The Thief Lord is a book that kids and many teens will enjoy. I read it first as a sixth grader and have read it over and over again for the past four years. Its a fantasy novel with a twist. The twist is that the fantasy is not in the form of fairies or dragons, but in how the kids live their lives. They are orphans, they live completely independent from adults in an abandoned movie theater and they haven't a care in the world. This book is, in my opinion, a very good competitor for Harry Potter.