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SPACE PIRATE BEARS

Dad, Jamie, and Abby, who have brown skin, curly hair, and toothy smiles, huddle up close to share stories of the faraway world of Princess Leona’s Star Defenders. This group of space heroes includes Prince Pilot, Captain Neigh the Space Horse, Cosmic Witch Bogwart, and Princess Leona herself. The cartoonish illustrations are vibrant, which makes the threat of the evil Doktor Drab even more daunting as he brings with him a dullness that drains the pages of color. But just as Princess Leona is c

I AM HAPPY!

“I am happy,” declares the pup. “I’m SO happy I…sing on a swing, swing as I sing, head in the sky, like a butterfly.” The pup chases after bubbles, dances, does somersaults, and walks on clouds! Our furry protagonist grabs the paw of a kitty, whom readers may remember from Rosen and Starling’s I Am Angry (2022). They’re both joined by a squirrel from the creators’ I Am Hungry (2023), and they “walk on air, wind in [their] hair.” These pals do many outlandish things, from rolling down mountains

LION'S GAME

In the year 1300, the king (or Mansa) of the Mali Empire is betrayed by the rival Keita clan; they attack, and only the king’s daughter, the princess Yafa, and her newborn survive the massacre. She escapes the capital city of Niani swearing revenge. Roughly 120 years later, the young assassin Diata, Yafa’s descendant, arrives in Timbuktu seeking a route to Niani to exact vengeance. The Keita clan have maintained control of the empire amidst power shifts amid the ruling castes of Mali society, b

REBELS WITH A CAUSE

Way, a professor of developmental psychology and the author of Deep Secrets, draws on considerable research, including her own longitudinal studies into the lives of boys, to show how society’s construction of “boy culture” undermines their well-being. That culture, she writes, “is rooted in ideologies that intersect with one another, including but not limited to patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.” As boys grow up, they learn that “soft” qualities, such as

GETTING TO YES

In the summer of 1978, Chris is back in his hometown of Brandon, Florida, after his first year in college at Florida State University, setting up his summer job at JB’s pizza restaurant. There, he meets Chloe; beautiful and sweet, she immediately dazzles. What follows is a look back at Chris’ previous romantic exploits, beginning with his relationship with Deb, stretching from the end of his high school days in 1977 through his first year in college and his meeting with Chloe. The narrative wea

EVERYWHERE BEAUTY IS HARLEM

Roy DeCarava (1919-2009) gets off work, and now his “time is his own.” He loads a roll of film in his camera and pays attention to what he sees around him in Harlem. Relying on his senses, he takes in the city. With his camera, he captures a variety of sights. A boy drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. An artist showing his paintings as the sunlight catches his hat. A mother and son: the love in the boy’s eyes. A crushed soda can. And then there are the sights he can’t catch. A man holding a chi

THE MOCHI MAKERS

Endpapers hint at the treat that the child and Obaachan decide to make together, using a long-standing, matrilineal recipe. With Obaachan’s “strong, wrinkled hands” and the child’s “small, quick ones”—and their whole hearts—they prepare the rice (spilling only a few grains!). While it cooks, Obaachan tells the story of how she came to America, and the two play cards and sip green tea. Soon it’s time to put the rice in a mixer, “which pounds it into a sticky mound,” and pat rice balls into flat

THE CURSE OF EELGRASS BOG

Twelve-year-old Kess and her older brother, Oliver, have lived alone in the Unnatural History Museum ever since Mam and Da left for Antarctica on a research trip ever so long ago. Well, there’s also Shrunken Jim, a pickled, disembodied head Kess carries around in a jar, a staunch if unusual friend. Kess hopes that new exhibits will revitalize the museum, and when newcomer Lilou visits, Kess finds a partner in exploration—and what they learn in Eelgrass Bog upends everything Kess thought she kne

SUMMER NIGHTS AND METEORITES

The Jewish Barbanels, like modern-day Bridgertons, provide fodder for any number of romantic adventures; this time they’ve provided a perfect foil for Jordan Edelman, who wears black lace and fishnets (even on Nantucket) and lives life fully. She flirts hard, falls harder, and cries hardest whenever the inevitable breakup comes. Jordan manages to be both uncomplicated and a muddle of messy emotions: She worries about her single, widowed father and how he’ll cope with her impending departure for

THE LONG HISTORY OF THE FUTURE

It was sci-fi writer William Gibson who said that the future is already here; it’s just very unevenly distributed. Kobie, a contributing editor at Wired and the futures editor at PC Pro, would probably agree, as she romps through a series of gee-whiz ideas for machines that have failed to fulfill their much-hyped promise. The author examines AI, robots, hyperloop transport, brain-computer interfaces, and smart cities, among other concepts, with her eyes open and tongue in her cheek. She chronic

LINGUAPHILE

In her fourth book, Sedivy, a Canadian academic specializing in linguistics and psychology and the author of Memory Speaks and Language in Mind, takes a personal tack, recounting how her life has been focused on the search for the essence of language. She grew up speaking several different tongues, which made her particularly sensitive to the twists and turns of language and how words connect to social conventions and the formation of identities. Eventually, “English would come to dominate all

MAMA'S LIBRARY SUMMERS

Two African American siblings dressed in blue shorts and striped shirts go to the library each week in the summer to pick 10 books. “Only books about Black people…no repeats,” Mama says, and “No more than three books on the same subject!” the white librarian says. After painstakingly choosing, the children haul their huge piles to the car where Mama waits, hot but too shy to enter. At home, everyone grabs a book and settles down: the narrator on the bed, the younger sister on the floor, and Mam

THE EVER-CHANGING EARTH

Following a distant glimpse of a small Asian child named Kûn pedaling through a modern landscape past outsize ghostly images of turbulent waters and immense prehistoric creatures, Baker-Smith rewinds to a view of the dinosaurs’ cataclysmic demise. He then goes further back to depict the massive interplanetary collision that produced our moon and, after millions of years of raging storms, led to the appearance of teeming life in unusual forms that evolved over eons into those of today. Meanwhile

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) began composing music as a young man in Valencia, Spain, at a school for the blind, where he learned a complex variety of braille that allowed him to make musical notation before dictating it to his assistant. “Being blind affected every aspect of Rodrigo’s life and brought him closer to music through an acute aural sense,” write Suárez-Pajares and Clark, both professors of musicology. Today, he is best known for his Concierto de Aranjuez, “the key with which Rodrigo

THE MURDERESS

When Los Angeles train station authorities force open two leaking, putrid-smelling trunks, the dismembered female bodies they find horrify them. Yet what leaves them especially aghast is the idea that Ruth Judd, the pretty young woman who presents a claim ticket for the trunks, could possibly be involved in what clearly appears to be murder. Notaro carefully reconstructs the Depression-era period in which this real-life crime took place and presents a sympathetic portrayal of Ruth, who manages

BLAME MY VIRGO MOON

Newly 15-year-old Cat really wants her new girlfriend, Morgan, to get along with her friends, but they’re just not gelling. English Cat is part of the fashion-conscious, makeup-wearing group surrounding her school’s queen bee, Siobhan, while Irish Morgan hangs with an edgier, goth-leaning cohort. To make matters worse, Morgan and Siobhan are both running for head girl. The competition gets fierce, and to avoid favoring one person over the other, Cat auditions for the school play, Romeo and Juli

THE BARNYARD SANG IN THE MERRIEST WAY

The Tanner family travels cross-country to their grandparents’ farm in Evergreen, Louisiana, for an anticipated Christmas celebration. However, they become concerned when a when the heat fails to work at the local church after a cold snap. Where will everyone celebrate? This fun adventure celebrates family and community, and Ketsviil’s illustrations offer a bright, engaging color palette to convey the upbeat tone of the Louisiana-set narrative. The often-crowded pictures balance a sense of chao

BIG RIVER

Photographer and biologist Moskowitz and nature writer Pearkes survey, in words and images, the enormous Columbia River Basin, stretching from British Columbia to Nevada and from Montana to the Pacific Ocean, its many rivers now punctuated by dozens of dams. The book opens with an expansive essay by Pearkes on the Basin’s natural and human history, including the ancient geology and glaciology that forged its rugged landscape, the evolution of salmon and their epic upriver migrations from the se

ALL ABOUT PENISES

“Lots of people have penises!” Solot and Miller cheerfully explain. “Maybe you’re curious to learn more about penises.” What follows is a fairly straightforward text about anatomy, with a sprinkling of social and emotional learning. A helpful diagram differentiates between the base, the shaft, the head, and the urethra, while illustrations depict both circumcised and uncircumcised penises (an entire paragraph in the robust “Additional Information for Parents and Caregivers” section at the end i

SING BY THE BURYING GROUND

Boruch describes her 31 short essays as thoughts, “triggered by surprise,” that have collected into unexpected pools: “thought becoming thought in spite of what I may have predicted or never wanted really.” She gives much thought to poets such as Frost, Auden, Plath, Langston Hughes, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney—a list appended to the essays cites many more. Her most lyrical pieces focus on the singularity of particular writers and on poems themselves: how, for example, “a so