Dragon Magic, by Andre Norton (1972)

Well, you know, you win some, you lose some...and Dragon Magic, by Andre Norton (1972), sadly fell into the later category for me. 

The premise was interesting enough--four middle school boys of desperate backgrounds and interests all living in the same neighborhood in the early 1970s, but not interested in being friends.  Then one of them discovers the magic of the beautiful dragon puzzle he finds in an old abandoned house--a puzzle with four dragons.  Each boy in turn puts together a dragon, which whisks him on a journey back in time, and they become friends in the present when they share their experiences.

The boys whose interactions in the present make a framing device for the stories of the past are:

Sig--an ordinary guy of Germanic heritage, who finds himself helping Sigurd take on Fafnir.

Ras, aka George--a black kid, whose big brother has embraced the Black Power movement, finds himself a Nubian prince enslaved in Babylon along with Daniel.  He gets to watch Daniel overcome an African swamp dragonish creature.

Artie--would be cool boy, goes back in time to King Arthur and learns a valuable lesson about meaningful relationships.

Kim--adopted from Hong Kong, goes back to ancient China where there is a very confusing war going on, and comes back knowing he should try harder to make friends.

So a diverse cast of kids who don't get all that much page time, but who actually manage to be somewhat more than stereotypes, which is good, and four stories that varied a lot in interesting-ness, which wasn't so good.  The first two (Sigurd and Daniel) were very interesting, the last two I found tedious.

Which could have been just me.  But the particulars of the stories aside, the whole ensemble never felt enough like a cohesive story to rise above the fractures of its form and make me really care.  In large part this is because the time travel magic put the boys into characters in the past--they weren't themselves, so there was no ongoing metacommentary about having travelled in time.  The stories were told straight up, with no ties back to the present, in much the same way as you might find stories anthologized in a book of "Dragon Stories of Many Lands."  And on top of that, the boys had almost no agency within their stories, which made them even less interesting.

So that's generally why I didn't care for it.  Here's a particular thing that vexed me--in Ras's story, Norton keeps referring to him as "the Nubian" and not by his name.  All the other boys were referred to by name, and it bothered me that he was depersonalized this way. 

But the dragon puzzle was beautifully described...best dragon puzzle ever.

The Atomic Weight of Secrets, by Eden Unger Bowditch (2011)

The Atomic Weight of Secrets,  or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black, by Eden Unger Bowditch (Bancroft Press, March, 2011, middle grade, 339 pages) is the first book of The Young Inventors Guild, a historical speculative fiction story about five brilliant children.  Their parents are extraordinary too, so much so that one day in 1903, when the mysterious men in black come calling, the parents, with no explaination, have to leave their children.   But the men in black have a plan for the children too, one that involves sending them off to their own special boarding school in rural Ohio.  There they are cared for by the loving Miss Brett (the first adult to ever read out loud to them--the brilliant parents were too busy being brilliant to have much time for their kids), a seemingly normal woman who's unable, or unwilling, to provide any answers....

Twelve-year-old Jasper Modest (a young inventor) and his six-year-old sister, Lucy (gifted with a perfect memory), were taken from London.  Nine-year-old Wallace Banneker, determined to follow in the footsteps of his family of African American scientists, inventors, and mathematicians, was taken from New York.  Twelve-year-old Noah Canto-Sagas, brilliant both mentally and musically, was taken from Toronto.  And the oldest child, the thirteen-year-old Faye Vigyanveta, taken from the luxurious home of her parents, Indian scientists, is fiercely determined to find out the secret of the Mysterious Men in Black who have torn apart their lives for no clear reason.

And they are indeed Mysterious.  "In black," for them, includes black tutus.  Black bear suites.  Black scarfs concealing their faces, which are shrouded by black sombreros, Easter bonnets, and the like.  All manner of grab bag bits of clothing, concealing them utterly.   And they are not exactly forthcoming to the children--which is to say, they don't say anything. 

Although the children's strange school is a virtual prison, and their weekend trips to loving foster mothers carefully orchestrated to make escape impossible, this bizarre situation is one where the children can thrive, becoming each other's first true friends.   All the delicious food they want, adult attention and love, and beautiful lab equipment.

Except that there is no getting around the fact that their parents are missing (and though they might have been distant, un-nurturing parents for the most part, this is still disturbing), the men in black are their jailers, and if they want answers, they are going to have to escape.  And being brilliant young inventors, the answer comes to them--they must build a flying machine...

This is a book that requires from its reader an acceptance of the bizarre.  The children's situation is like a dream, and the reader knows no more about the men in black then they do (although I, having read more science fiction than the kids have, soon had a theory....what do they actually look like, under all that black concealment???).

Acceptance is also required regarding the pacing of the book.  We meet all five kids just as they are about to try to escape from their bizarre situation.  But then the author goes back to the start of things, before the arrival of the men in black, but doesn't introduce us properly to all of the kids at once, instead, she doles out the introductions at intervals.  She doesn't rush it--we don't get Wallace Bannaker's back story, the last one, until page 182, which I found extreme.   So it wasn't until the final third of the book that I felt I had a really firm handle on the kids, and could really appreciate their interactions and character arcs.    Likewise, although the book starts with the escape plan getting underway, it then goes back to tell all the story up to that point.

So I read much of the book with a slightly uninvested feeling (though I liked the kids, enjoyed the details of their strange school life, and was curious to learn more about the mystery).  It was not till the story catches up to closer to where the book begins, with the great escape project well underway, that the pieces all clicked for me.   At that point, all the disparate gifts of the kids combine to make things really start humming, the tension grows, and the reader waits with baited breath for the Great Reveal....and realizes she's not going to get it.  Nope, no little wrapping up the plot threads here, just waiting for the next book...

Still, though I have reservations, it never occurred to me to put it down.  And I think it might work well for the right young reader--smart, lonely kids in particular!