48 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOR CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULTS Seeing Things: The Boogieman Ryan K. Abdelaziz, independently published, 2024, $8.99/paperback, e-book available, 47 pages. This first book of an expected trilogy follows James, an ordinary young man with an extraordinary secret— he can see things others can’t, including a terrifying creature who haunts his dreams. Discovering he is a Seer, James finds himself thrust into a clandestine battle of good versus evil. Guided by his mentor, George, James learns to harness his powers as he confronts the sinister creatures of his relentless nightmares. As he battles dark forces and uncovers hidden truths, he discovers the weight of destiny on his shoulders. Ryan Abdelaziz is a 9-year-old Foreign Service kid (yes, you read that right) who lives in Virginia with his little brother, Luca, and his Foreign Service parents, Gabi and Khalid. The family has been posted in Nassau, Riyadh, and Recife. POETRY Novice Nida Sophasarun, LSU Press, 2025, $20.95/paperback, e-book available, 78 pages. How close can a person come to home when their family has deserted it? Guided by this question, the poems in Nida Sophasarun’s Novice traverse natural, animal, and dream worlds, seeking intimacy in a snake coming in from the rain, a mother’s body imagined as a house, and the moon serving as both the missing piece and the linchpin in a night sky. Organized by tropical seasons and unfolding in Asia and the American South, Novice proposes that home is monumental and ruined, remembered and forgotten, local and diffuse, peopled and haunted. The themes in this book of poetry draw on the author’s nearly 25 years in a Foreign Service family and experiences in Thailand, Burma, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Bulgaria. Nida Sophasarun is from Atlanta and holds degrees from Wellesley College and Johns Hopkins. Her husband is Foreign Service Officer Josh Huck. GUIDEBOOKS/SELF-HELP Preserving with Purpose: Reimagining Buildings for Community Benefit Amy Hetletvedt, Island Press, 2025, $40.00/paperback (presale), e-book available, 216 pages. While prominent buildings like Notre Dame in Paris rise from the ashes, historic buildings in disinvested communities are lost at an alarming rate. The resulting holes signify a loss of not only structures but also the stories and the embedded possibilities that the buildings represent. In Preserving with Purpose, architect Amy Hetletvedt unveils a revolutionary but simple vision for rethinking building conservation in vulnerable communities. She explores ways to repurpose existing buildings, explains why these buildings matter, and shows what communities and professionals can make of them—together. With nearly 200 images that visually support the concepts discussed, the book is an accessible, engaging resource for a broad audience including artists, activists, and those simply interested in the why of vacant, abandoned, and distressed buildings. Amy Hetletvedt is a licensed architect, preservationist, and educator. She and her FSO husband have served in The Hague, Lomé, Prague, Tunis, and Ottawa. Hetletvedt also spent four years in an Expanded Professional Associates Program (EPAP) position concentrating on facility planning and historic building stewardship.
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