In the years since turning from her earlier, Japan-based novels (most notably the award-winning The Master Puppeteer), Katherine Paterson has created a handful of engagingly rakish young Americans. The two mavericks of Bridge to Terabithia and the incorrigible title character of The Great Gilly Hopkins are spunky, independent, and sharply observed. Both books won several kinds of prizes each, but my own private prize goes to Gilly—always a foster child, never a daughter. I'd adopt her any day.

Jacob Have I Loved, Katherine Paterson's sixth novel, centers on an ugly duckling of such endurance and rough charm that readers should take to her immediately. "Wheeze" Bradshaw is a twin—a second-best twin. Her sister, Caroline, is pretty and supremely talented, while Wheeze is a gawky girl of no apparent talent at all. (p. 11)

Without even trying, Caroline acquires everything Wheeze wants. She isn't a villain, however, and...