A boy’s refusal to rat out his older brother lands him in juvenile prison.

Author Shawn Goodman’s unflinching “Kindness for Weakness” follows 15-year-old James, the youngest son in a massively screwed-up family. His mom is in thrall to her latest loser meth head boyfriend, and Louis, his big brother, 19, is a gym rat and dealer who enlists James as a drug runner. The only person James can really count upon is his English teacher, who opens James’ narrow world with classic novels.

When James gets caught by the po-po, Louis skedaddles, leaving James on his own to get fingerprinted, booked and interviewed by cops who know Louis as a bad character. Still, James won’t give up his brother, not even after he’s transferred to a juvenile detention facility notorious for its sadistic staff. The boys routinely are verbally and physically abused, sometimes to the point of requiring medical attention (or worse).

Author Goodman’s account of life in juvie reverberates with realism; Goodman previously worked as a school psychologist in some New York state juvenile justice centers.

Some enterprising teacher should figure out a way to teach a literature class that includes books like “Kindness for Weakness,” Walter Dean Myers’ “Monster,” “Smack” and “Junk” by Melvin Burgess, and “Smoke,” and Ellen Hopkins’ “Fallout.”

And for music lovers, “Kindness for Weakness” loosely references the Soul Children’s “Kindness for Weakness,” later covered by the hip-hop group Dilated Peoples.

“Kindness for Weakness” by Shawn Goodman (Delacorte, $16.99), age 14 and up.

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Are these beach books? Um, yes.

It happens every year, the onslaught of summer reading material.

There’s usually a big literary title or two, like this year’s “Transatlantic” by Colum McCann and “The Woman Upstairs” by Claire Messud.

There’s also usually a heady biography (like the new Charles Moore biography “Margaret Thatcher”), a salacious tell-all (“Waiting to be Heard” by Amanda Knox), a can’t-miss thriller (the latest Dan Brown thriller, “Inferno”) and a talker (“Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg). There is some comic relief (“Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” by David Sedaris), something from John le Carre (“A Delicate Truth”), something from Danielle Steel (“First Sight,” coming in July), a big celebrity memoir (“The Outsider” by Jimmy Conners). And there’s always a wildcard or two (last year, it was “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed; stay tuned for this year’s left-field entry).

In other words, it’s a busy season for books.

Faced with the scrum of seasonal blockbusters, what’s a publisher of a good old-fashioned beach read supposed to do to attract some beach-reading attention from bookstore buyers (or online browsers, for that matter?)

Put a beach on the cover, that’s what. That way there’s no question about it: This Book Is To Be Packed Into Your Beach Bag, and meant to be read by the beach (or pool, or lake, or other body of water).

More than a dozen new books have crossed my desk in the past few weeks, all of which employ a similar motif on the cover: A woman (or girl, or group of girls), standing by the water (or in the water, or sitting on a dock), with her face obscured (or turned away, or cut out of the frame altogether). Some of them are effective and evocative (the cover for “The Time Between” by Karen White stands out for its ethereal mood, the cover for “The Widow Waltz” by Sally Koslow adds a note of humor with a be-shirted pup).

Some of them are … not so evocative.

What’s on your summer reading list? Is there a beach on the cover?

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That could be what attracted Ben Affleck, who has optioned the book for film – a lively narrative of pre-revolutionary Boston, with 15,000 citizens caught up in a cycle of increasing tension that climaxed in 1775 with the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first major battle of the American Revolution.

The best-selling author, who won the 2000 National Book Award for “The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” will speak at the Tattered Cover on Monday, May 20, reconstructing that ideological and geographical landscape with rich detail and stories of people long lost to history.

One of the book’s main characters is Joseph Warren, aptly described by Barry as “a forgotten Founding Father.” After all, everyone knows John Adams, Sam Adams and John Hancock – but who remembers Joseph Warren?

He was a 33-year-old physician who led the patriots on the ground – the guy who gave Paul Revere the orders to send out the alarm that British troops were headed to Concord, a major general with a “swashbuckling personal magnetism” who was elected President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and oversaw the organization of the new Continental Army.

“His seemingly limitless capacity for work, along with his unmatched ability to adapt his own actions to meet the demands of the moment, meant that as the speed of events began to increase…he was inevitably looked to as the person to keep the patriot cause together,” writes Philbrick.

Warren, who grew up selling milk from the family farm in Roxbury, began his studies at Harvard University at age 14, became a doctor, and was grand master of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Masons–the society that became the secret cell of the patriot cause, where the details of the Boston Tea Party were said to be worked out in December 1773.

The book covers the 18 months that followed the Boston Tea Party, looking at the vigilantes who frightened people in Boston with their violence, and at the more level-headed patriots who eventually decided to rebel against the British, who’d overtaken their city.

The fighting at Lexington and Concord comes to life with portraits of the people of the countryside – yeoman farmers in “floppy-brimmed hats, baggy, dark-colored coats, gray homespun stockings, and buckled cowhide shoes…with their powder horns slung from their shoulders.”
And then there’s the Battle of Bunker Hill, which actually took place on Breed’s Hill, almost half a mile to the southeast. The bloodiest battle of the Revolution, it was the place where several hundred militia men, running disastrously low on gunpowder, until the British were 15 yards away and they could see “the whites of their eyes,” killing or wounding almost half the British force. Ultimately, the citizen soldiers ran out of gunpowder and had to retreat, but showed that the ragtag colonial militia was willing to stand up to the well-trained British regulars, and foretold their ultimate victory.

This book is the latest installment of Philbrick’s narrative of how the colonies became the United States, which began with the Pulitzer-nominated “Mayflower,” about the ship’s voyage and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. He will speak at the Tattered Cover, 2526 E. Colfax, on Monday, May 20 at 7:30 p.m.

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“Paperboy” by Vince Vawter follows a stuttering adolescent through a summer in 1959.

Vince Vawter‘s young adult novel “Paperboy” follows 11-year-old Victor Vollmer, who prefers to his housekeeper’s nickname, “Little Man,” to the tongue-twister on his birth certificate.

His stammering inspires alternate names for the housekeeper (“Mam”) and his best friend, Art (“Rat”), both easier for his lips to produce. Little Man has another trick, inserting a hiss (“sssss”) as a preface to challenging words, reasoning “It’s better to be called a snake than a retard.”

As the story begins, Little Man is taking over as the substitute paperboy while his friend Rat is out of town. He’s good at throwing newspapers accurately onto porches, but quails at making the weekly collections for the afternoon paper, the tongue-twistingly-named Press-Scimitar. (Afternoon paper! There’s something that fixes this novel even more firmly in the distant past than an 11-year-old with a paper route.)

Collections become less intimidating as the paperboy learns his customers. There’s the pretty but perpetually drunk woman whose abusive husband’s behavior explains her addiction problems. There’s someone known as TV Boy, who rarely leaves his house for reasons that the paperboy doesn’t discern for weeks. There’s Ara T, a junk man whose malevolent personality leaks into Victor’s life, and infects Mam’s as well. There’s a kindly, verbose newspaperman who takes Victor under his wing.

“Paperboy” is set in Memphis, and race sidles in as part of the story. But a pretty small part. Victor notes that Mam can only ride in front of the bus if he’s sitting with her. When he comments on that rule, Mam’s response is pragmatic: “Rules is rules. Don’t mean they don’t need changing but best to abide by them till they is changed.”

“Paperby” by Vince Vawter (Delacorte, $16.99), ages 10 and up.

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Author-illustrator Eliza Wheeler’s luminous book follows a worldly gardener

“Miss Maple’s Seeds,” written and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler, follows Miss Maple, a kindly, Mother Goose-ish lady gardener who annually collects ungerminated seeds and prepares them for the following spring.

Miss Maple harbors the little seeds in the maple tree where she lives, caring for seeds that range from tiny poppy and raspberry seeds to heftier acorns and lupine. Miss Maple educates the little seeds about what to expect on “field trips” to their new homes on muddy river banks, on grassy fields and in shady forests.

Each night, Miss Maple reads to her charges by firefly light, whispering, “Take care, my little ones, for the world is big and you are small,” a lovely benediction.

Wheeler’s illustrations are rich with light and detail, from a glowing fireplace on a snowy day to celebrating rain and distant lands. It’s a wonderful story that celebrates both spring and parenthood.

“Miss Maple’s Seeds,” written and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler (Nancy Paulsen Books, $16.99), age 3 and up.

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“Transatlantic” by Colum McCann

Chief among the benefits that come with overseeing the Denver Post’s Books coverage is the daily delivery of books. It’s not unusual for 50 or more books to be wheeled into my office on a given weekday, of which 2 or 3 always scream out to be read right away. (If only!)

Like, for example, an advance copy of the new novel from Colum McCann: “Transatlantic,” due out in June.

McCann needs no introduction to fans of contemporary fiction; his last work, “Let the Great World Spin” sold hundreds of thousands of copies and won a slew of awards, from the National Book Award to the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

I tore through “Transatlantic” on a couple of plane rides last weekend. My copy is already dog-eared and fingerprinted. It was thoroughly absorbing.

Not many writers are able to capture New York City the way McCann – an Irishman who calls New York home – can, as in this passage, when a young Irish immigrant arrives in New York in 1846:

New York appeared like a cough of blood. The sun was going down behind the warehouses and tall buildings. She saw men on the wharfside in the ruin of themselves. A man barked questions. Name. Age. Birthplace. Speak up, he said. Speak up, goddamnit. She was sprayed with lice powder and allowed entry. Lily jostled her way along the waterfront among the stevedores, police officers, beggars. A stench rose up from the oily harbor. The brokenness. The rawness. The filth. She had met only a few Americans in her life – all of them in Webb’s house in Dublin, specimens of great dignity, men like Frederick Douglass – but in New York the men were adherent to shadows. The sloping Negroes were bent and huddled. What freedom, that? Some still wore the branding marks. She passed by them. Scars. Crutches. Slings. The women along the docks – white women, black women, mulattos – were rude with face color. Their dresses rose above their ankles. It was not all what Lily had wanted it to be. No fancy carriages pulled by drays. No men in bow ties. No thumping speeches along the waterfront. Just the filthy Irish calling out to her in all manner of disdain. And the silent Germans. The skulking Italians. She wandered amongst them in a haze. Children in rags of unbleached cotton. Dogs on the corner. A mob of pigeons descended from the sky. She moved away from the cries of teamsters and the cadenced call of peddlers. Pulled her shawl around her shoulders. Her heart shuddered in her thin dress. She walked the streets, terrified of thieves. Shoes were filthy with human waste. She clutched her bonnet tight. Rain fell. Her feet blistered. The streets were a fever. Brick upon brick. Voice upon voice. She passed dimly lit lofts where women sat sewing. Men in top hats stood in the doorways of dry-goods stores. Boys on their knees set cobblestones. A fat man wound a music box. A young girl made paper cutouts. She hurried on. Hungry. Shattered. A rat brazened past her on the pavement. She slept in a hotel on Fourth Avenue where the bedbugs concealed themselves beneath the wallpaper. She woke, her first morning in America, to the scream of a horse being beaten with a truncheon outside her window.

Random House will publish “Transatlantic” on June 4.

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The first entry in Olivia Samms’ “Bea Catcher Chronicles” is a lively story.

Olivia Samms‘ gripping novel “Sketchy” is the first in a series about the dynamic and fallible Bea Washington, a recovering drug addict and high school student who has the preternatural ability to draw whatever a nearby person is thinking about. (Awkward if Bea happens to be sketching near a typical adolescent male on hormonal overdrive.)

It’s an engaging premise, and one that will appeal to fans of TV shows like “CSI,” “Lie To Me” and “Dexter.”

“Sketchy” opens with some boys who, while cutting class, literally stumble across the pallid body of a girl who’s been raped, hurt and left for dead. The victim’s revival begins a chain of events that sucks Bea, and all her foibles, into its gravitational pull. She’s an unlikely and unwilling heroine, with a nascent love interest that feels a smidgen predatory. (Really? An apparently good cop and a 17-year-old girl?)

“Sketchy,” apart from the ick factor associated with the increasingly over-interested detective, is a quick, riveting read. Bea’s talent is paranormal, but barely. It’s a hugely welcome relief from the surfeit of teen books featuring vampires, werewolves, zombies and other beasts. Bea is smart and refreshing, a rebel doing her best to do well by doing good, or at least doing better than she has in the past. I’m eager to see what happens next in her chaotic life.

“Sketchy,” by Olivia Samms (Amazon Children’s Publishing, $16.99) Ages 14 and up.

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“Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters”

The McKissacks were awarded the 1990 Coretta Scott King Honor for “A Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullman Porter.” They won again in 1995 for “Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters,” in 2000 for “Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers,” and in 2003 for “Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in The United States.”

Other titles from the McKissack’s include “Sojurner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?” and “Black Diamond: Story of the Negro Baseball League.”

Read more about McKissack’s life and legacy via Publishers Weekly and also in this New York Times obituary.

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Alvaro F. Villa’s wordless picture book is both heartbreaking and hopeful

“Flood” has no words, but doesn’t really need them (which is a hard thing for a writer to admit). It’s the story of a contented-looking family and their snug, two-story house near a waterfront. The setting is bucolic: Fields, shimmering stretches of water, shade trees, abundant flowers.

Then the sky becomes a threatening orange, and roiling gray thunderheads move in, dwarfing the little house. The family worriedly watches a TV weather report. As the skies open, they pile protective sandbags around their threatened house in a vain attempt to thwart the rising water.

It’s the damp version of the horrific scenario too many Colorado families faced last summer, when the Waldo Canyon and High Park fires drove people from their homes. (Minus the sandbags.)

When the waters recede, leaving a crumpled, mud-drifted porch and soggy interior, and the family looks upon the ruined house for the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t contain enough words to express their despair. What happens next is, as people say in a different context, the triumph of hope over experience.

The images by Argentinian artist Villa, are absolutely pregnant with meaning, nuanced and riveting.

“Flood” by Alvaro F. Villa (Picture Window/Capstone Books, $20.99), ages 4 and up.

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“Lost Sloth,” by the author of “Olive, the Other Reindeer,” is winsome.

The interwebz love sloths almost as much as they heart kittehs. It’s a pretty safe bet that J. Otto Seibold knew that before he started to sketch the slightly pouty-mouthed sloth featured in “Lost Sloth.”

The naif style of Seibold, a self-taught artist, is immediately familiar to readers who remember “Olive The Other Reindeer,” Seibold’s phenomenal literary and merchandising success. “Lost Sloth” falls a bit short of the standard set in “Olive,” where the humor involved tweaking longstanding Christmas tropes.

But it’s still adorable, and undoubtedly will be embraced by the “Olive” fans who’ve grown up to be hipster Redditors and contributors to MeFi and other communities that love themselves a big helping of this perpetually-bemused South American mammal.

In “Lost Sloth,” a lethargic Sloth learns he’s won a shopping spree — but has only three hours to claim his prize. Three hours may sound like plenty of time to you and me, but to a sloth, three hours is is, like, a nanosecond. Oh, noes! How on earth is a creature that moves 5.1 to 15 feet per minute supposed to make it all the way across town to the Shopping Spree Store?

And what will Sloth buy when he gets there? The answer is both surprising and ironic — just like the demographic audience for this book.

“Lost Sloth” by J. Otto Seibold (McSweeney’s McMullens, $16.95) Ages 4 and up, especially hipsters

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