Westerfeld, Scott. MIDNIGHTERS: THE SECRET HOUR

Westerfeld, Scott.
THE SECRET HOUR
New York : Eos, 2004.

Long, long ago it was determined that there should a time when man was not present. So an hour was set aside from each day, and every night at midnight the world as we know it stops and life forms long forgotten emerge. Now, if you happen to be born at the stroke of midnight, there are two things about you that are special. One, you have access to that hour, and two you were born with secret, special powers. There are only a few places on earth that are open to this other reality and one is a seemingly ordinary little town in Oklahoma. When the story opens fifteen-year-old Jessica Day’s family has just moved to Bixby Oklahoma, and Jessica is feeling rather dismal about the local high school and its populace. It is still so soon after moving that her room is littered with half emptied boxes. She notices them stacked about in the still, dark of the room, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, and they echo her feeling of not belonging. She notices that it is quiet, absolutely quiet, and the sky outside her window is full of tiny, sparkly diamonds of light. She is very drawn to the diamonds outside her window and she reaches out into the night air. As she does, the sparkly diamonds become tiny droplets of still rain that drop at her touch, and behind the movement of her hand a small, black tunnel of empty night air forms. Jessica has entered the midnight hour. Soon she will learn that she is one of a small group of people in town who know the hour, each with special abilities they must master quickly, for they are about to face an ancient evil that lurks in that hour and wants out. Book 1 of the Midnighters series. (New Hampshire Isinglass Teen Read Award committee)