The Bread We Eat in Dreams
Valente, who has recently focused on work for younger readers (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making), brings an adult sensibility to this collection of 20 stories and six poems, even those that feature adolescents who merge with the mythic. Coyote leads a nondescript high school to a once-in-a-lifetime championship (White Lines on a Green Field). One New England town has a tutelary demon (The Bread We Eat in Dreams) while another looks for a ritual virgin (The Blueberry Queen of Wiscasset). Valente mashes up fact and fable to produce both surrealism (The Wolves of Brooklyn) and humor (Twenty-Five Facts About Santa Claus), but what she does best is reveal the hearts of young folks, whether they're learning to face the realities of a vampire plague (In the Future When All's Well) or the social horrors of a postapocalyptic America fighting an alternate WWII under President Joe McCarthy (Fade to White). Jacket and interior illustrations by Kathleen Jennings add nicely to the off-kilter feeling of Valente's challenging work. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (Jan.)