The Book Jumper

Fifteen-year-old Amy Lennox has grown up in Germany, but after a traumatic spring she talks her mother into taking them back to her birthplace, the island of Stormsay off the coast of Scotland. Amy’s family and another clan, the Macalisters, are keepers of a secret library of texts that date back centuries, and they can “jump” into stories, interacting with their characters, so long as they stay “in the margins, between the lines.” But a thief is also jumping into books and stealing the authors’ ideas, ruining the books. Amy and Will Macalister try to solve the mystery before more stories are destroyed. Amy also learns the identity of her father in a less-developed story line. The lore of the two families and German author Gläser’s descriptions of Stormsay and the library are meticulous and moody, creating a gothic atmosphere that serves this star-crossed love story well. Meetings with book characters, like Kipling’s Shere Khan and Dickens’s Oliver Twist, offer entertaining moments that balance the grimmer elements of the story as it builds to a bittersweet ending. Ages 12–up. (Jan.)