The International House of Abandonment, The Red Jacket; Stars, hide your fires

The International House of Dereliction by Jacqueline Davies, illustrations by Julia Castano; Clarion Books, 227 pages ($18.99) Ages 8-12.

Resourceful 10-year-old Alice Cannoli-Potchnik secretly starts a solo house restoration project in the abandoned mansion next door and ends up helping the restless spirits that inhabit it in this sweet, funny and very different ghost story from Lemonade Wars author Jacqueline Davies.

Alice’s father is a building inspector and a home catering whiz. Her mother is a professor of anthropology at a small college who keeps moving the family from house to house as Alice’s father, with Alice’s help, beautifully restores one decrepit structure after another.

Alice was a girl whose curiosity hadn’t been dulled by too many math worksheets and required reading. Her parents believed in unschooling, which meant she didn’t go to school; instead, life was school. At supper, Alice regales her doting parents with everything she learned that day. (For example, she learns that Henry David Thoreau bought way too many nails to build his cabin in the woods because he was such a bad carpenter. He also took his laundry to his mother’s house to wash, so why was he considered a model of self-reliance?)

Alice’s curiosity is piqued by the abandoned mansion next door, with a sign reading International House followed by handwritten words Of Dereliction. She senses something unique, almost alive, in the mansion, slips through the coal chute and sets about fixing what her father calls the heart of the house, the fireplace with its Delft tiles. And she meets the restless spirits that haunt the place: a 6-year-old girl, a hero of the war of independence, a student. All have unfinished business; Alice decides to help them find peace.

Davies’ unique ghost story, with a dramatic finale, features a gallery of colorful character portraits (Alice’s parents don’t own a car but have six red wagons to move their things from place to place), and its fun narrative buzzes. How interesting that one of the things that can prevent the dead from finding peace is not returning a library book!

The red jacket written and illustrated by Bob Holt; HarperCollins, ($18.99) ages 4-8.

A lonely seagull sees her life transformed when she’s given a red jacket in this irresistible picture book featuring simple text and hilarious illustrations by longtime Hallmark card illustrator Bob Holt.

While other creatures, gulls, crabs, pelicans, starfish enjoy each other’s life and company, Bob the Gull is alone, walking with his head down, not talking to anyone. All that changes when a bird gives him his red jacket. Bob looks in the mirror and feels so chic, so elegant, it’s like wearing a big hug. A newly confident Bob talks to crabs and flounder, helps a pelican, and even talks to his fellow seagulls.

Stars, hide your fires by Jessica Mary Best; Quirk Books, 304 pages ($18.99) Ages 14 and up.

A skilled thief and crook from a poor corner of the universe crashes the Royal Ascension Ball hoping to score the score of his life, only to be framed for the murder of the Emperor in this dazzling debut novel offering political intrigue, scathing social commentary, heart-pounding action and slow-burning romance.

Eighteen-year-old Cass lives in the Helia Empire on Sarn, a minor moon of the planet Danae, a miserable place that is in total darkness for half the year, where topsoil has been transported for private gardens on another planet, where sand pollutes the air and water, where people feed on a protein porridge called Pink Dream. Cass helps support her ailing father with her pickpocketing skills, scamming tourists with her close friends and scavenging for scrap metal.

When the Prince offers her a coveted invitation to the Ascension Ball (handcrafted silver watermark…encrusted with the Emperor’s personal encryption seal), Cass jumps at the chance to use her pickpocketing skills at the ball, hoping the spoils will help her give her father a better life.

The author creates a wonderful fantasy universe contrasting miserable places like Sarn with its terrible climate and lack of food and resources with rich planets that have city-wide climate control, leafy trees for shade, and artificial clouds on demand. The wealthy have figured out how to milk spiders so that their thread creates wonderful fabric, not caring that spider bites can cost workers the use of their hands.

Courageous, intelligent and resourceful, Cass is a wonderful heroine. As she prepares to enter the ball, she thinks: I’m half prepared for what they see through me, smell the poor on me like rotten perfume, like sweat and a sweet, unhealthy protein porridge.