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"Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" is a powerful biography of a teenager in Montgomery, Ala., who refused to give up her seat on a bus nine months before Rosa Parks did the same. Montgomery's bus laws were the most draconian in the South; there, an entire row had to be vacated to accommodate a single white person. On March 2, 1955, Claudette, who was 15, simply refused.

"Right then, I decided I wasn't gonna take it anymore," she said. "I hadn't planned on it, but my decision was built on a lifetime of nasty experiences." What followed was, of course, more nasty experiences. She was dragged off the bus, punched, handcuffed and thrown into jail as she screamed, over and over, "It's my constitutional right!" It took nearly two years for her to be proven right, and by then she had been vilified by whites and blacks alike.

Phillip Hoose writes with utter clarity. He siphons any outrage from his prose, leaving the stark facts to speak for themselves. And left to themselves this way, oh, do they shout.

Claudette grew up in a Montgomery where she was not allowed to try on shoes or clothing in shops, or sit in waiting-room chairs that whites might sit in later, or ride an elevator with a white person. Her spontaneous actions that day set change into motion -- aided by the actions of Parks, which were not spontaneous, but planned.

The book, illustrated with historic photos, won a National Book Award and is a finalist for a Young Adult Library Services Association's award for excellence, which will be announced Monday.

LAURIE HERTZEL, BOOKS EDITOR

When the opening page of a novel has a character getting caught by a Pakistani construction worker while in flagrante solo and watching a Roman Polanski film, it's a good bet what follows will be much sassier than standard chick lit.

Sohn's book isn't a glossy depiction of striver-culture in the pricey neighborhood. She reveals and she ridicules the lifestyle in a manner that is more amusing than nasty and often borders on the absurd.

She tracks the lives of a few women and men who live in and on the edge of Park Slope. Some of the characters interact and intertwine in interesting or implausible ways. I struggled to keep track of the characters at times and wish I had made a chart at the beginning.

The book contains numerous celebrity and Brooklyn references that will ring true for those who keep up on the celeb gossip and have quaffed at the Gate or eaten risotto at al di la, but could be less satisfying to unfamiliar readers.

Sohn landed enough original zingers about the frustrations of dating, marriage, babies, psychotherapy, hippies, yuppies and movie stars to keep me smirking through the delicious denouements.