Publishers Weekly Eighteen-year-old Henry "Monty" Montague-scandal prone, acid tongued, and a bit too fond of boys, girls, and gin-is embarking on a grand tour of Europe, a last hurrah before taking up the mantle of lordship. The tour quickly veers off course for Monty, his longtime friend (and not-so-secret crush) Percy, and his headstrong sister Felicity when Monty and a young lady are caught in a compromising situation at Versailles, after which Monty absconds with a small trinket. Pursued by the Duke of Bourbon, Monty learns that the object may hold the key to unlocking powerful alchemical secrets. Without funds or connections, the three haphazardly make their way across the continent, crossing paths with secretive Spanish siblings, an inexperienced pirate crew, and others. It's a gloriously swashbuckling affair, but Lee (This Monstrous Thing) doesn't shy from addressing the era's overt racism, sexism, homophobia, and prejudice regarding illness. Percy, a biracial epileptic, and Felicity, a young woman dreaming of medical school, are well-rounded and fascinating supporting characters, and the romantic relationship that develops between Monty and Percy is sure to leave readers happily starry-eyed. Ages 13-up. Agent: Rebecca Podos, Rees Literary. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Book list *Starred Review* Henry Montague is the son of a lord, and as such, his behavior is entirely inappropriate. A lover of vice and hedonism, Monty prefers to spend his time drinking (acceptable) and trysting, both with girls and boys (decidedly not acceptable). Still, Monty is in high spirits as he prepares for his grand tour of the Continent. At his side is his best friend: polite, gentlemanly Percy is the orphaned product of an English lord and a woman from Barbados. Monty, of course, is hopelessly in love with him and plans to make the most of the tour, until his distinct flair for trouble gets in the way. Several miscommunications, one truly terrible party, and an act of petty thievery later, Monty and Percy find themselves on the run across Europe with Monty's sister Felicity in tow. Tongue-in-cheek, wildly entertaining, and anachronistic in only the most delightful ways, this is a gleeful romp through history. Monty is a hero worthy of Oscar Wilde (What's the use of temptations if we don't yield to them?), his sister Felicity is a practical, science-inclined wonder, and his relationship with Percy sings. Modern-minded as this may be, Lee has clearly done invaluable research on society, politics, and the reality of same-sex relationships in the eighteenth century. Add in a handful of pirates and a touch of alchemy for an adventure that's an undeniable joy.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

School Library Journal Gr 9 Up-A trio of high-born, determined, and wildly charismatic teenagers get more than they bargained for in this rollicking 18th-century Grand Tour of the Continent gone awry. Endearing rake Lord Henry Montague (or Monty) and his biracial best friend (and unrequited love), the infinitely patient Percy, leave England to drop Monty's fiercely intelligent sister Felicity off at finishing school. The friends then spend a year traveling. After the Grand Tour, Monty will return home to help his demanding father run their estate and Percy will go to Holland to law school. If Monty's dad catches wind of him still "mucking around with boys," Monty will be cut off from the family. The trip is intended to be a cultural experience. However, no one could have predicted that one seemingly petty theft would set off an adventure involving highwaymen, stowaways, pirates, a sinking island, an alchemical heart, tomb-raiding, and a secret illness. From the start, readers will be drawn in by Monty's charm, and Felicity and Percy come alive as the narrative unfolds. The fast-paced plot is complicated, but Lee's masterly writing makes it all seem effortless. The journey forces Monty and friends to confront issues of racism, gender expectations, sexuality, disability, family, and independence, with Monty in particular learning to examine his many privileges. Their exploits bring to light the secret doubts, pains, and ambitions all three are hiding. This is a witty, romantic, and exceedingly smart look at discovering one's place in the world. VERDICT A stunning powerhouse of a story for every collection.-Amanda MacGregor, formerly at Great River Regional Library, Saint Cloud, MN © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Publishers Weekly This heartrending story by German writer Raschke is narrated by 10-year-old Jette, who describes the death of her terminally ill six-year-old brother Emil in unvarnished prose (“He lay there completely still. And pale, like yogurt”). Her parents are too devastated to offer much comfort. Earlier on, when Emil wasn’t as ill and they were on vacation, Jette asked her father whether fish could sleep. “Dad gave me a funny look and mumbled something. I saw that he didn’t know.” It’s an early hint that the parents she depends on are as lost as she is. Another time, Jette and Emil talk frankly about death, and she offers Emil a version of Heaven that he likes: “pizza heaven, where he can eat as much pizza as he wants all day.” Cartoonish drawings by Rassmus contribute to the straightforwardly painful mood, as when Jette is seen in the back of her car on the way to the funeral home with Emil’s seat empty beside her. Brutally honest about the suffering that follows the death of a young sibling, Raschke’s narrative is at once excruciating, honest, and compelling. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

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Publishers Weekly Even the book's younger readers will understand the distinctive visual code. As the pigs enter the confines of a storybook page, they conform to that book's illustrative style, appearing as nursery-rhyme friezes or comic-book line drawings. When the pigs emerge from the storybook pages into the meta-landscape, they appear photographically clear and crisp, with shadows and three dimensions. Wiesner's (Tuesday) brilliant use of white space and perspective (as the pigs fly to the upper right-hand corner of a spread on their makeshift plane, or as one pig's snout dominates a full page) evokes a feeling that the characters can navigate endless possibilitiesDand that the range of story itself is limitless. Ages 5-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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School Library Journal K-Gr 6-In Tuesday (Clarion, 1991), Wiesner demonstrated that pigs could fly. Here, he shows what happens when they take control of their story. In an L. Leslie Brooke sort of style (the illustrations are created through a combination of watercolor, gouache, colored inks, and pencils), the wolf comes a-knocking on the straw house. When he puffs, the pig gets blown "right out of the story." (The double spread contains four panels on a white background; the first two follow the familiar story line, but the pig falls out of the third frame, so in the fourth, the wolf looks quite perplexed.) So it goes until the pigs bump the story panels aside, fold one with the wolf on it into a paper airplane, and take to the air. Children will delight in the changing perspectives, the effect of the wolf's folded-paper body, and the whole notion of the interrupted narrative. Wiesner's luxurious use of white space with the textured pigs zooming in and out of view is fresh and funny. They wander through other stories-their bodies changing to take on the new style of illustration as they enter the pages-emerging with a dragon and the cat with a fiddle. The cat draws their attention to a panel with a brick house, and they all sit down to soup, while one of the pigs reconstructs the text. Witty dialogue and physical comedy abound in this inspired retelling of a familiar favorite.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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Book list Ages 3^-6. This spectacular, large-format edition has double-page-spread illustrations that resonate with bold strokes and exuberant images of the moon as it prepares for its nightly activities. The moon paints the sky, gets rid of fog and mist, plants dreams, locks up nightmares until morning comes and it's time to go to sleep. Even very young children will understand this simple, almost poetic Spanish rendition of a sweet bedtime story.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Library Journal Successful actor/director/producer Dunne is the oldest son of journalist and victim rights' activist Dominick Dunne (1925–2009) and the nephew of novelist/essayist Joan Didion (1934–2021). In this searing and powerful memoir, readers learn about the author's troubled childhood and adolescence. After dire experiences at two boarding schools, he headed for New York with dreams of becoming a successful actor. While he looked for work, his friend and roommate Carrie Fisher filmed Star Wars. His sister, Dominique, created the titular Friday Afternoon Club when she became an actor; in addition to Griffin, she would invite her friends to the club, including a young George Clooney. Griffin Dunne got a foothold in film by producing several movies and eventually starred in An American Werewolf in London and After Hours, which he also coproduced. Everything changed in 1982, when Dominique, age 22 at the time, was murdered. The court convicted her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, on a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter. The tragedy changed the family and the course of Dominick Dunne's career, inspiring him to become a crime reporter. VERDICT Raw and painful to read at times but compelling in its honesty, this memoir about the Dunnes will appeal to movie and true-crime fans.—Penelope J.M. Klein

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Publishers Weekly After Hours actor Griffin recounts in his bittersweet debut how movies, madness, and murder have touched his celebrated American family. Dunne presents his recollections as a colorful ensemble piece starring his accomplished relatives, including his father, Dominick, who torpedoed his career as a Hollywood producer by insulting a powerful agent, then became a famous novelist; his mother, Ellen, who carried on several affairs; his brother, Alex, a brilliant writer; his sister, Dominique, an actor who costarred in Poltergeist; and his uncle and aunt by marriage, authors John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. The narrative is a swirl of parties, crude jokes, and sharply etched celebrity cameos, including a pre-fame, pot-smoking Harrison Ford, still working as a carpenter (“His stuff was so strong that after one toke I couldn’t tell the difference between a saw and a tape measure”), and a magnificently bratty Carrie Fisher. But there are darker currents, too: Dominick’s closeted homosexuality; Ellen’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis; Alex’s intermittent psychosis. Anchoring the book is an account of 22-year-old Dominique’s death by strangulation, and her ex-boyfriend John Sweeney’s subsequent conviction on a relatively minor manslaughter charge. Dunne’s writing is vivid, openhearted, and full of a rich irony that inflects even the most emotional scenes, as when he recalls an extra on the set of the gangster spoof Johnny Dangerously offering to have his mob associates kill Sweeney. The result is a raucously entertaining homage to an unforgettable dynasty. Agents: David Kuhn and Nate Muscato, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)

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Kirkus A moving memoir from the actor and producer. Conventional wisdom says we cannot choose family or fate. In this tribute to his famous family, Dunne (b. 1955) reminds readers to love family and do the best with what fate sends along. Bookended by the shocking murder of his sister, Dominique, and the birth of his daughter, Hannah, the narrative retraces the author’s history, offering colorful snippets of life in an intriguing, privileged milieu. In Dunne’s fascinating world, his father, writer and investigative journalist Dominick Dunne, swaps acrimonious barbs with literati brother and sister-in-law, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion (“Joan was a ‘serious writer,’ Dad ex-plained to his children, ‘not like the hacks’ he’d hired to write at Four Star [Television]”). Carrie Fisher is a confidante—“best friends become best friends suddenly, and without knowing that’s what’s happening until it happens”—and celebrities drop in for parties and dinners. Despite the glamorous backdrops in California and New York, the author portrays a family whose core human experiences make them universally relatable. Dunne is candid about his father’s demons and substance abuse, which stoked the embers of a tumultuous marriage. He compassionately chronicles his mother’s battle with multiple sclerosis, and he gently examines the sibling dynamics between the three Dunne children (one of whom is mentally ill, and to whom he dedicates the book). Dunne also chronicles his own slow climb toward fame, an ascent he has navigated on his own terms. The tragedy of Dominique’s murder looms throughout, and the author capably describes stepping into two of the most challenging roles of his life to date: filming Johnny Dangerously while simultaneously supporting his family in their quest for justice for Dominique. A poignant love letter and evidence that through it all, genuine love is the backbone that keeps a family strong. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list Readers of actor and producer Dunne's first book will find themselves often flipping to its stunning black-and-white cover photo. Among its dozen faces are a teenage Dunne; his striking mother, Lenny; his writer father, Dominick; Dominick's writer brother and frequent feuding partner, John; and John's wife, Joan Didion. One little face belongs to Dunne's younger sister, Dominique, whose murder at 22 would devastate and redefine the family. All their stories and more make up Dunne's captivating memoir of celebrity from all sides, which is beyond entertaining, honest in confronting heartbreaks and jealousies, often genuinely funny, and somehow understated. Dunne recalls staggering personal stories about a who's-who of famous people in the Dunnes' orbit alongside his own coming-of-age, early career turns, and the crushing experience of attending the trial for his sister's killer. It's a testament to his talent that his legacy doesn't weigh the book down. Instead, Dunne's storytelling is buoyant, his prose crisp; he's most definitely a writer, too. This clear-eyed, heartfelt memoir ends with the birth of Dunne's daughter in 1990; readers will hope for future books.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Horn Book Perkins's wonderfully contemplative and relaxed yet captivating novel, illustrated with her own perfectly idiosyncratic spot art, is a collection of fleeting images and sensations--some pleasurable, some painful, some a mix of both--from her ensemble cast's lives. Set in a 1970s small town, the third-person narrative floats back and forth between the often humorous, gradually evolving perspectives of its characters. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

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School Library Journal Gr 6-9-The author of the popular All Alone in the Universe (HarperCollins, 1999) returns with another character study involving those moments that occur in everyone's life-moments when a decision is made that sends a person along one path instead of another. Debbie, who wishes that something would happen so she'll be a different person, and Hector, who feels he is "unfinished," narrate most of the novel. Both are 14 years old. Hector is a fabulous character with a wry humor and an appealing sense of self-awareness. A secondary story involving Debbie's locket that goes missing in the beginning of the tale and is passed around by a number of characters emphasizes the theme of the book. The descriptive, measured writing includes poems, prose, haiku, and question-and-answer formats. There is a great deal of humor in this gentle story about a group of childhood friends facing the crossroads of life and how they wish to live it. Young teens will certainly relate to the self-consciousnesses and uncertainty of all of the characters, each of whom is straining toward clarity and awareness. The book is profusely illustrated with Perkins's amusing drawings and some photographs.-B. Allison Gray, John Jermain Library, Sag Harbor, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Book list Gr. 6-9. This lyrical sequel to All Alone in the Universe (1999), a Booklist Editor's Choice, begins with one of many black-and-white drawings and a caption that reads, People move back and forth in this area like molecules in steam. As the title and caption imply, this story reads like a series of intersecting vignettes--all focused on 14-year-old Debbie and her friends as they leave childhood behind. Perkins writes with subtle, wry humor about perceptive moments that will speak directly to readers: universe-expanding crushes, which fill the world with signs and wonder ; scornful reappraisals of childhood things (Debbie's disdain for Nancy Drew is particularly funny); urgent concerns about outfits, snappy retorts, and self-image. Perkins adds many experimental passages to her straightforward narrative, and she finds poetry in the common exchanges between teens. One section of dialogue, written entirely in haiku, reads, Jeff White is handsome, / but his hair is so greasy. / If he would wash it--. A few cultural references set the book in the 1970s, but most readers will find their contemporaries in these characters. Best of all are the understated moments, often private and piercing in their authenticity, that capture intelligent, likable teens searching for signs of who they are, and who they'll become. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

School Library Journal Gr 6-9-Fourteen-year-old Debbie and her friends spend time together listening to the radio, tanning in their backyards, and going to local concerts. Lynne Rae Perkins's 2005 Newbery Award-winning novel (Greenwillow, 2005) records a series of episodes and events that happen in the lives of Debbie, Hector, and their school friends. The teens are facing crossroads in their lives and must decide which path to choose. Listeners will relate to these likeable young people who reflect on both mundane and urgent concerns. Perkins's lyrical and humorous text comes to life with Danielle Ferland's competent narration. There is a sense of awe, delight, and joy in Ferland's reading which perfectly matches the tone of the book.-Wendy Woodfill, Hennepin County Library, Minnetonka, MN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Publishers Weekly PW wrote that this 2006 Newbery Medal winner "captures the wistful romantic yearnings of three friends on the brink of adolescence." Ages 10-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Publishers Weekly Through narrative that has the flavor of stream-of-consciousness writing but is more controlled and poetic, Perkins (All Alone in the Universe) captures the wistful romantic yearnings of three friends on the brink of adolescence. There's Debbie, who makes a wish that "something different would happen. Something good. To me." There's Hector, who hears a guitarist and quite suddenly feels inspired to learn how to play the instrument. Then there's mechanical-minded Lenny who feels himself drawn to Debbie. The characters spend spring and summer wandering about their neighborhood, "criss crossing" paths, expanding their perspectives on the world while sensing that life will lead them to some exciting new experiences. (During a walk, Hector feels "as if the world was opening, like the roof of the Civic Arena when the sky was clear. Life was rearranging itself; bulging in places, fraying in spots.") Debbie forms a crush on a boy from California visiting his grandmother. Hector falls for a girl in his guitar class. Lenny hints at his feelings for Debbie by asking her on a date. All three loves remain unrequited, but by the end of the novel, Debbie, Hector and Lenny have grown a little wiser and still remain hopeful that good things lie ahead if they remain patient. Part love story, part coming-of-age tale, this book artfully expresses universal emotions of adolescence. Ages 10-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms

Publishers Weekly: The diagnosis of Tourette's Syndrome isn't mentioned until the last pages of Rubio's sensitive portrayal of a young girl with the disease. Instead, Rubio lets Icy Sparks tell her own story of growing up during the 1950s in a small Kentucky town where her uncontrollable outbursts make her an object of fright and scorn. "The Saturday after my [10th] birthday, the eye blinking and poppings began.... I could feel little invisible rubber bands fastened to my eyelids, pulled tight through my brain and attached to the back of my head," says Icy, who thinks of herself as the "frog child from Icy Creek." Orphaned and cared for by her loving grandparents, Icy weathers the taunts of a mean schoolteacher and, later, a crush on a boy that ends in disappointment. But she also finds real friendship with the enormously fat Miss Emily, who offers kindness and camaraderie. Rubio captures Icy's feelings of isolation and brings poignancy and drama to Icy's childhood experiences, to her temporary confinement in a mental institution and to her reluctant introduction--thanks to Miss Emily and Icy's grandmother--to the Pentecostal church through which she discovers her singing talent. If Rubio sometimes loses track of Icy's voice, indulges in unconvincing magical realism and takes unearned poetic license with the speech of her Appalachian grandparents ("`Your skin was as cold as fresh springwater, slippery and strangely soothing to touch'"), her first novel is remarkable for its often funny portrayal of a child's fears, loves and struggles with an affliction she doesn't know isn't her fault. Agent, Susan Golomb; editor, Jane von Mehren.

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