What knowledge is worth having? Sixteen year old Adele asks herself this in crime writer Malla Nunn’s YA debut, after her room mate calls her ignorant. The insult smarts all the more because it comes from Lottie Diamond, who is what Adele calls a third-class girl. A bottom-shelf girl. A girl with whom someone like…

Harry Potter will be eleven forever. Despite the million or so words that follow the event of his eleventh birthday, in which he grows and masters spells and vanquishes his enemy, the real magic of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series—the storybook magic, that is—is contained within the first two acts of the very first book.…