There are all kinds of readers in the world and my middle child is a re-reader. Once he falls in love with a book, he commits. This is the child who got hooked on reading via graphic novels and I wonder if the time it takes to translate a story that’s told mostly in pictures, and the depth of the world created by the addition of visuals, have shaped his reading tastes. He doesn’t seek variety. He could be happy on a desert island with a complete set of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Thus, I considered it a great victory this summer when I offered him Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, a thick steampunk fantasy, and he bit. In fact, he loved it.

Roughly following historical contours, Leviathan opens with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife but focuses on their surviving son, Alek, who escapes death. In alternate chapters, readers get to know Deryn Sharp, a girl so intent on joining the British Air Service she’s willing to disguise herself as a boy. Alek and Deryn meet, join forces, and World War I is on. In Westerfeld’s re-imagining, the combatants are the Clankers, whose weaponry consists of heavily fortified machinery, and the Darwinists, whose airships are made up of bioengineered animals. The Leviathan is the most colossal of these, a giant whale kept afloat by microscopic hydrogen-breathers.

First in a planned four-book series (three novels and a heavily illustrated “manual of aeronautics”), the book is also exquisitely designed. Westerfeld wanted to capture the period feel of the era in which the story is set, so he hired illustrator Keith Thompson to create fifty, full-plate interior illustrations. If Leviathan doesn’t become a classic, it won’t be because it doesn’t already look line one.

Though Alek and Deryn share star billing and I am sure Leviathan will have a female readership, this is a story that seems tailor made for that middle school boy who has decided books are boring, and reading something girls do. In case you can’t convince them with my pitch, show them the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYiw5vkQFPw

Westerfeld, who broke out with the Uglies series – fantasies set in a dystopian future where 16-year-olds are forced to undergo radical cosmetic surgery to perfect their looks -- will be in Miami Sunday to talk about his work. He’ll meet with Books & Books’ Teen Reads Forum at 5pm, before the main event at 6. Both sessions will be held at the Coral Gables location, 265 Aragon Ave.