Jamila Gavin offers a textured, nuanced, evocative story of the upper and lower classes in England in 1741, concentrating her focus on two 13-year-old boys and their intertwined ambitions. It's a big, ambitious, old-fashioned book about England at the dawn of the industrial age. The word most frequently used to describe this young-adult novel, which won the Whitbread for best children's book of 2001, is "Dickensian" -- in the very best sense.  (GBR339, $7.95)