Dreams and Visions: Fourteen Flights of Fantasy edited by M. Jerry Weiss & Helen S. Weiss Young adult 256 pages Starscape March 2006 Hardcover     Dreams and Visions is a collection of 14 young adult fantasy and science fiction. It includes stories by famed authors Tamora Pierce, Joan Bauer and Charles de Lint. As is typical and reminiscent of old time fairy tales, and as will thrill the young adult reader, most of the stories could come under the heading of Nightmares and Visions, not Dreams. The house in Patrice Kindl’s “Depressing Acres” slowly starts to resemble a gingerbread house as the children of the neighborhood begin to disappear. The djinn of Suzanne Fisher Staples’ "Jameel and the House of Djinn" both help and hinder a young boy forced to return to his native Pakistan. The most clever and easy to appreciate as a writer is Joan Bower’s “Blocked” - the story of characters who take over to write their own story. Everyone who has ever had writer’s block can appreciate that one. But it is John J. Ritter’s "Baseball in Iraq" that sets this collection above others of its genre. As a blistering attack on the modern war, it is unsurpassed. An angel welcomes a young, newly dead American airman to the future. They examine each of their pasts to determine what should happen next. As they compare their "worst thing I ever did stories," it becomes a story of the meaning of evil. “Once you cross that line…degrees don’t matter…Evil is evil. That’s what no one ever tells us.” It is difficult to imagine this story in a book of YA fantasy, but it is included. The surprise identity of the angel is told on the inside cover of the book, but is best left to be told in the story. This an incredibly varied collection of short stories for well-read young adults. From young love to the end of the world to the meaning of evil, it is all here. More than one will become classics of its genre, destined for use in textbooks and school anthologies.     web reviews   Barb Radmore/2006 for curled up with a good kid's book   For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)