The Secret Hour

I am a 7th grade reading teacher who doesn't particularly enjoy fantasy or science fiction. I LOVED this book and purchased a set to use in my literature circles with my students. They loved it. What really makes it great is that there are 2 more books in the series, so you've hooked your students, and hopefully, they will continue to read the series. Students at this level relate to being different as being a negative thing. They enjoy seeing these outcasts have an advantage over all the kids who make fun of them and all of the kids that they don't fit in with.

I read this when I saw it on the library shelf, read the back, and thought, mmm, looks like a pretty good book. Well it is! The main charactor, Jessica Day, has just moved to Bixby Oklahoma, where things are really wierd. So are the people. Or, at least, four of the people. Melissa, Rex, Dess, and Johnathan, all have powers. Polymath, acrobat, mindcaster, and seer. The weird thing about Bixby, is that 1. The town really likes the number thirteen. Thirteen pointed stars, thirteen letter name, and 2. At exactly the stroke of midnight, time stops. Except for five people. Rex, Dess, Mellissa, Johnathan, and Jessica. It's called the blue time, and in it roam slithers and darklings. Aggressive midnight beings. All with one intent. Get Jessica. They have to find her power, then beat all the slithers and darklings wile Jessica learns the ever-changing rules of the blue-time. It's a really good book, and really worth reading over and over again.

And now it's my favorite book of all time! Who knew? Anyone who picks up this book will be imediately hooked. The pace of this book never slows down.When Jessica Day moves to Bixby, she never expected that she would discover a secret world, Midnight, and the strange teens alone that live in it. Rex reads the lore, Melissa is a pyschic, Dess does math, and Jonathan flys. Each of them have their own talent at Midnight, but Jessica can't seem to figure out what hers is. Sometimes it seems like she's not even a real midnighter."Maybe you're not," Melissa said. "Not a real one, anyway. Something about you is so....... 11:59. You don't belong."This is deffinatly a book worth reading over and over......

"Melissa didn't know exactly what to think of the new girl. Below her shifting emotions was an unexpected flavor, a sharp metal taste, like a coin pressed against the tip of Melissa's tongue. The scent of unbridled energy was everywhere, but maybe that had just been the storm. And of course, someone new was always full of unfamiliar flavors, unexpected faculties. Each of Melissa's friends felt different to her, after all. But Jessica Day felt more than different."Jessica thought she was just like any other teenager when her family moved from suburban Chicago to Bixby, Oklahoma. She was restless, lonely, dissatisfied and trying to "adjust." Her ambitious mother was distracted with work and her father was a boring stay-at-home dad. But from her first day at Bixby High she sensed that there was something definitely "different" afoot. She knew that she was being seen as more than the new kid in town and that there was something special about her. Rex, Melissa, Dess and Jonathan are Midnighters. Each has a special power that helps them through the blue, frozen hour of midnight in Bixby. Rex is the historian, Melissa is highly psychic, Dess is a math genius and Jonathan can defy gravity. Together they help protect the little town from the slithers and darklings who come during the secret hour. Now that they have met Jessica they must figure out why the dark forces are bent on killing her and, in the end, what kind of power this Jessica has.Put all these ingredients together, plus a growing romance between Jessica and Jonathan, and you have a fast-paced, creative fantasy as only Scott Westerfeld can write. Picture Buffy meeting superheroes, and you get the idea of the pace and direction of this adventure. Not only would this book translate beautifully into a TV series, it could also succeed, with the right art work, as a graphic novel. Readers will be fully tantalized waiting for the next two installments of this trilogy. --- Reviewed by Sally M. Tibbetts (...)