RUSH HOUR: RECKLESS

Veteran anthologizer Cart has organizes a thrilling and literate array of short stories, poetry and graphic work, with an interview with Yann Martel, author of the Life of Pi, and includes contemporary authors such as Sharon Flake, David Levithan, Helen Frost and A.M. Jenkins, as well as authors new to the scene. The anthology opens with the short story, “Vocabulary,” in which a son becomes his father’s unwitting accomplice in a sophomoric prank against his former wife and her new boyfriend. In another story, “Chain Events,” a daughter is vacationing in Scotland with her mother, a woman who always has good ideas. Her daughter thinks herself a follower because she always takes her mother up on these good ideas until, in Scotland, she encounters something that transforms her. In “Breaking and Entering,” a boy enters the house of his former lover who is away at college. He sits in his room, snuggles in his bed and dozes off only to be found by his lover’s mother. The impact of these highly intelligent and entertaining edge-of-your-seat works packs a wallop and is a fine addition to Cart’s series of literary journals. (Anthology. YA)