"The Wish List," Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2002; 200 pp.

If you couldn't get enough of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, put this book on your wish list.

Fowl fans will warm to yet another exciting tale that doesn't talk down to kids. As inventive as Colfer's Artemis books, with an irreverent sense of humor and an impressive cast of characters, this is a rollicking read. First published in Ireland in 2000, it's just been released worldwide in hardback (the paperback edition is due out in August 2003).

Like Artemis, the wickedly ingenious lead character in the Artemis Fowl series, 14-year-old Meg Finn isn't your everyday heroine. She plays hooky from school, shoplifts and vandalizes public property. Things take a turn for the worse after lowlife Belch Brennan persuades her to help him break into the home of pensioner Lowrie McCall -- and they get caught red-handed by the gun-toting old man. Belch's pit bull, Raptor, takes a bite out of McCall, and McCall's shotgun falls into Belch's hands.