Remedial Book Club for Immature Adults

In this acclaimed, award-winning national bestseller, readers are introduced to Ida B, a fourth grader like no other, who's living a life like no other, with a voice like no other, and a family like no other. How does Ida B cope when outside forces attempt to derail her, her family, and her future?

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Is it possible to cultivate readers' affection for a character who has been trained from his tenderest years to dismiss evil as a "loaded word"? Australian writer Jinks, author of the Crusades-era Pagan series, successfully meets the challenge in this very different novel. She devises gradations of wrongdoing so steep that her antihero's adversaries leave him (almost) smelling like a rose. At age seven, child prodigy Cadel Piggott lands in a shrink's office for illegal computer hacking, where psychologist Thaddeus Roth delivers startling counsel: "Next time, don't get caught." Thaddeus is an agent of Cadel's real father, a brilliant crook who, from behind bars, manages to place Cadel at the secretive Axis Institute for World Domination. By 13, Cadel is earnestly studying "Infiltration, Misinformation, and Embezzlement," but as he increasingly relies on an outside friendship, he privately plots to extricate himself from the paterfamilias.Comic-book fans will enjoy the school's aspiring villains (including one who floors foes with deadly B.O.), but this is more than a campy set-piece. Cadel's turnabout is convincingly hampered by his difficulty recognizing appropriate outlets for rage, and Jinks' whiplash-inducing suspense writing will gratify fans of Anthony Horowitz's high-tech spy scenarios. Although some of the technical concerns of evil geniuses (firewalls, tax shelters, nanotechnology) may stymie less-patient readers, most will press on, riveted by the chilling aspects of a child trapped in adult agendas that, iceberglike, hide beneath the surface.

Starred Review. Grade 6-9–Scott uses a gigantic canvas for this riveting fantasy. The well-worn theme of saving the world from the forces of evil gets a fresh look here as he incorporates ancient myth and legend and sets it firmly, pitch-perfect, in present-day California. At the emotional center of the tale are contemporary 15-year-old twins, Josh and Sophie, who, it turns out, are potentially powerful magicians. They are spoken of in a prophecy appearing in the ancient Book of Abraham the Mage, all but two pages of which have been stolen by evil John Dee, alchemist and magician. The pursuit of the twins and Flamel by Dee and his allies to get the missing pages constitutes the book's central plot. Amid all this exhilarating action, Scott keeps his sights on the small details of character and dialogue and provides evocative descriptions of people, mythical beings, and places. He uses as his starting point the figures of the historical alchemist Nicholas Flamel and his wife, who have found the secret of immortality, along with mythical beings, including the terrifying Scottish crow-goddess, the Morrigan; the three-faced Greek Hekate; the powerful Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet; and Scathach, a legendary Irish woman warrior and vegetarian vampire. While there is plenty here to send readers rushing to their encyclopedias of mythology and alchemy, those who read the book at face value will simply be caught up in the enthralling story. A fabulous read.

-School Library Journal

Two tragic stories -- one past, one present -- come together in this carefully constructed novel set in the Australian bush. Seventeen-year-old Taylor Markham has just been made leader of the Jellicoe School's "Underground" during the annual territory wars with the townies and the cadets. Taylor arrived at the school at age eleven when her mother dumped her at the local 7-11 and she was taken in by Hannah, voluntary caretaker of the school's neediest students. Interspersed with war maneuvers, negotiations, and Taylor's hotly charged meetings with cadet leader Jonah Griggs are excerpts from Hannah's unfinished novel about three teenaged survivors of a horrific car wreck on Jellicoe Road years earlier. The three survivors, and the lifelong bonds they formed with the townie who rescued them and the cadet who befriended them, have everything to do with Taylor; together with broken memories of life with her drug-addicted mother and dream visits from a mysterious boy, Hannah's story helps Taylor piece together the truth about her past and determine who she will become. Despite grief piled on grief in the personal histories of the characters, they are all firmly bound by friendship and love. Suspenseful plotting, slowly unraveling mysteries, and generations of romance shape the absorbing novel.

-Horn Book Magazine