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FACING MIGHTY FEARS ABOUT BEING APART FROM PARENTS
“So, being apart happens.” Despite a page design best described as utilitarian, this series entry offers clingy young readers and their concerned parents both a reassuring message and some helpful tools for getting past the angst. Huebner offers a lengthy catalog of animal parents who, much like human ones, “go to great lengths to keep their babies safe.” These examples are printed as “Fun Facts” on images of small loose-leaf pages taped in below the widely spaced text. The author also provides
TERRIBLE HORSES
A younger sibling has an older—and much cooler—sister. “I want her friends to be my friends. I want her things to be my things,” the child tells us. But “she wants her friends to be her friends. She wants her things to be her things.” When the two fight, the younger child retreats and writes “stories of terrible horses.” They say horses are the most difficult thing for an artist to draw, but if that’s the case, then no one told Wilson-Max. His horses careen across the page in magnificent colors
IT'S MURDER, YOU BETCHA!
Doris Day Anderson is like many other 61-year-old women—aside from the fact that she recently solved a murder. Doris has sworn to put her nosy tendencies to rest ever since. However, when she takes an afternoon to go ice fishing with her sisters, Rose and Grace, Doris gets more than she bargained for when the trio reel in the leg of Lars Carlson, a fellow resident of Hallock, Minnesota and Rose’s boyfriend. When Rose requests that Doris find out if Lars was two-timing her with his ex, Etta, Dor
IN THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY
“Since its inception, immigrant detention has been an affront to basic ideals of justice and compassion,” writes Stanford historian Minian, author of Undocumented Lives. Even if the numbers of detained didn’t change much from Obama to Trump to Biden, the practice of separating families and detaining children apart from their parents was employed more vigorously in that middle term than on either side. The author chronicles how draconian measures such as imprisonment without due process and even
DEAR WENDY
Chinese American first-year college student Sophie Chi (she/her) runs Dear Wendy, a popular anonymous Instagram account, where she provides relationship advice to her fellow Wellesley College students. She feels like she’s hitting her stride when a new anonymous Instagram account pops up, seemingly parodying her account. Fellow Wellesley student Jo Ephron (she/they), who’s white and has two moms, started Dear Wanda as a one-off joke for her friends. But as the account gains popularity, Wendy an
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY WITH MURDER
When Lauren moves to Happy Valley, Pennsylvania, just before her senior year, the last thing she wants is to get involved in more drama. When she left everything she knew behind in California, desperate to start over in a new place with her mom and her mom’s new boyfriend, all she brought with her were terrible memories of an unimaginable trauma. But Lauren’s plans fail when a no-strings-attached hookup with classmate Robbie Crestmont unwittingly entangles her in something dangerous: She learns
CAN YOU HEAR THE PLANTS SPEAK?
The young narrator spends summer days with loving great-grandparents who impart important lessons: “These trees are our ancestors” and “We thank them with a song, a blessing, and a few drops of water.” From mountains to rivers, every part of nature is alive, and the child learns to listen to the plants, who offer food, promise to quench the little one’s thirst, and provide smoke to “lift your prayers to heaven.” As the youngster grows, so does the surrounding cityscape, silencing the animals an
WHAT KINGDOM
Before the relative independence of the residential facility, our narrator was locked in the psychiatric ward of a hospital and subjected to repeated electroconvulsive therapy. She’s determined never to be sent there again. Now she has her own fifth-floor room along with other young adults, among them Hector, from Peru, where his psychoses were treated with exorcism. Their housing is intended to be temporary, an “impermanent halfway house,” “a practice home.” Together with the support staff, sh
THE HEART NEVER FORGETS
In this story told from the perspective of a young child, a small town gathers for the masquerade—a West African event where people don masks representing ancestors, spirits, or deities. This masquerade, however, is different for our young protagonist—it’s the first one without Grandpa. Taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells, the child recalls the akaras that Grandpa loved to eat and the way he smiled as he shared them. The drums thump louder, and musicians join the din as the festival ra
BUTTER
Three of the men died in suspicious accidents, one of a drug overdose, another under a train, and another in a bathtub. Determined to score an interview with the assumed murderer, who is in a detention center awaiting a second trial, Rika overcomes the woman’s refusals by expressing great interest in food. To further gain her trust, Rika carries out the extreme assignments concocted by Kajimana, including having sex (with her droopy older boyfriend, as it turns out) before rushing out to consum
TEACHING EDDIE TO FLY
Arthur, a small bear, is friends with Eddie, an ostrich. After Arthur asks Eddie why he doesn’t fly, Eddie explains that he wasn’t taught. Solicitous Arthur decides to play teacher. He enjoys giving lectures and illustrates aeronautical principles on a chalkboard. Next, Arthur instructs Eddie to flap his wings, but nothing doing. More lessons ensue. Eddie is lifted in a hot-air balloon, jumps off a diving board, tries stilts, and dangles from a parachute. Arthur decides to ask some birds how th
WE WHO PRODUCE PEARLS
“We who dream / mark time by the moon, / a heavenly body containing multitudes, whose many faces mirror our own.” Writing in verse, Ho notes the diversity of the Asian American community. She alludes to the many reasons that people took the risk of immigrating to America: the wounds of colonization, unfair labor practices, and dreams of opportunities. Affirming that the Asian experience is an integral part of U.S. history, she acknowledges the oppression that Asian Americans have endured, but,
THIS IS NOT MY LUNCHBOX!
In a lush green woodland, a light-skinned child sets up a tent and hungrily opens a red lunchbox. Aaargh! It’s crawling with insects and spiders! “No thank you! I will NOT eat that! This is not my lunch box. This lunch box belongs to the…” A page turn reveals the answer: “downy woodpecker.” Over the course of the book, the child opens more differently colored lunchboxes to reveal the food preferences of a jumping mouse, black bear, praying mantis, moose, wood frog, red fox, American robin, skun
T IS FOR TRAILS
Each letter of the alphabet is devoted to a different topic, though the entries share some similarities. A rhyming verse set against an illustration introduces the letter’s topic: backpack, clothes, hydration, leave no trace, urban hiking. Along the left or right sides of each page, lengthy text boxes provide more detail and suggest a trail to hike (the trail or national park name starts with the page’s featured letter), along with its location, distance, and level of difficulty. While Young’s
SING, I
Ester Prynn, whose mother named her in admiration of Hawthorne’s passionate heroine, lives in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay with her husband and two teenage sons. One morning, at the convenience store where she works for an angry, misogynist boss, a masked robber barges in, violently threatening her and her co-worker, making off with a few hundred dollars, and, it turns out, unsettling Ester’s life. Restless and unfulfilled, Ester is a familiar character: a woman who has devoted herse
NOW THEY WILL KNOW I AM HERE
In Paris, a van carrying two “briefcase-size parcels” to the U.S. Embassy is ambushed, sparking an international crisis. The driver of the van is beheaded in the assault, suggesting merciless terrorists are involved. Enter American Tom Rivers, a CIA officer who formerly worked in Army intelligence. With his Luminox watch and ability to take a beating in the line of duty, he’s tasked with figuring out what’s going on. He meets a “smart, beautiful and dangerous” woman named Raz Jackson in Paris.
PROJECT ÜBERMENSCH
Unsuspecting sailors aboard the USS Eldridge in 1943 are the subjects of an experiment conducted by the United States Navy in which their ship physically disappears then reappears; the experiment goes awry, killing many and wounding several others, including Third Mate Peter Smithwick, whose legs must be amputated at the knees. The narrative flashes forward to present day North Carolina, where religious handyman and all-around nice-guy Orvin Littney meets his new neighbor, the mysterious Geoffr
SLEEPAWAY
This slim, artful novel by Prufer, a poet, imagines a world consumed by a peculiar viral phenomenon—communities are struck by the “Sinaloan condition,” mysterious but brief attacks that force people to collectively nod off for a minute or more. Tornado sirens have been repurposed to sound the alarm when the “sleeps” are coming, but they still induce calamities on the roads and skies. Worse, though most people wake up, some are left in extended comas; Glass, a 12-year-old boy in Missouri, has lo
THE SOWER OF BLACK FIELD
Viktor Koch, a 67-year-old Catholic missionary from the United States, lives in a monastery with his fellow monks of the Passionist order in Schwarzenfeld, “a backwater village nestled in the rambling, pine-covered hills of southeast Germany.” He is a beloved member of the community, having previously employed all the unemployed workers of the village in the construction of the monastery eight years prior. But in the spring of 1941, as the Third Reich bans Catholic worship and prepares to seize
NEXT LEVEL
After mother and son attend church, the child sheds his restrictive clothes for something light and comfy. The boy plays outside before the two take the bus home, where the child bathes and gets ready for bed. The stylish mother is always on the same page as her child, never embarrassed, even when others judge the boy for behavior they see as disruptive. Though many people don’t understand the child, he’s “on the next level,” as she tells him. Cole Doyon’s text is a poignant poem from a parent