While I wait to hear from my 11-year-old adventurous Test Reader, I will venture that this pecuiar, mysterious book about a grieving girl, an alter-girl seeking to unfurl the answers to mysteries revealed by an old desert hotel populated by a gray fox gourmand and a white rat mechanic, and their intertwinement will engage many readers. As another reviewer noted, it smacks of Stead's When You Reach Me and similarly curiously satisfying.


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While I wait to hear from my 11-year-old adventurous Test Reader, I will venture that this pecuiar, mysterious book about a grieving girl, an alter-girl seeking to unfurl the answers to mysteries revealed by an old desert hotel populated by a gray fox gourmand and a white rat mechanic, and their intertwinement will engage many readers. As another reviewer noted, it smacks of Stead's When You Reach Me and similarly curiously satisfying.


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A girl is devastated by the death of her father, a girl who has lost her name arrives at a hotel in a desert, there is music, a rat, and a fox. This story dips in and out of time and in and out of imagination, weaving together a beautiful whole. Magical realism is the closest genre I can find for it - it also reminded me of the film The Fall. I liked the subtle European setting, the deft translation, and the all of the main characters.
I'd give this to middle school readers who enjoy mysterious twists and a touch of magic. ( )

Alternating chapters take the reader from the present, where a young girl is trying to cope with losing her father and her guilt about sending an angry letter to him just before his accidental death, to a story that the two had been writing together. The story, about a girl who has lost her memory and finds herself in a hotel that is deserted except for two animal proprietors, is interesting, intriguing, and gentle. There's a lot to puzzle over and the author does a good job of bringing the two parts of the book together in the end. So while it is yet another book about the death of a parent, it is handled in a new way and the embedded story feels like it's not about death at all until the very end. I thought it was very well done. ( )

Matti, Truus. (2010). Departure Time. South Hampton, New Hampshire: NAMELOS. 212 pp. ISBN 978-1-60898-087-1 (Hard Cover); $18.95.

Maybe if we cross Samuel Beckett with Alice and Wonderland and add a splash of Werlin, we will discover the inspiration for this very different genre mashup. Mouse is, shall we say, not in Kansas anymore. She finds herself in a hotel staffed by a talking fox and a rat. Mouse is not sure how she got here and as time passes she begins to suspect that fox and rat are holding secrets from her. However, readers, just when we think we are in a fairly typical animal fantasy, we hear the screams and anger of a ten year old girl whose father has failed her in unforgivable fashion. When Mouse lashes out in a fit of anger, her father dies. Guilt and anger fills Mouse. Readers wander back and forth between the very real world in which fathers break promises and die and the surreal world of talking foxes and rats that slowly reveal the path toward healing and forgiveness. Part mystery, part fantasy, and part gritty realistic fiction, Departure Time will not leave readers anytime soon after the last fascinating page is turned. You have not read this book before! While the subject matter of this book is appropriate for all ages, the sophistication of the story makes it more suitable for middle school and high school readers.

NAMELOS is a new publisher focusing on distributing downloaded books (e-Books). It is founded by Stephen Roxburgh who is responsible for many of the award winning books published by Front Street Books. This book is worth tracking down and if your library has developed fans of e-Books, check out the NAMELOS website (www.namelos.com). Do take the trouble to find and read and recommend this book to students; we need healthy small publishers every bit as much as we need established, larger publishers. You may also want to track down POD by Stephen Wallenfels, also by Namelos.