and the ordinary can turn extraordinary in the blink of an eye. In this thrilling new adventure, loyalties can shift as quickly as the wind. Soon Simon and Ruby must race against the clock as they try to master Simon's powers in time to stop a rogue Storm Maker's treacherous and potentially deadly plans.
Then a stranger arrives and tells the twins that Simon is a Storm Maker - part of a clandestine group of people entrusted with controlling and taming the weather - and that he is in great danger. What starts as an ordinary summer turns exciting and perilous for twins Ruby and Simon when strange occurrences begin happening on their farm - sudden gusts of wind, rainstorms, and even tornado warnings - that seem eerily timed to Simon's emotions. These three interlocking narratives-of girl, boy and dog-form an absorbing and strangely beautiful story of valor and survival that is all the more impressive for its restraint.What if you had the power to control the weather? Alone and in anguish, the girl is roused from her grief only by the need to care for Nandi and the other dogs without her human resourcefulness, they will all die.
We meet Musa, a brutalized young boy in a distant city whose ability to dowse for water has drawn cruel attention. The attack leaves Sarel orphaned-but the family's secret underground grotto, with its life-giving well, undiscovered. The first voice we hear is that of a dog, Nandi, who but partly comprehends what is happening when armed men spray bullets across the homestead where she and her pack live with a girl named Sarel and her parents. Three narrators shape our understanding of events in a place that feels as though it must Africa-there are dark-skinned gangs and people named Dingale and Umama, and fresh water is not so much the coin of the realm as the only thing of value.
The writing in "Parched" (Harcourt, 151 pages, $15.99) is as spare, dry and desolate as the landscape that Melanie Crowder depicts in this piercing debut novel for 9- to 14-year-olds.
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