An experienced editor of books for young people (as well as the editor of A Family of Readers by Martha Parravano and me), Marc Aronson is also one of the genre’s most distinguished historians. His Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado won both the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and the inaugural Sibert Medal; he has also written books about the Salem witchcraft trials, Stonehenge, and Robert F. Kennedy. But I never thought to see Marc Aronson and Chilean miners in the same sentence. I just had to find out what spurred his latest book, Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert, which receives a starred review in the September issue of the Horn Book Magazine.

1. You are best known as a historian — what led you to write a book about such a recent event?

Marc Aronson: My real interest is always linking past and present and that is what happened with Trapped. Namrata Tripathi, my editor at Atheneum, said she thought the miner story might make a good book, so I began to see if I could weave together the drama of the events with larger stories about mining and the underground world, and the more research I did the more fascinated I became by both threads.
2. Why do you think kids — boys especially — are drawn to books about disasters? (I know we all are, but disaster books are the mainstay of the “reluctant reader” shelf.)

MA: As you said in A Family of Readers, if you don't read much, whatever you read better be worth it — and a true story that pulls you along a tightrope between life and death is about as compelling (and stripped of meditations on the subtle vagaries of interior emotion) as you can get.

3. What was the most foreign aspect of the research and story for you?

MA: Learning about mining, mine procedures, going into a mine, understanding the mentality of miners. Outside of singing earnest songs about the Cumberland Mine Disaster in my childhood lefty summer camp, I had never thought about their world. Mining always meant Wales, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, John L. Lewis — all completely alien from the life of a Jewish boy from an arty family on the Upper West Side in New York.

4. Which of the miners would you most like to talk to, and what would you ask him?

MA: Luis Urzúa, the captain. I would ask him: what did he think would have happened if they had not been reached for another week and how would they have behaved as men began to die? Or, as I asked the rescuers, what would he want to say to American kids reading about his story?

5. If you had been in that mine and they said they could send down one book for you to read, what would it be?

MA: In the mine I would have wanted something really long and really funny, maybe the collection of Mark Twain short stories that I loved as a child. But if I were on a different sort of desert island, not underground, maybe Proust or Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities or even Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — one of those really long books any cultured person is supposed to have read but which I've managed to skip.  

 —Roger Sutton

An illustrated book about an ocean voyage, a comic-strip biography of a Nobel physicist, and an examination of a controversial period of American history are just some of the new nonfiction titles hitting shelves alongside Marc Aronson’s Trapped.

Feynman by Jim Ottaviani ingeniously uses a first-person narrative and the graphic novel format to present the life of a remarkable man. A brilliant theoretical physicist who worked on the atomic bomb, won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, was married three times, played in a samba band, studied drawing, and hung out at topless bars, Richard Feynman approached everything with exuberance and a sense of play. Ottaviani’s and illustrator Leland Myrick’s enthusiasm infuses every aspect of the book — and they’re even able to provide clear explanations of complex physics. (12 years and up)

Karen Blumenthal’s Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition traces Americans’ drinking habits from colonial times to the present day to show how lack of moderation has caused this country to go from one extreme to the other and back again. She explains the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts that produced the Prohibition era. With an ambitious scope that includes anecdotes, quotes, statistics, photographs, and illustrations to complement the larger story, Blumenthal makes the subject matter relevant for modern readers. (12 years and up)

Far from Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage is Sophie Webb’s richly detailed account of her travels on a four-month-long NOAA research cruise studying the impact of fishing on two dolphin populations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Combining scientific information, field guide–like illustrations, and a thorough, realistic account of the day-to-day experiences of a field scientist, Webb provides readers with a closer look at the exciting science and the real-life minutiae of spending so much time at sea. (9–12 years)  

 

Three new concept books for preschool and primary ages play with the book form and go out of their way to keep kids involved.

Newcomer Patricia Intriago brings a strong graphic sensibility to her deceptively minimalist Dot. This book of opposites uses a brief rhyming text and a playful touch, setting up predictable patterns and then breaking them. The pacing and text are on target for three-year-olds, while older children will better appreciate the graphic gymnastics and some of the more subtle humor. Who knew circles could be so versatile? (3–6 years)

Hervé Tullet also uses dots — hastily painted colored circles — and speaks directly to the reader in his app-like Press Here. Giving the iPad a run for its money, he invites the reader to interact with his book, providing a big payoff to those who suspend their disbelief. “Try shaking the book…just a little bit,” he suggests on one spread showing perfectly aligned red, yellow, and blue dots. Turn the page and voilà! the dots are all mixed up. This tactile, sturdily satisfying book invites repeated readings without wearing down any batteries. (2–5 years)  

Why should dots have all the fun? Laura Lungkvist’s Follow the Line to School (fourth in her Line series) encourages readers to trace a continuous line from spread to spread as it meanders through an elementary school. Sometimes the line forms parts of the picture and sometimes it just creates a path from one item to the next, roaming through class rooms, cafeteria, a playground, and more. The text asks direct questions that can be easily answered with a thorough look at the art (“How many balls do you see? What colors are the jump ropes?”). What better antidote to back-to-school jitters? (4–8 years)

 —Lolly Robinson

Another entry in a beloved series about a high school Everygirl, the follow-up to a novel about two very different characters and their unlikely attraction, and the gripping sequel to a futuristic science fiction thriller are books teens will want to get their hands on.

In Incredibly Alice, the twenty-sixth book in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice series, Naylor works toward a major milestone in her beloved character’s life: high school graduation. There are plenty of hurdles to jump before that event, not the least of which is a familiar rite of passage for high school seniors — the wait for college acceptance letters. Alice fans will see her through this installment’s tumult of emotions as Alice attempts to sort out who she is and what she wants. (12 years and up)  

Ron Koertge revisits the appealing odd couple from Stoner and Spaz in Now Playing: Stoner & Spaz II. High-school filmmaker Ben is freshly wounded by another flake-out by on-again/off-again girlfriend Colleen, who ditched his debut documentary’s gala opening to be with her dealer ex-boyfriend. Ben is powerfully attracted to heavily tattooed and super hot Colleen, the first girl to look past his cerebral palsy, despite the promises he knows she can’t keep. These two dramatically different but equally hurting teens give one another something each desperately needs. Readers will be pulling for them despite the odds. (12 years and up)  

Mary E. Pearson’s The Fox Inheritance is set 260 years after the accident that allegedly killed Locke and Kara in The Adoration of Jenna Fox. But Locke and Kara aren’t actually dead: their minds were copied by the scientist father of their best friend, Jenna Fox, whose illegal resurrection was the focus of the previous book. When their minds fall into the hands of an unethical scientist, the two are restored to new, improved bodies and they escape into an alien future world. Through Locke, we experience the confusing futuristic world, a suspenseful chase, the emotional reunion with Jenna, and the complex playing out of the issues of trust, ethics, and betrayal. (12 years and up)  

 —Kitty Flynn