The First Day

Skye, the narrator of this often provocative Australian novel, has longed for the part of Mary Magdalen in her high school's production of Jesus Christ Superstar, but the part goes to a golden-voiced new girl, Judith. Skye (assigned the role of Peter) also likes Marco (who plays Jesus), but he is interested in Judith, who seems to like Morgan (Judas). The teens ponder (not too heavily) their roles in the play, and their backgrounds are as diverse as can be. Skye has been raised outside of organized religion by her widowed mother, a free spirit who long ago rejected her own strict Catholic upbringing, and Skye contrasts her life with Judith's, who has grown up in a community of fundamentalist ""Bible-bashers."" For good measure, Marco is a believing Catholic, and the director of the play (who also lives with Skye's mom) is Jewish. What sounds like formulaic fare becomes the stage for an unusually respectful exploration of religious identity and varieties of religious experience. Characters are convincingly individuated, and no single perspective or pattern of belief is made to seem more valid than the others. If Masson takes a few shortcuts in resolving the plot lines, she makes up for it with her refusal to simplify her heroine's search for meaning. Ages 11-14. (Feb.) fyi: In a wholly different genre, Masson's Serafin (St. Mary's/StarMaker, $5.50 paper 208p ages 11-14 -567-X; Feb.) inventively adapts the framework of Charles Perrault's ""Puss in Boots"" as the basis of a cosmological fantasy: half-angels, fallen angels and fallible humans participate in the struggle between good and evil.