The author of over a dozen novels and numerous short stories in his first decade as a children's writer, Chris Lynch creates tough and edgy streetwise fiction. Episodic and fast-paced, his fiction questions the male stereotypes of macho identity and inarticulate violence. His youthful characters are often athletes, or wanna-be athletes, or kids who have been churned up and spit out by the system. Outsiders all, Lynch's protagonists desperately want to be accepted for who they are. "You were not born into physical greatness and all the love and worship and happiness that are guaranteed with it," the narrator muses to himself in the short story "The Hobbyist." "But fortunately you were born American. So you can buy into it." Because Lynch's protagonists are thoughtful, sometimes complex, and often introspective teens, his writing has broad appeal among the YA readership. As School Library Journal contributor Angela J. Reynolds...