As a pre-teen, I fell in love with Harriet the Spy in the way that many pre-teens fell in love with Harry Potter a decade ago. I often attribute my adult profession of anthropologist to my love of Harriet. She was my idol. I dressed up like her, kept a notebook, and even got caught once “spying” at one of my neighbor’s houses in Billings, Montana. I had heard that their house had a dumbwaiter, and in the book Harriet had hidden inside the dumbwaiter to spy. I got caught before I had even found the dumbwaiter! Nonetheless, she inspired me to listen, to watch, and to write.
S. B. Stein’s new Lucy & James series has the potential to captivate a whole new generation of young readers and to inspire young people to go out into the world, to learn everything they can about it, and most importantly to make it a better place.
Lucy and James are young teens, each with strong senses of self; they are moral and global thinkers. Lucy is from New York City, has been homeschooled, but mostly schooled in the Museum of Natural History where her parents both work as diorama artists. (I want that job). Her parents decide that it is time for her to go to “real” school, something she dreads, as she tried it once before and barely lasted a day. Through her own ingenuity, she finds a perfect school, The World Academy, halfway across the planet, and manages to convince her parents to send her there.
Lucy has a passion for animals, especially endangered species, and has set some lofty goals for herself; she wants to save them all. In the first book, she has set her sights on saving the plowshare tortoise of Madagascar. On the Star Ferry en route to the World College she meets James. James, like Lucy was home schooled, or more like “world schooled,” having spent most of his life traveling the world with his tour guide family. He is less cerebral and more physically inclined than Lucy, but he longs for more meaning to his life; he finds his match and meaning with Lucy, and together they take an amazing and dangerous adventure to save the turtles and break up a smuggling ring based in Africa.
I hope that S.B. Stein’s next adventure for Lucy & James, which is set in Iceland, is as riveting as this one! And, I can’t wait for the movies!
oooooh. great review. thank you.