Gr 9 Up-The author weaves several odd yet connected story threads: the 19th-century Arctic exploration aboard the ill-fated Alex Crow ship; a madman's bizarre U-Haul road trip; and the Merrie-Seymour Research Group and its de-extinction program. But the most compelling narrative is that of Ariel, a teenage refugee of an unnamed country, who is adopted into an American family. He and his brother, Max, are sent to Camp Merrie-Seymour "where boys rediscover the fun of boyhood." The camp's purpose is to wean teenage boys off of their technology addictions. Unfortunately for Max and Ariel, their father works for Merrie-Seymour, so they're forced to attend because it's free. Smith deftly combines Ariel's harrowing wartime horrors juxtaposed against his hilarious six weeks at an American summer camp with maladjusted teenage boys. The teen protagonist is the lens through which readers see how society exerts its control over teenage boys' thoughts and actions. And Camp Merrie-Seymour is the satirical showcase for how often these boys are expected to deal with the harsh world on their own without any real guidance from adults. Smith's writing seems to ebb from an honest place, not one of nostalgia, but of the discomfort and agony of adolescence. Smith follows up his enthralling, boundary-pushing Grasshopper Jungle (Dutton, 2014) with this more cohesive and brilliant work. VERDICT A must-have for all YA collections. Kimberly Garnick Giarratano, Rockaway Township Public Library, NJ

Starred Review Ariel, a refugee from an unnamed, war-torn country, has been adopted by the Burgesses, and he and the Burgesses' son, Max, have been sent to a camp for boys addicted to electronics (even though they're not). The camp is owned by the company where their father works as a scientist in the Alex division, an arm of the company dedicated to, among other things, resurrecting extinct animals and creating biodrones, animals (people included) implanted with surveillance hardware. Ariel is reluctant to speak out loud, fearing that he will burden others with his painful stories, but his stark narrative, both of life at camp and of the harrowing details of how he came to the U.S., reveals a startling depth of character. Interspersed with Ariel's story are the nineteenth-century journal entries from one of the founding members of the Alex division and his first experiments in "de-extinction," and the bizarre narrative of the crazily unraveling Lenny, one of the first biodrones, whose hallucinations lead him to commit grotesque acts. Smith is a spiritual heir to Kurt Vonnegut, and that's especially clear in this novel ience fiction, the horrors of war, the cruelty of violence, ribald humor (in particular, Max's impressive and witty list of euphemisms for masturbation), and the vagaries of memory combine in a deeply affecting, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately hopeful way.