RUSH HOUR: SIN

To be published twice a year, the inaugural issue of this journal of YA literature includes essays, short stories, poetry, artwork, and excerpts from novels. Just the first page of Cart’s introduction hypes the volume as eclectic, innovative, cutting-edge, risk-taking, fresh, original, and provocative. Such promotion is unnecessary, as it is, indeed, a solid collection. Each issue will have a different theme; this time it’s sin. The nonfiction stars here. Marc Aronson’s superb essay on the Salem witch trials will send readers to his new work Witch-Hunt (2003), and Hazel Rochman’s “What Would I Have Done?” is an excellent introduction to the range of writing on the Holocaust. The fiction is consistently strong, examining the many faces of sin, and Sonya Sones’s subtly erotic “Massage” is the best of the poems. The art is provocative if not especially appealing. Nothing on the cover indicates the audience, so perhaps this fine journal will also find itself in the hands of adults. (notes on the contributors) (Anthology. YA)