THE SUMMER OF LOVE

It's the late 1960s, and Lily Maier's family has just moved to a new tract house in the nondescript suburban town of Woodland. The book begins like any teen novel: Lily explores the neighborhood; fights with her younger sister, Pearl; and meets the local kids. Lily's initial skepticism about the move dissolves when she encounters a boy who seems smarter and more mature than the rest. When their physical relationship intensifies, though, he backs off in the inexplicable way boys sometimes do. Hurt and confused, Lily reluctantly ends up making out with another guy, who's crass and predatory and won't take no for an answer. On top of the boy problem, Lily discovers Pearl's romantic attachment to Kim, a neighborhood girl. Drechsler handles Kim and Pearl's sneak-off-and-kiss relationship, and Lily's response to it, with subtlety and sensitivity, adding another layer of emotional complexity to the story. She combines insight and empathy in this true-to-life portrayal of sexual awakening and budding introspection among teenagers. The book's brown-and-turquoise color scheme, with lots of hand-lettered dialogue, can be hard on the eyes, but the excellent page layouts overcome the problem. Drechsler's drawings capture teenagers' languid, seemingly uncomfortable postures—girls lean and flirt, boys slouch awkwardly around them—and her rendition of these moments are startlingly realistic. Drechsler successfully juxtaposes inchoate adolescent emotions against the square soulessness of 1960s suburbia. (Sept. 1)