Shelf Life

The good news:
Margaret Peterson Haddix has started a new series.
The bad news:
It has a cliff-hanger ending and we will have to wait about a year for the second installment… ARRRGH!!!

Like Ms. Haddix’s other books (Among the Hidden, Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey,etc.) this one pulls you in quickly and doesn’t let go. The story begins with a plane appearing out of nowhere at an Ohio airport. No pilots, no crew and no flight plan, just a plane full of… well, read it for yourself to find out. Jump forward 13 years. Jonah is 13 years old. He is an adopted child and his parents have been very open about it. To Jonah, it is no big deal. Then the letters begin arriving. “You are one of the missing,” is the first ominous message. Other adoptees, all 13 years old, receive similar notes. Soon the FBI comes into play and strange men appear and disappear seemingly into thin air. No one is who they seem and our protagonist doesn’t know which way to turn. The book ends with Jonah, his sister Katherine, and his friend Chip facing an uncertain fate.

Like the “Shadow Children” series this one seems certain to attract a large and loyal following. Librarians and book store employees should brace themselves for the onslaught of questions about the arrival of the next installment (according to Ms. Haddix’s web site, “Book Two, Sent,coming 2009.”)

By Mr. Doyle

With recomendations from Scott Westerfield, Neil Gaiman, and Steven Gould how could you go wrong? Cory Docotorow, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Boing Boing, has written a timely and exciting work about what happens when a society gives up freedom for security (btw– it gets niether).

Marcus Yallow and his friends are on the streets of San Francisco playing an Alternate Reality Game when terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge and the BART Trans-Bay Tunnel. Unable to find shelter, they are swept up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and are questioned and tortured in “Gitmo by the Bay.” They are humiliated and broken and released, warned not to talk about what happened.

Marcus discovers that his beloved San Francisco has become a police state. Determined not to take it lying down Marcus declares a digital war on the DHS, organizing a teen rebelion against the suspension of civil liberties. Using open source software and encryption protocols they create an underground computer network and use it to organize against the authorities. But can they stand up to the nearly unlimited resources and personnel of a federal government gone bad? To find out, read

Little Brother

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By Mr Doyle