Works delight, from covers to what's inside

Take it from someone who has to choose just one young-adult book to review every other week: There's an incredible amount of interesting stuff being published for younger readers these days. The following is a selection of exciting fiction and nonfiction that has come out this fall, from award winners and finalists to illustrated classics. Hardbound and beautifully designed, these books stand up to being judged by their covers - and any one of them would make a thoughtful gift.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Volume 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 351 pp., $17.99). M.T. Anderson won the National Book Award this year with Octavian, an unusual exploration of a segment of American history that probably didn't make it into your high school textbook. Octavian has been raised by his mother, an African princess, and a group of rationalist philosophers who go by numbers instead of names. He starts out life relatively unaware of the tumult of Revolutionary Boston, but the outside world encroaches on his personal sphere - as it tends to - and Octavian is faced with the realities of slavery, war, and personal betrayal.

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote (Knopf, 48 pp., $17.95).

In 1956, Truman Capote, already famous for Other Voices, Other Rooms, published a surprisingly winsome memoir of the Christmas he was 7 - and of the quirky elderly woman who was his closest friend.

Together they gather pecans for fruitcake in a dilapidated baby carriage, pal around with their terrier, Queenie, and avoid the "other people" who inhabit their house and frequently make them both cry.

This 50th-anniversary publication includes a CD of the story read by Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm and features sweet watercolors by Beth Peck. (Queenie is in every single picture.) This is a wonderful story, wonderfully told.

Looking For Bapu by Anjali Banerjee (Wendy Lamb, 162 pp., $15.95). Banerjee's ebullient first novel, Maya Running, took young readers back to an olden time that ended before their memories began: the 1970s. It also gently and realistically dealt with the issue of being an ethnic minority in a sea of whiteness. In Looking for Bapu, Banerjee tells the story of a young boy's relationship with his grandfather, once again blending spiritual awareness, a sense of humor, and the details of her characters' Indian heritage in a way that's both sophisticated and very likable.