Encountering Enchantment: A Guide to Speculative Fiction for Teens (review)

Speculative fiction, as defined here by Fichtelberg to include fantasy, science fiction, and horror, is often a jungle for professionals who lack a map to the real estate. The 1,400 titles assembled here, all published or reprinted during the last fifteen years, are an admittedly selective list, but they deliver what knowledgeable speculative-fiction readers would expect to see and push boundaries by including a section on graphic novels as well as titles in large print, Braille, audiobook, and video formats. Entries include standard bibliographic information, along with relevant awards, and an annotation (except in the cases of individual entries in adult series, where the series has a general annotation). The book is notable for its appendices that include programming ideas, fantasy lists for Harry Potter read-alikes and "Girl Power," a separate list of speculative fiction in audio or video format, and a list of books recommended for use with book clubs. Fichtelberg features short interviews with nine authors from Lloyd Alexander to Scott Westerfeld, and there is a resource list that includes books, websites for genres and authors, and an awards glossary. Navigation is enhanced by author and title indexes as well as a subject index, cross references within various sections, and tab-like markings on the page edges that help get quickly between sections. This is a thoughtful and inventive breakdown of current speculative fiction: for example, Epic Fantasy breaks down even further into Mythic Epic and Pre- and Postindustrial Epic, just the sort of details that will help match title to reader. The titles, series information, programming suggestions and navigational aids will make it very popular in public and school libraries for maintaining and building collections, as well as for linking readers to books they'll come to love.