Things books in order

Reading order

Things Not Seen opens with Bobby Phillips waking up one morning to find he has become invisible. There is no dramatic explanation, a defective electric blanket and an unusual solar event are the closest thing to a cause, and the story that follows is less about how it happened than what it does to him. Bobby meets Alicia, a girl who is blind, and that relationship becomes the center of the book. Because she cannot see him, she sees him more clearly than anyone else can. It is a simple idea that Clements handles with real care.

The second book, Things Hoped For, shifts the focus to Gwen, a teenage musician in New York City preparing for conservatory auditions when her grandfather disappears. She meets Robert, the same Bobby from the first book, now older and also in the city for music reasons. The third book, Things That Are, returns to Alicia and picks up directly where the second ended. Together the three books form a quiet, thoughtful trilogy that uses science fiction as a frame for something closer to literary fiction about adolescence and identity.

These books are sometimes shelved with middle grade and sometimes with young adult fiction, and they suit readers on the older end of the middle-grade range. Clements wrote them with more restraint and less humor than his school stories, and the tone is warmer and more interior.