Max and David, two preternaturally talented students at magical Rowan Academy, quest around the world and eventually beyond to prevent a demon from gaining the power to unmake creation. This dark sequel (the forces of good are continually defeated) swells in scale and scope, and Neff occasionally overrelies on summary, but overall his storytelling remains compelling.

When Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies in 1942, four-year-old Annelex's comfortable colonial world turned upside down. With her pilot father away at war, her family was among 300,000 Europeans and Eurasians interned for years in Japanese prison camps. Separated from her brother, Annelex, her mother and grandmother endured harsh punishment and near-starvation before the camps were liberated in 1945 and the family joyfully reunited. However, the Indonesian war of independence against 300 years of Dutch colonial rule soon dashed their hopes of returning to the life they knew. In spare, unsentimental language, the author lets events speak for themselves, focusing on details that matter to children: of fear, hunger, boredom and the devastating discovery that adults are helpless to protect them. The result is a powerfully concentrated portrayal of war's brutalities seen through a child's eyes. Like Yoshiko Uchida's The Invisible Thread (1991), this memoir is an outstanding contribution to children's literature about World War II, illustrating the astonishing ability of human beings to survive and overcome years of displacement, internment and exile. (Memoir. 10 & up)

In 1942, Annelex and her family lived an idyllic existence on Java in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies. LexÆs father was a Dutch Naval officer and their life was one of ease with servants and friends all around. The advance of the Japanese army changed everything. Her father went missing while on a mission; the Japanese took over Java and then rounded up all the Europeans and shipped them to prison camps. Jack, LexÆs brother, was sent to a different camp than Lex, their mother, and grandmother. For three and a half years, Lex lived with fear and deprivation while clinging to the hope of her family reuniting. The author was barely four when she was imprisoned and relates the most vivid of her memories from a childÆs perspective. She describes watching Japanese soldiers swing women back and forth holding their legs and arms and then toss them onto a truck. Lex was reminded of a favorite game of hers and JackÆs and could not understand why the women werenÆt laughingùit was years before Lex realized that those women had been dead. Other scenes were undeniably horrific no matter the age of the witness. This book brings to light a little known chapter of World War II in writing that is spare and forthright, and teen readers with any interest in that period of history will find a compelling story.ùDebbie Clifford.