Haines
1942 New York
City; 15-year-old Iris Anderson must cope with a new family dynamic and living arrangement.
Her widowed father, a former naval officer who lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, has decided
to return to his private investigator business. They now rent rooms instead of having
their own apartment, and Iris attends a public high school instead of a private girls' school. Iris decides
to help her father with his investigations, especially the disappearance of a hunky
boy she met at school. She struggles with the questions of whom to trust, who really is her friend, and, in turn, what kind of friend
she is. Haines paints a gritty portrait of early 1940s NYC
from the Lower East Side to Harlem, from uniform to zoot suit, from rationing to
sharing, from poor to rich. This is a real page-turner
with a "film noir" feel; definitely not Nancy Drew! Highly Recommended.
2011, Roaring Brook Press, Ages 13 to 18, $16.99. Reviewer: Esther R. Sinofsky (Library Media Connection, October 2011).
ISBN: 9781596436091
I Hunt Killers
Barry Lyga
In order to catch
a killer, one must think like a killer, and nobody knows how to do that better than Jazz
Dent. His father is one of the most notorious serial killers in the world and taught Jazz everything he
knew about the art of killing. Now his dad is in jail, and all Jazz wants to do
is suppress the urges his dad passed on to him and be a normal teenager, but when
a new serial killer shows up in Lobo’s Nod, Jazz is obsessed with
catching him. In order to face the killer, Jazz must first confront his own demons and decide
which side he is really on. Lyga brilliantly
combines the feel of a true crime story with mystery, adventure, and psychoanalysis
in this intense story of a different kind of family bond. It is a classic “whodunit”
with the added intrigue of describing murders in great detail, while not becoming
overly gruesome, as well as the police work involved in solving a crime, so it feels
like a true crime novel instead of fiction. The characters are especially believable,
and the reader will be drawn in by their motivations
and actions. Jazz’s inner struggle to understand his compulsions to both save and
hurt people will captivate readers into wanting to know which path he will ultimately
choose. This story will appeal to a wide variety of older teen readers, especially
guys, and will make an excellent addition to any library serving mature teens. 2012,
Little Brown, Ages 15 to 18, $17.99. Reviewer: Blake Norby (VOYA, April 2012 (Vol.
35, No. 1)).
ISBN: 9780316125840
Wonderstruck
Brian Selznick
The separate
stories of two youngsters, a boy in 1977 and a girl in 1927, finally come almost
miraculously together. The boy’s tale is told at first in engrossing text; the girl’s
only in black and white double-page textured drawings. We meet Ben living unhappily
in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota with his aunt and uncle and family, having lost his
mother in a car accident. He is deaf in one ear, but after a lightning strike accident
he is completely deaf. Finding clues to a father he never knew, Ben takes off for
New York City to find him. In 1927 a girl named Rose lives isolated by her deafness in Hoboken, New Jersey, looking
yearningly across the river at New York City where her mother is a famous actress.
She too runs away. Themes run through both stories: parents, deafness, storms, stars,
and the American Museum of Natural History. Some coincidences must be accepted,
but the happy ending is both believable and satisfying. Selznick provides detailed, naturalistic, black pencil
drawings that create gray, almost photographic scenes of buildings and people with
a sense of mystery. We are swept into the powerful visual story as the point of
view zooms in or out. The provocative narrative, similar in format to the author’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, leaves the reader with much to think about
and illustrations to peruse repeatedly. 2011, Scholastic Press, Ages 9 to 12, $29.99.
Reviewers: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz
(Children's Literature).
ISBN: 9780545027892
