When I Was Your Age, Volume Two: Original Stories about Growing Up

Ehrlich offers more of a good thing in this second volume of memoirs of adolescence by renowned, contemporary YA authors. Here, readers can journey to their favorite writers' old stomping grounds, places where the seeds of imagination and keen powers of observation are planted. There is the unheated shed where Norma Fox Mazer presses her eye against the slats of the wall to watch and make up stories about Herbie, the landlord's son. Inside Jane Yolen's grandparents' home is a passage to discovery: a double-doored closet smelling ""of cedar and mothballs, and something else, a heavier, homier smell that I realized years afterward had been my grandfather's sweat."" And in Joseph Bruchac's ""The Snapping Turtle"" there is the ""little piece of forest"" where Bruchac's Abenaki Indian grandfather teaches him to read nature's ""signs"" and respect its gifts. Rita Williams-Garcia, Paul Fleischman, Howard Norman, E.L. Konigsburg, Michael J. Rosen, Kyoko Mori and Karen Hesse also weigh in. While the settings, themes and characters of these memoirs are as eclectic as their creators' individual writing styles, all express a poetic understanding and insight. Accompanied by brief commentaries from the authors, these works perceptively and succinctly encapsulate the joys, pains and quiet moments of realization that are a part of growing up. Ages 9-14. (Apr.)