List

Category
Audience

The Stolen Lady

Laura Morelli

From the acclaimed author of The Night Portrait comes a stunning historical novel about two women, separated by five hundred years, who each hide Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—with unintended consequences.


France, 1939

At the dawn of World War II, Anne Guichard, a young archivist employed at the Louvre, arrives home to find her brother missing. While she works to discover his whereabouts, refugees begin flooding into Paris and German artillery fire rattles the city. Once they reach the city, the Nazis will stop at nothing to get their hands on the Louvre’s art collection. Anne is quickly sent to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre’s most precious artworks—including the Mona Lisa—are being transferred to ensure their safety. With the Germans hard on their heels, Anne frantically moves the Mona Lisa and other treasures again and again in an elaborate game of hide and seek. As the threat to the masterpieces and her life grows closer, Anne also begins to learn the truth about her brother and the role he plays in this dangerous game.

Florence, 1479

House servant Bellina Sardi’s future seems fixed when she accompanies her newly married mistress, Lisa Gherardini, to her home across the Arno. Lisa’s husband, a prosperous silk merchant, is aligned with the powerful Medici, his home filled with luxuries and treasures. But soon, Bellina finds herself bewitched by a charismatic monk who has urged Florentines to rise up against the Medici and to empty their homes of the riches and jewels her new employer prizes. When Master Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint a portrait of Lisa, Bellina finds herself tasked with hiding an impossible secret.

When art and war collide, Leonardo da Vinci, his beautiful subject Lisa, and the portrait find themselves in the crosshairs of history. 

View Details >>

Birnam Wood

Eleanor Catton

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Financial Times, Slate, The Chicago Public Library, Kirkus, The Telegraph
A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick

“[A] savagely satirical thriller.” —People

The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

View Details >>

We Loved It All

Lydia Millet

Across more than a dozen acclaimed works of fiction, readers have become intimate with Lydia Millet's distinctive voice and sly wit. We Loved It All, her first nonfiction book, combines the precision of fact with the power of narrative to evoke our enmeshment with the more-than-human world.

Emerging from Millet's quarter century of wildlife and climate advocacy, We Loved it All marries scenes from her life with moments of nearness to "the others"-- the animals and plants with whom we share the earth. Accounts of fears and failures, jobs and friendships, childhood and motherhood are interspersed with exquisite accounts of nonhumans and arresting meditations on the power of story to shape the future.

Seeking to understand why we immerse ourselves in the domestic and immediate, turning away from more sweeping views, she examines how grand cultural myths can deny our longing for the company of nature and deprive us of its charisma and inspiration. In a thrilling distillation of experience and emotion, she evinces the familiar sense of feeling both well-meaning and powerless--a creature subject to forces that are baffling in their immensity. The fear and grief of extinction and climate change, Millet suggests, are forms of love that might be turned to resistance.

We Loved It All shimmers with curiosity and laconic humor yet addresses with reverence the most urgent crises of our day. An incantatory, bewitching devotional to the vast and precious bestiary of the earth, it asks that we extend to other living beings the protection they deserve--the simple grace of continued existence.

View Details >>

Good Housekeeping Organize Your Life

Good Housekeeping

Decluttering your home has never been easier with this step-by-step action plan. Plus, hundreds of genius tricks help you create a calm and tidy life.

Often the hardest part of organizing is getting started. This attractive book from the experts at Good Housekeeping breaks down your decluttering to-do list into smaller zones so you can tidy up and whip your home into shape.

Whether you're looking to take on every room in the house or focus on trouble spots (like your linen closet and that junk drawer!), this step-by-step action plan will help you decide what to keep and what to let go, as well as give you neat ideas for putting every space and every room in order…and to keep them that way.

With 5-minute tidy-up projects or a 28-day declutter challenge and beautiful photographs throughout, you’ll unlock the secrets to an organized home.

Inside you’ll find how to:

  • Divide your organizing projects into zones to make them manageable
  • Clear out your closets
  • Dejunk the junk drawer–for good!
  • Maximize space in the fridge, freezer and pantry
  • Free up overstuffed nooks and crannies
  • Boost bathroom storage


With inspiring yet practical advice from the home experts at Good Housekeeping, you’ll create order in your home and transform your life.

 

 

View Details >>

Table for Two

Amor Towles

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by the New York Times Book Review Podcast, Reader's Digest, Time, and more

From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories, including a novella featuring one of his most beloved characters

 
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood.

The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.

In Towles’s novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.

Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

View Details >>

How to Solve Your Own Murder

Kristen Perrin

Named most anticipated by: Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, BookRiot, BookBub, The Nerd Daily, Shelf Reflection, Novel Suspects, Borrow Read Repeat, The Everygirl, The Scout Guide, The Real Book Spy

The Top LibraryReads pick for March 2024

A Publishers Marketplace 2024 BuzzBook

For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.
 
In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?
 
As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

 

View Details >>

Like Happiness

Ursula Villarreal-Moura

A searing debut about the complexities of gender, power, and fame, told through the story of a young woman's destructive relationship with a legendary writer.

It's 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner Vera, she spends her days surrounded by art at the museum where she works. She loves this new life, but more than anything, she loves it for helping her forget the decade she spent in New York City; the years she spent orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Domínguez.

But when a reporter calls from the US asking for an interview, the careful separation Tatum has constructed between her past and present begins to crumble. Domínguez has been accused of assault by another woman, and the reporter is looking for corroboration. Tatum agrees to tell her story, but she begins with a clarification: while there are similarities, what happened to the other woman is not what happened to her.

As Tatum is forced to reexamine the all-consuming but undefinable relationship that dominated so much of her early adulthood, long-buried questions surface. What did happen between them? And why is she still struggling with the mark the relationship left on her life? Searching for clarity, Tatum decides to tell her story a second way as well: in the form of a letter to Domínguez, recounting and reclaiming the totality of their relationship, from the moment they met to the night the relationship imploded.

Told in a dual narrative that alternates between Tatum's present-day and her letter, Like Happiness explores the nuances of a complicated and imbalanced relationship, catalyzing a reckoning with gender, celebrity, memory, Latinx identity, and the unexpected ways power dynamics can manifest.

View Details >>

The Breakthrough Years

Ellen Galinsky

Blending cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling, The Breakthrough Years offers readers a paradigm-shifting comprehensive understanding of adolescence.

“Just wait until they’re a teenager!”

Many parents of newborns have heard this warning about the stressful phase that’s to come. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way?

Child development expert Ellen Galinsky challenges widely held assumptions about adolescents and offers new ways for parents and others to better understand and interact with them in a way that helps them thrive.

By combining the latest research on cognitive neuroscience with an unprecedented and extensive set of studies of young people nine through nineteen and their families, Galinsky reveals, among other things, that adolescents don’t want to separate completely from their parents but seek a different type of relationship; that they want to be helpers rather than be helped; and that social media can become a positive influence for teens.

Galinsky’s Shared Solutions framework and Possibilities Mindset show you how to turn daily conflicts into opportunities for problem-solving where both teens and parents feel listened to and respected; how to encourage positive risk-taking in your child like standing up for themselves, making new friends, and helping their communities; and how to promote five essential executive function–based skills that can help them succeed now and in the future.

The Breakthrough Years recasts adolescence as a time of possibility for teens and adults, offering breakthrough opportunities for connection.

View Details >>

The Ikaria Way

Diane Kochilas

Diane Kochilas' new cookbook that brings the plant-based cuisine of Ikaria to your dinner table.

Ikaria is an island in Greece where people live to a ripe old age, sometimes living well past 100. Diane Kochilas, host of the television series My Greek Table, is a daughter of Ikaria. The Ikaria Way is her latest cookbook and is filled with easy, contemporary recipes rooted in her background and steeped in the ancient Greek traditions of plant-based cuisine.

As Diane says, Greeks are almost vegan, but they’d never call themselves that. The array of plant-based dishes in the Greek diet is unsurpassed anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Diane’s pantry, and the one she suggests for readers, is culled from the traditions of the Mediterranean and is full of ingredients that have long given food its flavor: herbs, olive oil, nuts, and more. The recipes in The Ikaria Way are simple, almost entirely plant-based, prepared with real food and almost nothing processed, save for the occasional can of tomatoes. Readers will love meze like smoked eggplant with tahini and walnuts or baked chickpeas and pumpkin patties. There are wonderful salads combining strawberries and asparagus and robust mains like white bean stew with eggplant.

The Ikaria Way brings the healthy-eating recipes of an ancient island to readers everywhere. It is destined to take its place alongside Diane’s other books on the shelves of all good home cooks who want healthy eating and robust, delicious flavors on the same plate.

View Details >>

Age of Revolutions

Fareed Zakaria

Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk--the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world?

In this major work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world. Three such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a fascinating series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world--and created politics as we know it today. Next, the French Revolution, an explosive era that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us today. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Great Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world.

Alongside these paradigm-shifting historical events, Zakaria probes four present-day revolutions: globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. For all their benefits, the globalization and technology revolutions have produced profound disruptions and pervasive anxiety and our identity. And increasingly, identity is the battlefield on which the twenty-first century's polarized politics are fought. All this is set against a geopolitical revolution as great as the one that catapulted the United States to world power in the late nineteenth century. Now we are entering a world in which the US is no longer the dominant power. As we find ourselves at the nexus of four seismic revolutions, we can easily imagine a dark future. But Zakaria proves that pessimism is premature. If we act wisely, the liberal international order can be revived and populism relegated to the ash heap of history.

As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to once again reframe and illuminate our turbulent present. His bold, compelling arguments make this book essential reading in our age of revolutions.

View Details >>

There's Always This Year

Hanif Abdurraqib

A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home—from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America

“Mesmerizing . . . not only the most original sports book I’ve ever read but one of the most moving books I’ve ever read, period.”—Steve James, director of Hoop Dreams

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. “Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father’s jump shot,” Abdurraqib writes. “The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.”
 
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it’s basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

View Details >>

Worry

Alexandra Tanner

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Nylon, The Millions, and Debutiful!

Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world on the verge of calamity—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood.


It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother, a newly devout Messianic Jew, starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. Jules, halfheartedly struggling to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly comes to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. And Amy Klobuchar might have rabies. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, a disastrous trip home to Florida forces Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, constant fixtures in each other’s lives—to ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.

View Details >>

It Was Supposed to Be Sunny

Samantha Cotterill

A perfectly planned birthday party goes awry in this gentle story about adapting to the unexpected, written for kids on the autism spectrum and called “brilliant” and “engaging” by autism specialist Tony Attwood

Laila feels like her sparkly sunshine birthday celebration is on the brink of ruin when it starts to storm. Then, just as she starts feeling okay with moving her party indoors, an accident with her cake makes her want to call the whole thing off. But with the help of her mom and a little alone time with her service dog, she knows she can handle this.

Changes in routine can be hard for any kid, but especially for kids on the autism spectrum. Samantha Cotterill's fourth book in the Little Senses series provides gentle guidance along with adorable illustrations to help every kid navigate schedule changes and overwhelming social situations.

View Details >>

Good Different

Meg Eden Kuyatt

"The next Wonder. Good Different should be required reading." -- Good Morning America

An extraordinary novel-in-verse for fans of Starfish and A Kind of Spark about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference.

Selah knows her rules for being normal.

She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.

Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.

Selah's friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.

But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn't mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it's too late?

This is a moving and unputdownable story about learning to celebrate the things that make us different. Good Different is the perfect next read for fans of Counting by 7s or Jasmine Warga.

View Details >>

Save Me a Seat

Sarah Weeks

Joe and Ravi might be from very different places, but they're both stuck in the same place: SCHOOL.

Joe's lived in the same town all his life, and was doing just fine until his best friends moved away and left him on his own.

Ravi's family just moved to America from India, and he's finding it pretty hard to figure out where he fits in.

Joe and Ravi don't think they have anything in common -- but soon enough they have a common enemy (the biggest bully in their class) and a common mission: to take control of their lives over the course of a single crazy week.


 

View Details >>

Mighty Jack

Ben Hatke

Jack might be the only kid in the world who's dreading summer. But he's got a good reason: summer is when his single mom takes a second job and leaves him at home to watch his autistic kid sister, Maddy. It's a lot of responsibility, and it's boring, too, because Maddy doesn't talk. Ever. But then, one day at the flea market, Maddy does talk—to tell Jack to trade their mom's car for a box of mysterious seeds. It's the best mistake Jack has ever made.

In Mighty Jack, what starts as a normal little garden out back behind the house quickly grows up into a wild, magical jungle with tiny onion babies running amok, huge, pink pumpkins that bite, and, on one moonlit night that changes everything...a dragon.

View Details >>

Tornado Brain

Cat Patrick

In this heartfelt and powerfully affecting coming of age story, a neurodivergent 7th grader is determined to find her missing best friend before it's too late.

Things never seem to go as easily for thirteen-year-old Frankie as they do for her sister, Tess. Unlike Tess, Frankie is neurodivergent. In her case, that means she can't stand to be touched, loud noises bother her, she's easily distracted, she hates changes in her routine, and she has to go see a therapist while other kids get to hang out at the beach. It also means Frankie has trouble making friends. She did have one--Colette--but they're not friends anymore. It's complicated.

Then, just weeks before the end of seventh grade, Colette unexpectedly shows up at Frankie's door. The next morning, Colette vanishes. Now, after losing Colette yet again, Frankie's convinced that her former best friend left clues behind that only she can decipher, so she persuades her reluctant sister to help her unravel the mystery of Colette's disappearance before it's too late.

A powerful story of friendship, sisters, and forgiveness, Tornado Brain is an achingly honest portrait of a young girl trying to find space to be herself.

View Details >>

My Rainbow

DeShanna Neal

A dedicated mom puts love into action as she creates the perfect rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter, based on the real-life experience of mother-daughter advocate duo Trinity and DeShanna Neal.

Warm morning sunlight and love fill the Neal home. And on one quiet day, playtime leads to an important realization:Trinity wants long hair like her dolls. She needs it to express who she truly is.

So her family decides to take a trip to the beauty supply store, but none of the wigs is the perfect fit. Determined, Mom leaves with bundles of hair in hand, ready to craft a wig as colorful and vibrant as her daughter is.

With powerful text by Trinity and DeShanna Neal and radiant art by Art Twink, My Rainbow is a celebration of showing up as our full selves with the people who have seen us fully all along.

View Details >>

We Could Be Heroes

Margaret Finnegan

Shiloh meets Raymie Nightingale in this funny and heartwarming debut novel about a ten-year-old that finds himself in a whole mess of trouble when his new friend Maisie recruits him to save the dog next door.

Hank Hudson is in a bit of trouble. After an incident involving the boy’s bathroom and a terribly sad book his teacher is forcing them to read, Hank is left with a week’s suspension and a slightly charred hardcover—and, it turns out, the attention of new girl Maisie Huang.

Maisie has been on the lookout for a kid with the meatballs to help her with a very important mission: Saving her neighbor’s dog, Booler. Booler has seizures, and his owner, Mr. Jorgensen, keeps him tied to a tree all day and night because of them. It’s enough to make Hank even sadder than that book does—he has autism, and he knows what it’s like to be treated poorly because of something that makes you different.

But different is not less. And Hank is willing to get into even more trouble to prove it. Soon he and Maisie are lying, brown-nosing, baking, and cow milking all in the name of saving Booler—but not everything is as it seems. Booler might not be the only one who needs saving. And being a hero can look a lot like being a friend.

View Details >>

The Someday Birds

Sally J. Pla

The Someday Birds is a debut middle grade novel perfect for fans of Counting by 7s and Fish in a Tree, filled with humor, heart, and chicken nuggets.

Charlie’s perfectly ordinary life has been unraveling ever since his war journalist father was injured in Afghanistan.

When his father heads from California to Virginia for medical treatment, Charlie reluctantly travels cross-country with his boy-crazy sister, unruly brothers, and a mysterious new family friend. He decides that if he can spot all the birds that he and his father were hoping to see someday along the way, then everything might just turn out okay.

Debut author Sally J. Pla has written a tale that is equal parts madcap road trip, coming-of-age story for an autistic boy who feels he doesn’t understand the world, and an uplifting portrait of a family overcoming a crisis.

View Details >>

A Boy Called Bat

Elana K. Arnold

The first book in a funny, heartfelt, and irresistible young middle grade series starring an unforgettable young boy on the autism spectrum, from acclaimed author Elana K. Arnold and with illustrations by Charles Santoso.

For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat), life tends to be full of surprises—some of them good, some not so good. Today, though, is a good-surprise day. Bat’s mom, a veterinarian, has brought home a baby skunk, which she needs to take care of until she can hand him over to a wild-animal shelter.

But the minute Bat meets the kit, he knows they belong together. And he’s got one month to show his mom that a baby skunk might just make a pretty terrific pet.

"This sweet and thoughtful novel chronicles Bat’s experiences and challenges at school with friends and teachers and at home with his sister and divorced parents. Approachable for younger or reluctant readers while still delivering a powerful and thoughtful story" (from the review by Brightly.com, which named A Boy Called Bat a best book of 2017).

View Details >>

All My Stripes

Shaina Rudolph

A helpful story for kids with autism spectrum disorders as they follow a young zebra who learns to understand how he is different from the rest of his classmates.

"It teaches us to embrace not only who we are, but also to embrace the people around us who are brilliantly different thanks to their own amazing, colorful stripes."--Stan Lee, Chairman emeritus of Marvel Comics

Gold Medal, Mom's Choice Awards. Foreword by Alison Singer, President, Autism Science Foundation.

Zane the zebra often feels different. He worries that his classmates don't notice his "curiosity," "honesty," or "caring stripes," just his "autism stripe." With the help of his Mama, Zane comes to appreciate all his stripes, including his "autism stripe," as the unique strengths that make him who he is.

Includes a Reading Guide with additional background information about autism spectrum disorders and a Note to Parents and Caregivers with tips for finding support.

Excerpt:

All My Stripes provides readers a small yet enlightening glimpse into a day in the life of a young, smart, caring, honest, and curious zebra named Zane. Zane is experiencing challenges at school often associated with autism spectrum disorders. This story can serve as a teaching tool for caregivers--such as parents, grandparents, and teachers--to help other children and family members understand the various challenges individuals on the autism spectrum face on a day-to-day basis. Those that are highlighted in this story are discussed in more depth in the Reading Guide.

View Details >>

The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family

Sarah Kapit

Fans of the Penderwicks and the Vanderbeekers, meet the Finkel family in this middle grade novel about two autistic sisters, their detective agency, and life's most consequential mysteries.

When twelve-year-old Lara Finkel starts her very own detective agency, FIASCCO (Finkel Investigation Agency Solving Consequential Crimes Only), she does not want her sister, Caroline, involved. She and Caroline don't have to do everything together. But Caroline won't give up, and when she brings Lara the firm's first mystery, Lara relents, and the questions start piling up.

But Lara and Caroline’s truce doesn’t last for long. Caroline normally uses her tablet to talk, but now she's busily texting a new friend. Lara can't figure out what the two of them are up to, but it can't be good. And Caroline doesn't like Lara's snooping—she's supposed to be solving other people's crimes, not spying on Caroline! As FIASCCO and the Finkel family mysteries spin out of control, can Caroline and Lara find a way to be friends again?

View Details >>

Can You See Me?

Libby Scott

A coming-of-age story about learning to celebrate yourself -- and teaching the world to recognize you, too -- perfect for fans of R.J. Palacio's Wonder!

"This glimpse into the world of a young autistic girl is astonishingly insightful and honest. Tally's struggles to 'fit in' are heart-wrenching, and her victories are glorious." -- Ann M. Martin, Newbery Honor and New York Times bestselling author of Rain Reign

Things Tally is dreading about sixth grade:

-- Being in classes without her best friends

-- New (scratchy) uniforms

-- Hiding her autism

Tally isn't ashamed of being autistic -- even if it complicates life sometimes, it's part of who she is. But this is her first year at Kingswood Academy, and her best friend, Layla, is the only one who knows. And while a lot of other people are uncomfortable around Tally, Layla has never been one of them . . . until now.

Something is different about sixth grade, and Tally now feels like she has to act "normal." But as Tally hides her true self, she starts to wonder what "normal" means after all and whether fitting in is really what matters most.

Inspired by young coauthor Libby Scott's own experiences with autism, this is an honest and moving middle-school story of friends, family, and finding one's place.

View Details >>

Moonwalking

Zetta Elliott

"This novel in verse, alternately narrated by two boys in 1980s Greenpoint, Brooklyn, one channeled by Elliott and one by Miller-Lachmann, eloquently tackles race, culture and life on the spectrum." — The New York Times

For fans of Jason Reynolds and Jacqueline Woodson, this middle-grade novel-in-verse follows two boys in 1980s Brooklyn as they become friends for a season.

Punk rock-loving JJ Pankowski can't seem to fit in at his new school in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as one of the only white kids. Pie Velez, a math and history geek by day and graffiti artist by night is eager to follow in his idol, Jean-Michel Basquiat's, footsteps. The boys stumble into an unlikely friendship, swapping notes on their love of music and art, which sees them through a difficult semester at school and at home. But a run-in with the cops threatens to unravel it all.

From authors Zetta Elliott and Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Moonwalking is a stunning exploration of class, cross-racial friendships, and two boys' search for belonging in a city as tumultuous and beautiful as their hearts.

View Details >>

Ellen Outside the Lines

A. J. Sass

Winner of a Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor!

A heartfelt novel about a neurodivergent thirteen-year-old navigating changing friendships, a school trip, and expanding horizons for fans of Rain Reign and Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World.


Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school. Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track. Except it doesn't. Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned.

Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn't always stick to a planned itinerary.

View Details >>

Superstar

Mandy Davis

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year!

“Lester’s first-person narrative is honest and pure.” —Kirkus (starred review)

Perfect for fans of Fish in a Tree and Wonder, this uplifting debut novel from Mandy Davis follows space-obsessed Lester Musselbaum as he experiences the challenges of his first days of public school: making friends, facing bullies, finding his "thing," and accidentally learning of his autism-spectrum diagnosis.

Lester’s first days as a fifth grader at Quarry Elementary School are not even a little bit like he thought they would be—the cafeteria is too loud for Lester's ears, there are too many kids, and then there's the bully.

Lester was always home-schooled, and now he’s shocked to be stuck in a school where everything just seems wrong. That's until he hears about the science fair, which goes really well for Lester! This is it. The moment where I find out for 100 percent sure that I won.

But then things go a bit sideways, and Lester has to find his way back. A touching peek into the life of a sensitive autism-spectrum boy facing the everydayness of elementary school, Superstar testifies that what you can do isn’t nearly as important as who you are.

View Details >>

A Kind of Spark

Elle McNicoll

Perfect for readers of Song for a Whale and Counting by 7s, a neurodivergent girl campaigns for a memorial when she learns that her small Scottish town used to burn witches simply because they were different.

"A must-read for students and adults alike." -School Library Journal, Starred Review

Ever since Ms. Murphy told us about the witch trials that happened centuries ago right here in Juniper, I can’t stop thinking about them. Those people weren’t magic. They were like me. Different like me.

I’m autistic. I see things that others do not. I hear sounds that they can ignore. And sometimes I feel things all at once. I think about the witches, with no one to speak for them. Not everyone in our small town understands. But if I keep trying, maybe someone will. I won’t let the witches be forgotten. Because there is more to their story. Just like there is more to mine.

Award-winning and neurodivergent author Elle McNicoll delivers an insightful and stirring debut about the European witch trials and a girl who refuses to relent in the fight for what she knows is right.

View Details >>

A Bird Will Soar

Alison Green Myers

WINNER OF THE SCHNEIDER FAMILY BOOK AWARD

A heartfelt and hopeful debut about a bird-loving autistic child whose family's special nest is in danger of falling apart
.

Axel loves everything about birds, especially eagles. No one worries that an eagle will fly too far and not come home—a fact Axel wishes his mother understood. Deep down, Axel knows that his mother is like an osprey—the best of all bird mothers—but it’s hard to remember that when she worries and keeps secrets about important things. His dad is more like a wild turkey, coming and going as he pleases. His dad’s latest disappearance is the biggest mystery of all.

Despite all this, Axel loves his life—especially the time he spends with his friends observing the eagles’ nest in the woods near his home. But when a tornado damages not only Axel’s home but the eagles’ nest, Axel’s life is thrown into chaos. Suddenly his dad is back to help repair the damage, and Axel has to manage his dad’s presence and his beloved birds’ absence. Plus, his mom seems to be keeping even more secrets. 

But Axel knows another important fact: an eagle’s instincts let it soar. Axel must trust his own instincts to help heal his family and the nest he loves. 

View Details >>

Anybody Here Seen Frenchie?

Leslie Connor

A big-hearted, beautiful, and funny novel told from multiple viewpoints about neurodiversity, friendship, and community from the award-winning author of The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, Leslie Connor.

Eleven-year-old Aurora Petrequin's best friend has never spoken a word to her. In fact, Frenchie Livernois doesn't talk.

Aurora is bouncy, loud and impulsive--"a big old blurter." Making friends has never come easily. When Frenchie, who is autistic, silently chose Aurora as his person back in third grade, she chose him back. They make a good team, sharing their love of the natural world in coastal Maine.

In the woods, Aurora and Frenchie encounter a piebald deer, a rare creature with a coat like a patchwork quilt. Whenever it appears, Aurora feels compelled to follow.

At school, Aurora looks out for Frenchie, who has been her classmate until this year. One morning, Frenchie doesn't make it to his classroom. Aurora feels she's to blame. The entire town begins to search, and everyone wonders: how is it possible that nobody has seen Frenchie?

At the heart of this story is the friendship between hyper-talkative Aurora and nonvocal Frenchie. Conflict arises when Aurora is better able to expand her social abilities and finds new friends. When Frenchie goes missing, Aurora must figure out how to use her voice to help find him, and lift him up when he is found.

View Details >>

Me and My Sister

Rose Robbins

Getting along with your sister is never easy--especially if your brains work in different ways! Based on the author's childhood, Me and My Sister is a gentle exploration of growing up with an autistic sibling.

Life in a neurodiverse home isn't straightforward: these siblings communicate and behave in different ways. They're also unique people with different likes and dislikes. Misunderstandings are bound to happen! But despite the occasional bickering and confusion, maybe this brother and sister can discover new ways to love and help one another.

Siblings of all backgrounds will connect to this playfully illustrated story about embracing difference.

View Details >>

A Friend for Henry

Jenn Bailey

In Classroom Six, second left down the hall, Henry has been on the lookout for a friend. A friend who shares. A friend who listens. Maybe even a friend who likes things to stay the same and all in order, as Henry does. But on a day full of too close and too loud, when nothing seems to go right, will Henry ever find a friend—or will a friend find him? With insight and warmth, this heartfelt story from the perspective of a boy on the autism spectrum celebrates the everyday magic of friendship.

View Details >>

This Beach Is Loud!

Samantha Cotterill

Patience, understanding, and a soothing exercise saves the beach day when excitement turns to sensory overload.

Going to the beach is exciting. But it can also be busy. And loud. Sand can feel hot or itchy or sticky...and it gets everywhere! In This Beach Is Loud!, a sensitive boy gets overwhelmed by all the sights, sounds, and sensations at the beach. Luckily, this kiddo's dad has a trick up his sleeve to help his son face these unexpected obstacles.

Combining accessible storytelling and playful design, This Beach Is Loud! gently offers practical advice for coping with new experiences to sensitive children on and off the autism spectrum.

View Details >>

Amira's Picture Day

Reem Faruqi

Ramadan has come to an end, and Amira can't wait to stay home from school to celebrate Eid. There's just one hiccup: it's also school picture day. How can Amira be in two places at once?

An ALSC Notable Children's Book

Just the thought of Eid makes Amira warm and tingly inside. From wearing new clothes to handing out goody bags at the mosque, Amira can't wait for the festivities to begin. But when a flier on the fridge catches her eye, Amira's stomach goes cold. Not only is it Eid, it's also school picture day. If she's not in her class picture, how will her classmates remember her? Won't her teacher wonder where she is?

Though the day's celebrations at the mosque are everything Amira was dreaming of, her absence at picture day weighs on her. A last-minute idea on the car ride home might just provide the solution to everything in this delightful story from acclaimed author Reem Faruqi, illustrated with vibrant color by Fahmida Azim.

A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of the Year
A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Book of the Year

View Details >>

The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan

Salma Hussain

Mona learns to find her voice over the course of a year that sees her immigrating from Dubai to Canada in this novel for fans of Front Desk by Kelly Yang.

Mona Hasan is a young Muslim girl growing up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when the first Gulf War breaks out in 1991. The war isn’t what she expects — “We didn’t even get any days off school! Just my luck” — especially when the ground offensive is over so quickly and her family peels the masking tape off their windows. Her parents, however, fear there is no peace in the region, and it sparks a major change in their lives.

Over the course of one year, Mona falls in love, speaks up to protect her younger sister, loses her best friend to the new girl at school, has summer adventures with her cousins in Pakistan, immigrates to Canada, and pursues her ambition to be a feminist and a poet.

View Details >>

Nour's Secret Library

Wafa' Tarnowska

Forced to take shelter when their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin begin to bravely build a secret underground library. Based on the author's own life experience and inspired by a true story, Nour's Secret Library is about the power of books to heal, transport and create safe spaces during difficult times. Illustrations by Romanian artist Vali Mintzi superimpose the colorful world the children construct over black-and-white charcoal depictions of the battered city.

View Details >>

Salma the Syrian Chef

Ahmad Danny Ramadan

Newcomer Salma and friends cook up a heartwarming dish to cheer up Mama.

All Salma wants is to make her mama smile again. Between English classes, job interviews, and missing Papa back in Syria, Mama always seems busy or sad. A homemade Syrian meal might cheer her up, but Salma doesn't know the recipe, or what to call the vegetables in English, or where to find the right spices! Luckily, the staff and other newcomers in her Welcome Home are happy to lend a hand--and a sprinkle of sumac.

With creativity, determination, and charm, Salma brings her new friends together to show Mama that even though things aren't perfect, there is cause for hope and celebration. Syrian culture is beautifully represented through the meal Salma prepares and Anna Bron's vibrant illustrations, while the diverse cast of characters speaks to the power of cultivating community in challenging circumstances.

View Details >>

Ten Ways to Hear Snow

Cathy Camper

A snowy day, a trip to Grandma's, time spent cooking with one another, and space to pause and discover the world around you come together in this perfect book for reading and sharing on a cozy winter day.

One winter morning, Lina wakes up to silence. It's the sound of snow -- the kind that looks soft and glows bright in the winter sun. But as she walks to her grandmother's house to help make the family recipe for warak enab, she continues to listen.

As Lina walks past snowmen and across icy sidewalks, she discovers ten ways to pay attention to what might have otherwise gone unnoticed. With stunning illustrations by Kenard Pak and thoughtful representation of a modern Arab American family from Cathy Camper, Ten Ways to Hear Snow is a layered exploration of mindfulness, empathy, and what we realize when the world gets quiet.

View Details >>

The Librarian of Basra

Jeanette Winter

Alia Muhammad Baker is the librarian in Basra, Iraq. For fourteen years, her library has been a meeting place for those who love books. Until now. Now war has come, and Alia fears that the library-along with the thirty thousand books within it-will be destroyed forever. 

In a war-stricken country where civilians-especially women-have little power, this true story about a librarian's struggle to save her community's priceless collection of books reminds us all how, throughout the world the love of literature and the respect for knowledge know no boundries,

View Details >>

Eid Breakfast at Abuela's

Mariam Saad

Join Sofia and her mom and dad who spend Eid - the Islamic holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan - with her Mexican grandmother, who is not Muslim but chooses to throw them a festive breakfast which includes traditional Mexican food, decorations, and activities.

The book includes many Spanish words and a glossary as well to introduce the reader to simple words in Spanish and even Arabic.

View Details >>

The Cat Man of Aleppo

Karim Shamsi-Basha

The Caldecott Honor-winning true story of Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, who in the midst of the Syrian Civil War courageously offered safe haven to Aleppo's abandoned cats.


Aleppo's city center no longer echoes with the rich, exciting sounds of copper-pot pounding and traditional sword sharpening. His neighborhood is empty--except for the many cats left behind.

Alaa loves Aleppo, but when war comes his neighbors flee to safety, leaving their many pets behind. Alaa decides to stay--he can make a difference by driving an ambulance, carrying the sick and wounded to safety. One day he hears hungry cats calling out to him on his way home. They are lonely and scared, just like him. He feeds and pets them to let them know they are loved. The next day more cats come, and then even more! There are too many for Alaa to take care of on his own. Alaa has a big heart, but he will need help from others if he wants to keep all of his new friends safe.

View Details >>

Halal Hot Dogs

Susannah Aziz

Musa has the perfect idea for his special Jummah treat, but things don't go according to plan. Will Musa be able to get a yummy Jummah treat for his family?

"Musa's enthusiasm for halal hot dogs is infectious, and this portrait of a family and community that takes joy and pride in their identity and traditions is refreshing . . . . A joyful celebration of street food and Muslim American culture."--Kirkus Reviews

"An enjoyable tour of food, faith, and family."--School Library Journal

Every Friday after Jummah prayer at the masjid, Musa's family has a special Jummah treat. They take turns picking out what the treat will be, but recently the choices have been . . . interesting. Week one, Mama made molokhia. It's perfect for sharing, but gives us molokhia teeth for days! Week two, Baba burned the kufte kebabs on the grill. Week three, Seedi made his favorite riz b'haleeb-creamy rice pudding with pistachio sprinkled on top with an unexpected ingredient. Last week, Maryam brought jellybeans. . . . Finally, it's Musa's turn to pick, and he picks his favorite-halal hot dogs! But actually getting to eat this deliciousness turns into a journey riddled with obstacles. Will he ever get his favorite tasty treat?

View Details >>

Hope Is an Arrow

Cory McCarthy

A lyrical biography of Kahlil Gibran by award-winning writer Cory McCarthy, with glorious illustrations by Caldecott Honoree and two-time Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner Ekua Holmes.

Before Kahlil Gibran became the world’s third-best-selling poet of all time, he was Gibran Khalil Gibran, an immigrant child from Lebanon with a secret hope to bring people together despite their many differences. Kahlil’s life highlights the turn of the twentieth century, from the religious conflicts that tore apart his homeland and sent a hundred thousand Arab people to America, to settling in Boston, where the wealthy clashed headlong with the poor. Throughout it all, Kahlil held on to his secret hope, even as his identity grew roots on both sides of the Atlantic. How could he be both Kahlil Gibran, Arab American, and Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese boy who longed for the mountains of his homeland? Kahlil found the answer in art and poetry. He wrote The Prophet, an arrow of hope as strong as the great cedars of Lebanon and feathered by the spirit of American independence. More than a hundred years later, his words still fly around the world in many languages, bringing people together.

View Details >>

Silverworld

Diana Abu-Jaber

Fall under the spell of this fantasy-adventure story about a Lebanese-American girl who finds the courage to save her grandmother. Perfect for fans of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Teta, Sami's Lebanese grandmother, has been ill for a while, slipping from reality and speaking in a language only Sami can understand. Her family thinks Teta belongs in a nursing home, but Sami doesn't believe she's sick at all. Desperate to help, Sami casts a spell from her grandmother's mysertious charm book and falls through an ancient mirror into a world unlike any other.

Welcome to Silverworld, an enchanted city where light and dark creatures called Flickers and Shadows strive to live in harmony. But lately Flickers have started going missing, and powerful Shadow soldiers are taking over the land.

Everyone in Silverworld suspects that Shadow Queen Nixie is responsible for the chaos, which is bad enough. But could Nixie be holding Sami's grandmother in her grasp too? To save Teta and Silverworld, Sami must brave adventure, danger, and the toughest challenge of all: change.

View Details >>

Other Words for Home

Jasmine Warga

New York Times bestseller and Newbery Honor Book!

A gorgeously written, hopeful middle grade novel in verse about a young girl who must leave Syria to move to the United States, perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds and Aisha Saeed.

Jude never thought she'd be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives.

At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven't quite prepared her for starting school in the US--and her new label of "Middle Eastern," an identity she's never known before.

But this life also brings unexpected surprises--there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.

This lyrical, life-affirming story is about losing and finding home and, most importantly, finding yourself.

View Details >>

Where the Streets Had a Name

Randa Abdel-Fattah

Thirteen-year-old Hayaat is on a mission. She believes a handful of soil from her grandmother's ancestral home in Jerusalem will save her beloved Sitti Zeynab's life. The only problem is that Hayaat and her family live behind the impenetrable wall that divides the West Bank, and they're on the wrong side of checkpoints, curfews, and the travel permit system. Plus, Hayaat's best friend, Samy, always manages to attract trouble. But luck is on the pair's side as they undertake the journey to Jerusalem from the West Bank when Hayaat and Samyhave a curfew-free day to travel.

But while their journey may only be a few miles long, it could take a lifetime to complete...

Humorous and heartfelt, Where the Streets Had a Name deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with sensitivity and grace, and will open a window on this timely subject.

View Details >>

Farah Rocks Fifth Grade

Susan Muaddi Darraj

Farah and her best friend, Allie Liu, are getting excited to turn in their applications to the Magnet Academy, where they both hope to attend sixth grade. But when new girl Dana Denver shows up, Farah's world is turned upside down. As Dana starts bullying Farah's little brother, Samir, Farah begins to second-guess her choice to leave him behind at Harbortown Elementary/Middle School. Determined to handle it on her own, Farah comes up with a plan--a plan that involves lying to those closest to her. Will her lies catch up with her, or can Farah find a way to defeat the bully and rock fifth grade?

View Details >>

Everything Comes Next

Naomi Shihab Nye

"Emotionally resonant and stirring."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

 

"Lucky the reader who would have this collection lying around for visiting and revisiting."--Horn Book Magazine

This celebratory book collects in one volume award-winning and beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye's most popular and accessible poems.

Featuring new, never-before-published poems; an introduction by bestselling poet and author Edward Hirsch, as well as a foreword and writing tips by the poet; and stunning artwork by bestselling artist Rafael López, Everything Comes Next is essential for poetry readers, classroom teachers, and library collections.

Everything Comes Next is a treasure chest of Naomi Shihab Nye's most beloved poems, and features favorites such as "Famous" and "A Valentine for Ernest Mann," as well as widely shared pieces such as "Kindness" and "Gate A-4." The book is an introduction to the poet's work for new readers, as well as a comprehensive edition for classroom and family sharing. Writing prompts and tips by the award-winning poet make this an outstanding choice for aspiring poets of all ages.

 

View Details >>

The Arabic Quilt

Aya Khalil

Kanzi's family has moved from Egypt to America, and on her first day in a new school, what she wants more than anything is to fit in. Maybe that's why she forgets to take the kofta sandwich her mother has made for her lunch, but that backfires when Mama shows up at school with the sandwich. Mama wears a hijab and calls her daughter Habibti (dear one). When she leaves, the teasing starts.

That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a "quilt" (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi's most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

This authentic story with beautiful illustrations includes a glossary of Arabic words and a presentation of Arabic letters with their phonetic English equivalents.

View Details >>

Arab Arab All Year Long!

Cathy Camper

Celebrate the beauty and diversity of life in the Arab diaspora throughout the year.

Wrapping grape leaves, playing doumbek, drawing henna tattoos,
we’re Arab, Arab, Arab, the whole year through!


Yallah! From January to December, join some busy kids as they partake in traditions old and new. There’s so much to do, whether it’s learning to write Arabic or looking at hijab fashion sites while planning costumes for a local comic convention. With details as vivid as the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle perfume (made to remind Mom of Morocco), children bond with friends, honor tradition, and spend loving time with family. Accompanied by buoyant and charming illustrations, this portrait of Arab life and childhood zeal is sure to bring joy all year round. Back matter includes an extensive glossary and notes to enrich the experience for readers of any culture.

View Details >>

Heartsong's Missing Foal

Whitney Sanderson

Iris cannot wait for Heartsong to have her foal. Unicorns go into the Fairy Forest to have their babies, so Iris isn't surprised when Heartsong goes missing for a few days. Yet when the unicorn does not return, Iris and Ruby have to go in and find her. The Fairy Forest is filled with trickster magic and can be a dangerous place. Can Iris and Ruby find Heartsong and her missing foal before it is too late? There are unicorns behind Magic Moon Stable, but no one except Iris and Ruby know they exist. As Unicorn Guardians, it is their job to protect the unicorns and their magic to keep them safe from the outside world.

View Details >>

Bo's Magical New Friend

Rebecca Elliott

Meet Rainbow Tinseltail and the unicorns of Sparklegrove Forest, in this magical series from the creator of the bestselling Owl Diaries series!

This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line Branches, aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina. Branches books help readers grow!

Bo Tinseltail loves going to Sparklegrove School with the other unicorns. Every unicorn has a magical power. Bo is a Wish Unicorn with the power to grant wishes. Bo has lots of friends, but one thing Bo wants more than anything is a best friend. When a new unicorn named Sunny Huckleberry pops into the forest, will Bo's big wish finally come true? And what will Sunny's Unicorn Power be? Discover this TWINKLE-TASTIC, full-color series from Rebecca Elliott, creator of the USA Today bestselling Owl Diaries series!

View Details >>

Sunbeam's Shine

Emily Bliss

A human girl visits the Rainbow Realm, an enchanted land ruled by a circle of unicorn princesses, to help Princess Sunbeam regain her magical powers.

View Details >>

Kitty and the Moonlight Rescue

Paula Harrison

One night, Kitty finds a sleek black cat with white paws waiting at her window. When he introduces himself, Kitty is shocked to realize she can understand him--her powers have arrived! The cat, Figaro, has a problem. There's a terrible meowing sound

View Details >>

Willa the Wisp

Jonathan Auxier

In this first adventure, Willa the Wisp is being chased by the Rooks, an evil group of hunters keen on using one of a kind creatures for their own dark ends. It's up to Auggie to help Willa escape the Rooks and find refuge at the Stables, before it's too late.

View Details >>

Upside-down Magic

Sarah Mlynowski

Meet the Upside-Down Magic kids in the first topsy-turvy adventure of this New York Times bestselling series, now a Disney Channel Original Movie!

It's never easy when your magic goes wonky.

For Nory, this means that instead of being able to turn into a dragon or a kitten, she turns into both of them at the same time-a dritten.

For Elliott, the simple act of conjuring fire from his fingertips turns into a fully frozen failure.

For Andres, wonky magic means he's always floating in the air, bouncing off the walls, or sitting on the ceiling.

For Bax, a bad moment of magic will turn him into a . . . actually, he'd rather not talk about that.

Nory, Elliott, Andres, and Bax are just four of the students in Dunwiddle Magic School's Upside-Down Magic class. In their classroom, lessons are unconventional, students are unpredictable, and magic has a tendency to turn wonky at the worst possible moments. Because it's always amazing, the trouble a little wonky magic can cause . . .

View Details >>

Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible

Ursula Vernon

Sleeping Beauty gets a feisty, furry twist in this hilarious new comic series from the creator of Dragonbreath

Harriet Hamsterbone is not your typical princess. She may be quite stunning in the rodent realm (you'll have to trust her on this one), but she is not so great at trailing around the palace looking ethereal or sighing a lot. She finds the royal life rather . . . dull. One day, though, Harriet's parents tell her of the curse that a rat placed on her at birth, dooming her to prick her finger on a hamster wheel when she's twelve and fall into a deep sleep. For Harriet, this is most wonderful news: It means she's invincible until she's twelve! After all, no good curse goes to waste. And so begins a grand life of adventure with her trusty riding quail, Mumfrey...until her twelfth birthday arrives and the curse manifests in a most unexpected way.

Perfect for fans of Babymouse and Chris Colfer's Land of Stories, this laugh-out-loud new comic hybrid series will turn everything you thought you knew about princesses on its head.

View Details >>

Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister

Liz Kessler

New from the author of the best-selling Emily Windsnap series! A tale of a girl and her reluctant fairy guardian sparkles with magic and charm.

Philippa Fisher would like nothing more than to summon a fairy. Still, she is taken aback when Daisy, the new girl at school, announces that she is Philippa's fairy godmother — or godsister, since they're both the same age. Though the fairy is none too pleased with her mission, she is obliged to see it through and grant her human charge the customary three wishes. Now, if only Philippa would wish for something that makes her life better, not worse! With warmth and whimsy, the creator of Emily Windsnap whisks a traditional theme into a contemporary setting to tell a story of friendship, luck, and how we decide what we really want.

View Details >>

The Un-Friendship Bracelet

Martha Maker

In the first book of the Craftily Ever After chapter book series, a new student gets between best friends Emily and Maddie—and changes the meaning of their friendship bracelets!

Emily Adams, Maddie Wilson, Bella Diaz, and Sam Sharma are eight-year-olds with one special thing in common: they love to create. They each have unique talents, too! Emily is great at constructing and building; Maddie has an eye for fashion, fabrics, and sewing; Bella is a gadget whiz; and Sam is a gifted artist. Together, these four crafty friends dream up new projects to design, build, and create and through their experiences, they’ll learn how to handle various obstacles at school and in their everyday eight-year-old lives.

In the first Craftily Ever After book, best friends Emily and Maddie are so close that they spend most of their free time together, and wear matching friendship bracelets, too! One day, a new student named Bella Diaz shows up at Mason Creek Elementary. Maddie immediately befriends her, discovering that she too is really crafty. As Maddie and Bella spend more time together, Emily finds herself spending more time alone…until she realizes that the boy who’s been sitting next to her in class this whole time loves to draw and create just like she does. When Emily’s friendship bracelet falls off and Maddie doesn’t even notice, Emily begins to think that maybe it was an un-friendship bracelet after all.

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Craftily Ever After chapter books are perfect for emerging readers.

View Details >>

Mermaid Mysteries: Rosa and the Water Pony (Book 1)

Katy Kit

The mermaid friends are excited about Mermaid Bay's annual carnival where the best performance wins a beautiful pearl necklace! Rosa uses magic to create a pony out of water, and she plans to perform amazing tricks on its back. But just before the carnival begins, the magical water pony is stolen. Who is trying to sabotage the friends' performance--and why?

View Details >>

In a Blink

Kiki Thorpe

When four friends are whisked out of their ordinary lives to Never Land, home to fairies and mermaids, Queen Clarion and Tinker Bell have to figure out a way for them to get home.

View Details >>

The Princess in Black

Shannon Hale

Who says princesses don’t wear black? When trouble raises its blue monster head, Princess Magnolia ditches her flouncy dresses and becomes the Princess in Black!

Princess Magnolia is having hot chocolate and scones with Duchess Wigtower when . . . Brring! Brring! The monster alarm! A big blue monster is threatening the goats! Stopping monsters is no job for dainty Princess Magnolia. But luckily Princess Magnolia has a secret —she’s also the Princess in Black, and stopping monsters is the perfect job for her! Can the princess sneak away, transform into her alter ego, and defeat the monster before the nosy duchess discovers her secret? From award-winning writing team of Shannon and Dean Hale and illustrator LeUyen Pham, here is the first in a humorous and action-packed chapter book series for young readers who like their princesses not only prim and perfect, but also dressed in black.

View Details >>

A Royal Rescue

Helen Perelman

Join Princess Mini on all of her princess adventures at the Royal Fairy Academy in this super-sweet story that’s launching QUIX, a new line of fun-to-read short chapter books that are perfect for emerging readers.

Princess Mini is worried about starting a new school and making new friends—even with a little troll named Gobo by her side. It’s not always easy being a princess! Will she come to learn that her new school and new friends could lead to more adventures than she could possibly imagine?

View Details >>

The Storm Dragon

Paula Harrison

A group of friends set out to save magical creatures from a cruel queen and her wicked soldiers in the first book in the brand-new Secret Rescuers chapter book series.

When Sophy finds a little lost dragon named Cloudy, she knows he’s in danger. It will take all the courage she can muster—and a little bit of magic—to keep the baby dragon safe. But what if there are other creatures in danger? It looks like Sophy’s going to need some friends to help her with her secret rescues…

View Details >>

Fairy Realm #1: The Charm Bracelet

Emily Rodda

When Jessie visits her grandmother's house, Blue Moon, she discovers an amazing secret, and enters the Fairy Realm for the first time. All kinds of magical beings live in the Realm, and a noble Queen in a great golden palace rules them all.

But the Realm is in danger, and Jessie must outwit an evil enemy to save it before it's destroyed forever!

View Details >>

The Fairy Bell Sisters #1: Sylva and the Fairy Ball

Margaret McNamara

With Sylva and the Fairy Ball, Margaret McNamara launches the Fairy Bell Sisters, an enchanting new chapter-book series. The books feature Tinker Bell’s little sisters and are a must-read for lovers of the Rainbow Fairies and Disney Fairies stories.

Clara Bell, Golden Bell, Rosy Bell, Sylva Bell, and baby Squeak are fairy sisters who live on Sheepskerry Island. Usually Sylva and her sisters get along just fine—until the week of the Fairy Ball. Sylva has her heart set on going—she’ll get to wear magical diamond wings and walk on beautiful satin ribbons under the stars! But fairies must be at least eight years old to attend, and poor Sylva’s birthday is the day after the ball. But before the night is over, Sylva’s big sisters will need her to come to their rescue.

Charming illustrations by Julia Denos bring the world of fairies to life.

View Details >>

Fairest of All

Sarah Mlynowski

Mirror, mirror, on the basement wall . . .

 

The first installment of Sarah Mylowski's New York Times bestselling series!Be the bravest of them all . . .Once upon a time my brother and I were normal kids. The next minute? The mirror in our basement slurped us up and magically transported us inside Snow White's fairy tale.I know it sounds crazy, but it's true.But hey -- we're heroes! We stopped Snow White from eating the poisoned apple. Hooray! Or not. If Snow White doesn't die, she won't get to meet her prince. And then she won't get her happy ending. Oops.Now it's up to us to: - Avoid getting poisoned- Sneak into a castle- Fix Snow White's storyBut Snow White's REAL happy ending might not be quite what we expected . . .

View Details >>

The Secret Promise

Paula Harrison

These are no ordinary princesses--they're Rescue Princesses!

Princess Emily sometimes wishes that being a princess meant more than wearing fancy dresses and performing endless curtsies. She longs for a life-changing adventure-and she may just get one!

Someone is plotting to hurt the deer who live in beautiful Mistberg Forest. Together with some new friends, Emily will have to use her smarts, her savvy, and even some newfound ninja skills to save them.

View Details >>

Lucy Longwhiskers Gets Lost

Daisy Meadows

For use in schools and libraries only. From the mind of Daisy Meadows comes a new fantasy world, with the same great magical voice as Rainbow Magic but brand-new adventures! Best friends Jess and Lily visit Friendship Forest, where animals can talk and magic exists! On their first adventure in Friendship Forest, can Lily and Jess rescue adorable baby bunny Lucy Longwhiskers from the wicked witch Grizelda?

View Details >>

Dragons and Marshmallows

Asia Citro

With magical animals, science, mystery, and adventure -- the brand new series Zoey and Sassafras has something for everyone! Easy-to-read language and illustrations on nearly every page make this series perfect for a wide range of ages.

In the first book of this series, Zoey discovers a glowing photo and learns an amazing secret. Injured magical animals come to their backyard barn for help! When a sick baby dragon appears, it's up to Zoey and Sassafras to figure out what's wrong. Will they be able to help little Marshmallow before it's too late?

Each story in the Zoey and Sassafras series features a new magical animal with a problem that must be solved using science. There isn't a set formula for each book; Zoey sometimes needs to run experiments, while other times she needs to investigate a mystery, and yet other times she needs to do research. Zoey models how to keep a science journal through her handwritten entries in each story. Each story is complete with a glossary of the kid-friendly definitions for scientific terms used. The series highlights child-led inquiry science and the topics covered align with both Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.

View Details >>

Lunch Walks Among Us

Jim Benton

Tired of being stared at, Franny decides to attempt her most dangerous experiment yet -- she's going to fit in. but when a giant Monstrous Fiend attacks the class, everyone knows it's up to a mad scientist to save the day. But has Franny lost her creepy, crawly ways? Spotlight editions are printed on high-quality paper and with reinforced library bindings specifically printed for the library market. 

View Details >>

Anyone But Me

Nancy Krulik

For use in schools and libraries only. Third grader Katie Carew, nicknamed Katie Kazoo by the class bully, had no idea what would happen when she wished she could be anyone but herself. Now her wish has come true and she keeps turning into other people and even animals.

View Details >>

Aleca Zamm Is a Wonder

Ginger Rue

Meet the wonder-full Aleca Zamm, an ordinary ten-year-old with an extraordinary ability: she can stop time!

Aleca Zamm has finally reached double digits and she still doesn’t have a “thing”—a special talent or ability that will make her stand out. Her best friend, Maria, has a thing (swim team); her sister, Dylan, has a thing (singing); and even her former BFF Madison has a thing (soccer). But Aleca? No. Thing.

Until the day of her tenth birthday when Aleca discovers she can stop time just by saying her name. Suddenly, Aleca has a thing…and life is about to get a lot more interesting!

It turns out that being a Wonder (as her eccentric Aunt Zephyr, who is also a Wonder, calls it) comes with a few caveats, and that stopping time doesn’t go undetected by other Wonders or those who may be searching for them. With her new mentor Aunt Zephyr by her side, Aleca discovers that being special comes with special challenges she never expected.

View Details >>

The Magical Animal Adoption Agency, Book 1 Clover's Luck

Kallie George

Despite her name, Clover has always felt decidedly unlucky. So when she stumbles upon a mysterious cottage in the Woods, she can hardly believe her good fortune. It's the Magical Animal Adoption Agency, and it houses creatures of all kinds. Fairy horses, unicorns, and a fiery young dragon are just the beginning!

Mr. Jams, the Agency's owner, agrees to hire her as summer helper and Clover hopes her luck has finally changed. But when she's left alone to care for the Agency, a sneaky witch comes after the magical creatures! Will Clover outsmart her in time to protect the animals?

View Details >>

Step Into the Spotlight!

Heather Alexander

This glittery early chapter book series is all about friendship

This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line called Branches, which is aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina. Branches books help readers grow

Meet the amazing Stardust Girls -- Marlo, Bella, Carly, and Allie They all live and work at the Stardust Circus. Marlo, the new girl, is eager to make friends. The other girls welcome her and she tries everything to fit in -- trapeze, tightrope walking, juggling, and even dog training -- all with hilarious results. Marlo wants to shine in the spotlight, but what will her special talent be? With black-and-white illustrations throughout, this glittery series is full of sparkle and friendship

View Details >>

Believe Your Eyes

Cori Doerrfeld

A lot is changing for Cici. Her parents are separating, her wacky abuela is moving in, and on her tenth birthday, she wakes up with fairy wings! Cici's new magical powers let her see people as they truly are. But what she learns about her friends and family isn't always easy to accept. She has only one day to decide whether to keep her wings. When Cici wishes life could just be normal again, will she choose to believe in the power of fairies?

View Details >>

Wild Fairies #1: Daisy's Decorating Dilemma

Brandi Dougherty

Prepare your wings and listen closely: the wild fairies are now in bloom and popping up in a forest near you!

Spring is in the air in Sugar Oak! Green buds grow on the trees, the temperature is warm, and all of the fairies' animal friends have come out to play. But before the fairies can smell the flowers and soak in the sun, they must plan the biggest party of the year−the Blossom Bash! Normally, Daisy would love leading her fairy friends, but when each of the fairies has a different vision for the bash's decorations, she's left stumped. Daisy has a difficult decision to make, and with first bloom right around the corner, she better decide quickly!

View Details >>

Heidi Heckelbeck Has a Secret

Wanda Coven

Introducing Heidi Heckelbeck—a brand-new young chapter-book series with witchy whimsy!

Now readers between the ages of five and seven can read chapter books tailor-made for a younger level of reading comprehension. Heavily illustrated with large type, Little Simon's young chapter books let young readers feel like they are reading a “grown-up” format with subject, text, and illustrations geared specifically for their own age groups!

Heidi Heckelbeck seems like any other eight-year-old, but she has a secret: She’s a witch in disguise. Careful to keep her powers hidden (but excited to use them all the same), Heidi’s learning to live like any other kid—who just happens to be witch. And with easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, Heidi Heckelbeck chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

Heidi and her brother Henry have always been homeschooled—until now. But Heidi is not happy about attending Brewster Elementary, especially not when meanie Melanie Maplethorpe turns Heidi’s first day of school into a nightmare by announcing that Heidi is smelly and ruining her art project. Heidi feels horrible and never wants to go back to school—but while sulking in her room at home, she remembers her special medallion and Book of Spells. With a little bit of carefully concealed magic, Heidi might be able to give Melanie a taste of her own medicine….

View Details >>

Cinderella Stays Late

Joan Holub

Once upon a time, in faraway Grimmlandia...

A Grimmtastic girl named Cinderella is starting her first week at Grimm Academy on the wrong foot. Cinda's totally evil stepsisters are out to make her life miserable. The Steps tease Cinda, give her terrible advice about life at the academy, and even make her look bad in front of her new friends, Red, Snow, and Rapunzel! But when Cinda overhears the Steps plotting a villainous deed that could ruin Prince Awesome's ball, Cinda, her new friends, and a pair of magical glass slippers have to stop them--before the last stroke of midnight!
 

View Details >>

Enchanted Palace

Rosie Banks

Enter a magical world full of friendship and fun!

Ellie, Summer, and Jasmine are the very best of friends. Then one day, they find a magical box that whisks them away to the Secret Kingdom, a world full of every wonderfully magical thing under the sun.

But an evil queen wants to ruin the Secret Kingdom so she can rule it for all time. Can the friends help Trixi the pixie save King Merry's 1000th birthday party from Queen Malice's spiky thunderbolt before it's too late?

View Details >>

Chocolate Wishes #1

Sue Bentley

Dawn is worried about moving to a new school this year, but when she meets magical bunny Arrow she realizes this year might not be so lonely after all.

View Details >>

The Lost Stone

Jordan Quinn

Welcome to the Kingdom of Wrenly—a new chapter book series full of fantasy and adventure.

Meet Lucas, the eight year-old prince, and Clara, the daughter of the queen’s seamstress. Lucas is an only child who longs to make friends and go on adventures. Clara knows the kingdom well, so she and Lucas team up and explore the lands of Wrenly!

In The Lost Stone, Lucas and Clara search for Queen Tasha’s missing emerald. On their exciting adventure, they travel to all the main attractions of Wrenly: Primlox (the island of fairies), Burth (the island of trolls), Crestwood (the island of dragons), Hobsgrove (the island of wizards), and the beautiful Mermaid’s Cove. King Caleb has promised to reward the person who finds the precious stone, and Lucas and Clara are determined to search the entire kingdom until they find it!

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, The Kingdom of Wrenly chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

View Details >>

Snow Place Like Home (Diary of an Ice Princess #1)

Christina Soontornvat

A brand new, fun filled chapter book series that answers the question: What if Frozen's Elsa went to regular school?

Princess Lina has a life any kid would envy. She lives in a massive palace in the clouds. Everyone in her family has the power to control the wind and weather. On a good day, she can even fly! She loves making lemons into lemon ice, riding wind gusts around the sky, and turning her bedroom into a real life snow globe.There's just one thing Lina wants: to go to regular, non-magical school with her best friend Claudia. She promises to keep the icy family secret under wraps. What could go wrong? (EVERYTHING!)

View Details >>

Isadora Moon Goes to School

Harriet Muncaster

Meet Isadora Moon! She's half-fairy, half-vampire and totally unique!

Isadora Moon loves sunshine — and nighttime. She loves her magic wand — and her black tutu. She loves spooky bats — and Pink Rabbit. Isadora is half-fairy, half-vampire, and she’s special because she is different! 

Now Isadora’s parents want her to start school, but she’s not sure where she belongs — fairy school or vampire school?

Sink your fangs into all of Isadora’s adventures!
Isadora Moon Goes to School
Isadora Moon Goes Camping
Isadora Moon Goes to the Ballet
Isadora Moon Has a Birthday

View Details >>

They Called Us Enemy

George Takei

New York Times Bestseller!

A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.


George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

View Details >>

Bomb

Steve Sheinkin

Perfect for middle grade readers and history enthusiasts, New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin presents the fascinating and frightening true story of the creation behind the most destructive force that birthed the arms race and the Cold War in Bomb: The Race to Buildand Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon.

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents.

In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists, led by "father of the atomic bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer, was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos. This is the story of the plotting, the risk-taking, the deceit, and genius that created the world's most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb.

View Details >>

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War

Matt Faulkner

San Francisco, 1941: America has just declared war on Japan.
With a white mother and a Japanese father, Koji Miyamoto quickly realizes that his home is no longer a welcoming one. Streetcars won't stop for Koji, and his classmates accuse him of being an enemy spy. When a letter arrives from the government notifying him that he must go to a relocation center for Japanese Americans, he and his mother are forced to leave everything they know behind. Once there, Koji soon discovers that being half white in the internment camp is just as difficult as being half Japanese in San Francisco. Koji's story,
based on true events, is brought to life by Matt Faulkner's cinematic illustrations, which reveal Koji struggling to find his place in a tumultuous world-one where he is a prisoner of war in his own country.

View Details >>

Drowned City

Don Brown

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina's monstrous winds and surging water overwhelmed the protective levees around low-lying New Orleans, Louisiana. Eighty percent of the city flooded, in some places under twenty feet of water. Property damages across the Gulf Coast topped $100 billion. One thousand eight hundred and thirty-three people lost their lives. The tale of this historic storm and the drowning of an American city is one of selflessness, heroism, and courage -- and also of incompetence, racism, and criminality. Don Brown's kinetic art and as-it-happens narrative capture both the tragedy and triumph of one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

View Details >>

Bluffton

Matt Phelan

In the summer of 1908, in Muskegon, Michigan, a visiting troupe of vaudeville performers is about the most exciting thing since baseball. They’re summering in nearby Bluffton, so Henry has a few months to ogle the elephant and the zebra, the tightrope walkers and — lo and behold — a slapstick actor his own age named Buster Keaton. The show folk say Buster is indestructible; his father throws him around as part of the act and the audience roars, while Buster never cracks a smile. Henry longs to learn to take a fall like Buster, "the human mop," but Buster just wants to play ball with Henry and his friends. With signature nostalgia, Scott O’Dell Award–winning graphic novelist Matt Phelan visualizes a bygone era with lustrous color, dynamic lines, and flawless dramatic pacing.

View Details >>

Catherine's War

Julia Billet

A magnificent narrative inspired by a true survival story that asks universal questions about a young girl's coming of age story, her identity, her passions, and her first loves.

At the S vres Children's Home outside Paris, Rachel Cohen has discovered her passion--photography. Although she hasn't heard from her parents in months, she loves the people at her school, adores capturing what she sees in pictures, and tries not to worry too much about Hitler's war. But as France buckles under the Nazi regime, danger closes in, and Rachel must change her name and go into hiding.

As Catherine Colin, Rachel Cohen is faced with leaving the S vres Home--and the friends she made there--behind. But with her beautiful camera, Catherine possesses an object with the power to remember. For the rest of the war, Catherine bears witness to her own journey, and to the countless heroes whose courage and generosity saved the lives of many, including her own.

Based on the author's mother's own experiences as a hidden child in France during World War II, Catherine's War is one of the most accessible historical graphic novels featuring a powerful girl since Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi--perfect for fans of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Anne Frank, or Helen Keller.

Includes a map and photographs of the real Catherine and her wartime experiences, as well as an interview with author Julia Billet.

View Details >>

History Comics: The Challenger Disaster

Pranas T. Naujokaitis

Let this graphic novel be your time machine! In History Comics, the new nonfiction graphic novel series from First Second, the past comes alive!

In History Comics: The Challenger Disaster, we turn the clock back to January 28, 1986. Seven astronauts boarded the space shuttle Challenger on what would be a routine mission. All eyes and cameras were on crew member Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher, who was set to become the first private citizen in space. Excitement filled the air as the clock counted down to liftoff. But at T-plus seventy-three seconds after launch, the unthinkable happened . . .

What caused the midair explosion? In Pranas T. Naujokaitis's imaginative tale, set in a far-off future, a group of curious kids investigate the hard questions surrounding the Challenger explosion. Inspired by the legacy and sacrifice of the Challenger seven, they continue in their footsteps, setting out toward the stars and into the great unknown!

View Details >>

Displacement

Kiku Hughes

A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother's experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps in Displacement, a historical graphic novel from Kiku Hughes.

Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.

These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself "stuck" back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

Kiku Hughes weaves a riveting, bittersweet tale that highlights the intergenerational impact and power of memory.

View Details >>

History Comics: The Stonewall Riots

Archie Bongiovanni

Turn back the clock with History Comics! In this graphic novel, experience the Stonewall Riots firsthand and meet iconic activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Three teenagers—Natalia, Jax, and Rashad—are magically transported from their modern lives to the legendary Stonewall Inn in the summer of 1969. Escorted by Natalia's eccentric abuela (and her pet cockatiel, Rocky), the friends experience the police raid firsthand and are thrown into the infamous riots that made the struggle for LGBTQ rights front-page news.

View Details >>

The Faithful Spy

John Hendrix

The Faithful Spy is the dramatic true story of German pastor and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer come to life in this award-winning graphic novel from John Hendrix.

"Intertwines two stories: the insidious rise of Hitler with his creed of hatred and Bonhoeffer's development as an ethical thinker who believed that radical action was necessary, but that killing was a sin." --New York Times

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party is gaining strength and becoming more menacing every day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor upset by the complacency of the German church toward the suffering around it, forms a breakaway church to speak out against the established political and religious authorities. When the Nazis outlaw the church, he escapes as a fugitive. Struggling to reconcile his faith and the teachings of the Bible with the Nazi Party's evil agenda, Bonhoeffer decides that Hitler must be stopped by any means possible!

Young readers will be thrilled by the near-miss attempts to kill Hitler. The plots involve deception, gut-wrenching timing, and concealed explosives: a bomb in a gift package, a rigged docent conducting a tour of captured weaponry, and an explosive briefcase snuck into the heart of Hitler's fortress. But Hendrix makes the bold and surprising decision to tell it as a tale of faith. It makes this book unique, one as much about morality as it is about the attempted murder of one of history's most heinous leaders.

View Details >>

March: Book One (Oversized Edition)

John Lewis

The groundbreaking graphic-novel memoir by a living legend of the civil rights movement, March: Book One, is now available in an oversized hardcover edition. Created by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, this #1 New York Times bestseller is also a Coretta Scott King Honor book, a required text in classrooms across America, and the first graphic novel to win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Now this modern classic — praised by everyone from President Bill Clinton to LeVar Burton to Tim Cook — gets the deluxe, oversized hardcover treatment, so the stunning work of Lewis, Aydin, and Powell can be appreciated on a grander scale.

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.

Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.

Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.

View Details >>

The Legend of Auntie Po

Shing Yin Khor

A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

Part historical fiction, part fable, and 100 percent adventure. Thirteen-year-old Mei reimagines the myths of Paul Bunyan as starring a Chinese heroine while she works in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885.


Aware of the racial tumult in the years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Mei tries to remain blissfully focused on her job, her close friendship with the camp foreman's daughter, and telling stories about Paul Bunyan--reinvented as Po Pan Yin (Auntie Po), an elderly Chinese matriarch.

Anchoring herself with stories of Auntie Po, Mei navigates the difficulty and politics of lumber camp work and her growing romantic feelings for her friend Bee. The Legend of Auntie Po is about who gets to own a myth, and about immigrant families and communities holding on to rituals and traditions while staking out their own place in the United States.

View Details >>

The Great American Dust Bowl

Don Brown

A speck of dust is a tiny thing. In fact, five of them could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.

On a clear, warm Sunday, April 14, 1935, a wild wind whipped up millions upon millions of these specks of dust to form a duster--a savage storm--on America's high southern plains.

The sky turned black, sand-filled winds scoured the paint off houses and cars, trains derailed, and electricity coursed through the air. Sand and dirt fell like snow--people got lost in the gloom and suffocated . . . and that was just the beginning.

Don Brown brings the Dirty Thirties to life with kinetic, highly saturated, and lively artwork in this graphic novel of one of America's most catastrophic natural events: the Dust Bowl.

View Details >>

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers

Don Brown

A graphic novel chronicling the immediate aftermath and rippling effects of one of the most impactful days in modern history: September 11, 2001. From the Sibert Honor- and YALSA Award-winning creator behind The Unwanted and Drowned City.

The consequences of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, both political and personal, were vast, and continue to reverberate today. Don Brown brings his journalistic eye and attention to moving individual stories to help teens contextualize what they already know about the day, as well as broaden their understanding of the chain of events that occurred in the attack's wake.

Profound, troubling, and deeply moving, In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers bears witness to our history--and the ways it shapes our future.

View Details >>

The 13-Story Treehouse

Andy Griffiths

Andy and Terry live in a treehouse. But it's not just any old treehouse, it's the most amazing treehouse in the world!

This treehouse has thirteen stories, a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a secret underground laboratory, and a marshmallow machine that follows you around and automatically shoots marshmallows into your mouth whenever you are hungry.

Life would be perfect for Andy and Terry if it wasn't for the fact that they have to write their next book, which is almost impossible because there are just so many distractions, including thirteen flying cats, giant bananas, mermaids, a sea monsters pretending to be mermaids, enormous gorillas, and dangerous burp gas-bubblegum bubbles!

Join the fun with The 13-Story Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton. This title has Common Core connections.

View Details >>