One seldom encounters a collection of teen and pre-teen narrators who can retain the innocence of childhood and manifest an understanding of the world of adults. Such viewpoints are our guides through Karen Russell's evocative stories, which are set in an unreal fantasy world nonetheless haunted by the very real hopes, fears, and longings of the young people who inhabit it.

In "Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" the reader encounters kids with sleeping problems who treat the idea of sleeping as other teenagers treat the idea of sex: it's an illicit thrill and one that's hard to come by. Through this oblique conceit, we can relate to the characters' feelings of inadequacy, of being left behind, and of trying desperately to fit in. Moments of humor are strewn liberally throughout the collection. One narrator imagines that girls' breath smells like perfume, only to conclude: "But Emma smells like dinner. barbecue sauce, the buttery whiff of potato foil. Because it's Emma, it's still sort of hot."

Most powerfully, many of the stories deal with separation from parents, which must often occur as one grows up. In the collection's title story, boys and girls raised by werewolf parents are taken away to a boarding school of sorts, where they learn proper behavioral etiquette. Returning home to her family, the narrator is repulsed by the wolf ways of her people. Her inability to relate to them will remind readers of their own first, awkward homecomings. The clash of an insular family existence with one's newfound young adulthood is touching and universal, even if most of us were not raised by wolves.

-Kristin Gifford