Child X

When her parents' divorce goes from messy to downright weird, a 13-year-old British girl finds that she's no longer Juliet (a.k.a. Jules) Cheney--she's "Child X." This excellent debut novel from Lee Weatherly puts some interesting twists on an otherwise straightforward divorce memoir: The setting alone makes our plucky, put-upon protagonist Jules more compelling (with lively but easy-to-comprehend Briticisms like "I dashed to the loo and hid out there for ages, crying into a wad of rough, horrid loo roll"), and then photographers start popping out from trees and bushes to snap Jules's picture. What's going on here? Could it have something to do with Jules's harried, distant international-financier mum? Or her sweet dad, who writes for "the Beeb"? We're left--like most kids in a divorce--to figure things out on our own, along with poor Jules.

Weatherly shows serious skill for a newcomer, drawing our sympathies this way and that, capturing Jules's inherently unfair age to a tee, and expertly interweaving a theatrical production of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in the States and a "stonking great book" in Jules's estimation). And as with Pullman's kid classic, grownups will likely find themselves equally sucked in by Child X's tearful lessons in love and loss. (Brilliant work, Weatherly--you ought to be chuffed.) (Ages 9 to 12) --Paul Hughes