Now You See It...

Awards & Honors

Junior Library Guild selection
VOYA Top Shelf Fiction Awards
New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (2008)

Review

"Wendy is a well-conceived, unusual heroine; her equivocating (what she calls 'weaseling'), sarcasm, self-interest, and regret combine to make her recognizable to anyone who has felt guilty about comfortable apathy, and readers will root for her as she starts becoming the person she wants to be."

—The Bulletin

Cover Artist

Other books with covers by

Cliff Nielsen

Although there is no James Fenimore Cooper High School nor Westfall Nursing Home in Rochester, there is a Highland Park. The Lilac Festival which Wendy mentions is an actual event celebrated in Rochester every May. For more about the Lilac Festival, go HERE

Original cover art by Cliff Nielsen

Ages: 12 & Up

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Book Description:

With her new glasses, Wendy begins to see cheerful corpses, old crones disguised as high school cheerleaders, and portals to both the past and to another world--a place where everyone knows of the glasses' powers and will do anything they can to get them.

Where do you GET those ideas?

One year, I had a pair of wonderful sunglasses. I would be riding in the car with my family and I would say, "WOW! Look at that incredible sunset!" or: "That bush has the most amazing pink flowers!" or: "Isn't this the most absolutely stunning spring ever!" My husband and daughter would say, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Very nice," and were so obviously unimpressed that eventually I looked over the top of the glasses and saw that--apparently--the lenses had just the faintest tint of rose to them which made everything with even the slightest hint of pink look much more dramatic than they did otherwise.

My family started referring to those sunglasses as the glasses that let me see things nobody else could see, and I just carried that one or two steps further.

Excerpt

Ignoring the path, I ran straight onto the grass, into a cluster of trees. There really weren't as many as I had hoped.

I glanced over my shoulder.

He was gaining.

I sped through the arch--which sure looked like granite, though I knew it couldn't be--and there were a lot more trees on the far side, for which I was grateful. I zigzagged, watching the ground so I wouldn't trip over tree roots, and wondered if now was the time to try hiding. I couldn't hear Julian anymore, so I looked back.

Not a sign of him.

Of course, not a sign of the arch, either.

Or the wall.

Or the nursing home.

And there were a lot of trees.

A whole lot.

I was in a forest. Not a wooded yard. Not a park.

A freaking forest.

Glasses

Wendy's description of her eyesight pretty much matches mine, and I have needed to wear glasses since I was two years old. In spite of this, I had a tendency to not wear my glasses since I hated them so much, and this resulted in my frequently walking into things, as well as developing a reputation for being stuck-up because people thought I was ignoring them when, in fact, I couldn't see them.

I now wear contact lenses, because--while I think other people can look attractive in glasses--I have never owned a pair of glasses that I liked.

Vivian Vande Velde

Author of Books for Young People