The New York Times came out with its 100 Notable Books for 2007 list, and, no surprise, Denis Johnson made it. After all, Johnson’s novel, “Tree of Smoke,” won the National Book Award.

Missing, though, was Sherman Alexie’s young-adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which also won a National Book Award. It’s not as if the Times had panned it. In his Nov. 11 review, Times critic Bruce Barcott called Alexie’s novel “a gem of a book.”

“For 15 years now,” Barcott wrote, “Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He’s done it through various characters and genres, but “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home.”

So why did the book miss the list? Maybe with work by such familiar names as Johnson, Haruki Murakami, Mario Vargas Llosa, Richard Russo, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Ha Jin, J.K. Rowling, Martin Amis, Annie Dillard, Ian McEwan, Derek Walcott, Robert Hass, Alice Munro, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Tina Brown, John Updike and Janet Malcolm on it, there just wasn't any room for a kid from Wellpinit, Wash.

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