By Scott Westerfeld
Published by
HarperTeen
Jessica Day is new in the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma. Jessica is already facing the normal stresses of moving from Chicago for her mom's job, adjusting to a new high school and advanced classes, and dealing with her younger sister's temper tantrums about the family's move. If this weren't enough for a 15 year-old girl to handle, the first day of school Jessica becomes the focused interest of the strangest kids at school. You know, the kids that dress all in black, listen to loud metal music, and sit alone at their own lunch table. Jessica can't figure out why they are so interested in her, and why they keep asking her strange questions, like about her dreams and the taste of the town's water. But then she does have a strange dream....or was it?
Jessica soon learns that she is part of a select group of people born at the stroke of midnight. This gives her the ability to live out a 25th hour of the day at the strike of midnight. At first it is a beautiful landscape of leaves and rain drops frozen in time and glowing with a strange blue light. But then Jessica learns that she and the other kids aren't the only things that inhabits the secret hour. There are older and more dangerous things in this eerie world who want her dead. Now it's up to Jess and her new friends Rex, Dess, Melissa, and Jonathan to find out why they want her dead and how to stop them.
Scott Westerfeld does another wonderful job with teen fiction in this series (there are three other books in the series which I would be reading right now except that every copy at my library is checked out...grrr). Westerfeld is best known for his Uglies, Pretties, and Specials books (which are also good, but don't get me started on the development of the protagonist Tally, the books' greatest downfall) which are very good science fiction books. His Midnighters series, however, reminds me of author Charles de Lint (go read his Moonheart right now!). Westerfeld does a fun job of interweaving Native American mythology with a little science fiction in these books. I'm so impressed with the rules of his fantastical midnight world. But I won't say anymore, it's more fun to discover them on your own!
This is a very easy read....as in 280 pages in two days. I think 8th-11th graders will enjoy this one. I'm sure most students can relate to Jessica's social and school dilemmas. It does sadden me though to think that Hermoine Granger and I may be the only two souls who LOVED school and reading thick history books. Sigh.
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