Something Old: The Other Side of Dark, by Joan Lowery Nixon, Delacorte, 1986

Something New: Down the Rabbit Hole, by Peter Abrahams, Geringer, 2005

I read The Other Side of Dark, by Joan Lowery Nixon in a single sitting today. It’s only about 180 pages, and it’s written for young readers, so it didn’t take long. I wish it had taken longer.

Here’s the situation. Stacy wakes up in the hospital and doesn’t know why. She’s thirteen years old, but when she moves around under the covers a bit, she realizes she weighs a lot more than she should, and she has breasts. Feeling like she’s in the wrong body, she starts screaming.

It turns out she’s been in a coma, and has just woken up. She and her mother were shot 4 years ago, and so Stacy is seventeen, not thirteen. She has to deal with this, and all the changes in her life, her family, and among her friends – and she has to try to remember who shot her!

This is a wonderful book. Joan Lowery Nixon was a great writer (four Edgar awards!) who was well-known for letting the girls she wrote about find their own way out of problems, and Stacy is no exception. When she first realizes that whoever shot her might come after her again, her first response is fear, but immediately afterward she thinks:

“I’m tired. I’m angry. And I’m scared because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. The guy without a face who murdered my mother. And Stacy McAdams. I wonder who will find the other first.”

After that the pace never lets up, and Stacy becomes an indomitable heroine who will make you want to stand up and cheer.

Down the Rabbit Hole, by Peter Abrahams, is also a book for young readers. Ingrid Levin-Hill, thirteen years old, just wants to get to soccer practice, because “if you miss a practice, you miss the game.” She’s never walked to the soccer field from school before, but she thinks she can do it. Ingrid gets lost and winds up in the wrong part of her hometown, Echo Falls, and she meets Cracked-up Katie, who arranges a cab for her. But Ingrid leaves her red Puma soccer cleats behind.

The next day Cracked-up Katie is murdered, and the police want to talk to anyone who saw her recently, and Ingrid has just got to get her shoes back…

Ingrid loves Sherlock Holmes, and often tries to solve problems using the WWSD method. She’s trying to get by in school, hopes to win a part in the school production of Alice in Wonderland, and loves doing what she’s best at: soccer. She gets discouraged, but not easily, and she slowly works out what’s happening in Echo Falls, and who’s behind it.

Unlike Nixon’s book, Down the Rabbit Hole is written in the third person. So rather than seeing the world through Ingrid’s eyes, you see it as it is, and you’re able to interpret danger signs that she misses. Ingrid becomes your daughter, and you want to protect her, keep her safe, and in the end you become so proud of her.

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Bonus Bookfling: Peter Abrahams is well-known as an adult thriller writer, and his characters in those books get all manner of hell thrown at them. I told him recently I was worried that he might start treating Ingrid the same way, but he promised not to: “I would never do that to Ingrid!”

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