Leah Bobet
Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic
March 1, 2012
368 pages
Hardcover, $19.99
In Above, Toronto YA novelist Leah Bobet's first urban fantasy novel, kids develop physical mutations. Becoming outsiders forces them to leave Above
and head underground—literally—to the city of Safe. Matthew and Ariel, residents of Safe, must escape to
Above when an old enemy attacks Safe with an army of shadows. Along the way, the two kids realize they
must also change Safe in order to survive. And Matthew might want to be more than just friends with Ariel.
“I didn’t write it as a Young Adult,” Bobet said.
“There was no sense of an ideal reader. It was really more I had a story in my
head and it was chasing around the corners, and so out you go. My agent was
'Like, look, it would work as a YA novel – it’s got a coming-of age arc, it’s
got a young protagonist and also . . . it’s quite a dark book.'”
Bobet seems to have had Marvel Comics' Uncanny X-Men in mind when she penned the tale.
Bobet seems to have had Marvel Comics' Uncanny X-Men in mind when she penned the tale.
“It’s the whole trope of secret societies and mutants or
outcasts living underground—that ‘s not how it would really happen,” Bobet
said. “This is not the kind of thing where you’d have these marble floors. If
you wanted to go up into the ‘regular world’ and pass as a straight, you’d need
more than a cool, floppy cape."
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