Parents' Guide to The Nest

With expert pacing, hopeful messages of accepting faults and struggles, and creepy tension, it's hard to decide what to like best about this tiny but significant novel. Author Kenneth Oppel, who wrote the equally enthralling The Boundless only a year before THE NEST -- he's really on a roll -- presents a family struggling with the stress of a sick baby through the eyes of Steve, a boy whose age isn't given (but he's probably in middle school). He's anxious enough to see a therapist, washes his hands too often, and is afraid to even say the name of the family's new baby who's come into the house and may not live.

That in itself would be a compelling story in Oppel's hands. But then there are Steve's dreams about the wasps that are way too real. And a scary knife sharpener with missing fingers who goes door to door. And a toy telephone the little sister answers to talk to "Mr. Nobody." Readers will be torn like Steve about what to believe is real and who's really on his side. The tension builds right after Steve makes a profound decision about what he stands for. And he's willing to risk his life for it. After readers close the book and the tension of the climax fades, the beautiful themes in The Nest linger. A favorite: that Steve's family will have struggles and his brother won't be perfect but he's part of the family and is loved and valued for who he is, just as Steve is loved and valued.