Aileen Kilgore Henderson, Hard Times for Jake Smith

Either childrens’ books have been getting progress-ively smarter recently, or our reading level has … Er. Let’s start again. Children’s books have been getting progressively smarter recently, what with the literary sophistication to be found in writers like Philip Pullman, Lemony Snicket, and, many would argue, J.K. Rowling. Hard Times is aimed at younger readers, too, but Alabama novelist and former Stillwater teacher Henderson doesn’t dumb things down, writing about violence and abandonment in moving and straightforward prose. Her fourth book for local publisher Milkweed is an absorbing story of survival during the worst years of the Great Depression. Twelve-year-old MaryJake, cast aside at the crossroads by her dirt-poor parents, disguises herself as a boy and strikes out on her own, sort of Huck Finn in reverse.