Black Moss and Collier Macmillan are introducing new series aimed at active adolescent readers WOMEN ABOUND in my family. My father had four sisters, my mother two, and I am one of four daughters. It never occurred to me that I would have anything but daughters. How surprising and illuminating it has been, therefore, to share my life with a son for the last 11 years. We are so alike and yet so different and nowhere is that more apparent than in the way we approach books. Because reading is like a fix for me, I always assumed it would be the same for my son. It isn`t. Given his druthers Jeffrey reads sports biographies and stories, satirical magazines such as Private Eye and our own Frank, and compilations like The Prehistory of the Far Side. At his age I devoured romances and historical fiction; he wants information and action. What is the same is the restless browsing for something good to read. That itch is what made us agree to read the books under review. Together we have read - that is, he has read some and I have read all - Lost Time, by Charles Montpetit, and Beyond the Future, by Johanne Masse, both translated by Frances Morgan; The Invisible Empire, by Denis Cote, translated by David Homel and Shooting for the Stars, also by Cote, but translated by Jane Brierley; and four books by Daniel Sernine: Scorpion`s Treasure and The Sword of Arhapal, translated by Frances Morgan; and Those Who Watch Over the Earth and Argus Steps In, translated by David Homel. They are all under 200 pages in length, retail for $595 in paperback, and are published by Black Moss in its Young Readers` Library. Additionally, from Collier Macmillan`s Series 2000 we read Starcrosser, by John lbbitson (88 pages), and The Hungry Lizards, by Lesley Choyce (90 pages), each $5.50 in paperback. We are not talking about classic literature here. Most of these books are the equivalent of Harlequins for pre-teens: easy reading packaged to a familiar formula. They are almost all adventure stories, often in the form of science fiction; they are not overtly violent, but they are directed primarily at boys. And boys, for the most part, do have different reading habits from girls. For example, as a baby my son loved images, but he would never sit placidly and listen to a story. For the longest time we read the pictures instead of the words. When we progressed to chapter books adults sometimes call them novels - he would bounce a ball or practise shots on goal while 1 read. "You aren`t listening," 1 would accuse. "Yes, 1 am," he would retort. "What did 1 just read, then?" And, of course, he would recite the last sentence, bouncing all the while. It is easy enough to feed your kids good books when you are doing the reading. The real object, of course, is to entice them into reading to themselves. Boredom was what kept me turning pages as a child. Nowadays kids are so distracted by technological gizmos that often reading is what they do only after the machines have been unplugged. Fortunately, reading is a major slice of the curriculum at Jeffrey`s school, and earlier this year I rejoiced when he discovered Rosemary Sutcliffe. But two novels later he stumbled across Stephen King`s The Shining and that was it for King Arthur. Of the 10 books under review, I found the Black Moss series woefully underedited. Most are rather clunky translations, needing another run through to smooth out the syntax and the transitions. Often, it seemed as though the original French novel had been chopped and sliced to fit rather like the way Cinderella`s stepsisters mutilated their feet to cram them into the glass slipper. The blood shows, particularly in Those Who Watch Over the Earth and Argus Steps In. I thought Lost Time might appeal because of its shifting time sequences and the way in which the author Charles Montpetit actively enlists the reader in plotting the story. In structure and style, it is as close to a video game as stories usually get. However, my son found the book weird, doubtless preferring his narrative lotteries on the screen to the page. Jeffrey really liked Shooting for the Stays because "it was about hockey, my favourite sport. I think the way Denis Cote has adapted the sport into a science fiction book is a great accomplishment" He could easily envision a world "run by a caste of dehumanized old men" where hockey games are played under a dome to protect the players from violent fans, and he identified with the challenge facing the protagonist Michael Lenoir, "a star player in Quebec who has to join a world team to play a series of games against a team of robots. If his team is not victorious the robots will have a great promotion and will take over most of the humans` jobs" Neither of us found Cote`s other offering, The Invisible Empire, convincing. I found the story of the murder of a John Lennon clone derivative and the conspiracy theory about a nefarious religious cult shrill and predictable. In Jeffrey`s view "the plot goes off in different directions and never really joins up again. I think Denis Cote should stick to sports" Although the cold war tension in Beyond the Future has been somewhat thawed by recent events, the book is still a compelling tale about a 1995 space shuttle crew who avoid a nuclear holocaust because they are on a mission, only to return to an alien and unrecognizable earth. My son liked the way the author "switched" points of view "from the inhabitants of the new world to the astronauts" and I liked the ethical and emotional dilemmas the characters faced. Scorpion`s Treasure and The Sword of Arhapal, by Daniel Sernine, are a slightly uneasy fit because they are about the past rather than the future; but they are rich, dense novels, fluidly translated by Frances Morgan, about the supernatural and two boys` vigilant struggle against evil in a l7th-century settlement in New France. The Series 2000 books, Starcrosser and The Hungry Lizards, are much slicker than the Black Moss translations, but at the same time are not nearly as imaginative or quirky. They struck me as designer stories, by which I mean products that are acutely machined to a boy`s lust for action, speed, danger, glory, and ultimately a happy and safe ending. Both are extremely competent and both deliver engrossing reads - once. For all its editorial wants, I think the Black Moss series is more rewarding. These books, intended for silent reading, do for the most part have legitimate authorial voices. And that`s the key to good literature in anybody`s language. We all grow up listening to someone else. Good books supplant human readers - and the best of them, of course, allow us to hear ourselves.