Here we round up new and forthcoming children’s titles, including books about a family feast and a family tree, a YA novel about a type A student gone bad, a family’s trip to a hot spring, and more.
Soul Food Sunday by Winsome Bingham, illus. by C.G. Esperanza. Abrams, $17.99; ISBN 978-1-4197-4771-7. In this abundantly satisfying picture book, a large Black family—“Mommas and Poppas,/ aunts and uncles,/ nieces, nephews, and a whole lot of cousins”—gathers for Soul Food Sunday every week at Granny’s. The book earned a starred review from PW.
The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illus. by Nikkolas Smith. Kokila, $18.99; ISBN 978-0-593-30735-9. When a Black child, this story’s narrator, feels shame surrounding a family tree assignment, their parents and grandparents offer what an author’s note calls “a proud origin story.” In meticulous, forthright poems by Newbery Honoree Watson and 1619 Project founder Hannah-Jones, the family reaches back to the Kingdom of Ndongo, where their ancestors “had a home, a place, a land,/ a beginning.” The book earned a starred review from PW.
The Year I Stopped Trying by Katie Heaney. Knopf, $18.99; ISBN 978-0-593-11828-3. Junior class council secretary Mary Davies, a white, Catholic, “tightly wound” 16-year-old, earns excellent grades. Then she accidentally misses an assignment, the world doesn’t end, and she begins to realize how much she is defined by being good.
The Big Bath House by Kyo Maclear, illus. by Gracey Zhang. Random House Studio, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-593-18195-9. Maclear remembers with affection the local bathhouse that her Baachan took her to during childhood visits to Japan. The book earned a starred review from PW.
The Legend of the Christmas Witch by Dan Murphy and Aubrey Plaza, illus. by Julia Iredale. Viking, $18.99; ISBN 978-0-593-35080-5. Copper-haired infants abandoned in the Black Forest come to disparate ends in this “forgotten” dark myth by producer Murphy and actor Plaza.
Fuzzy, Inside and Out: A Story About Small Acts of Kindness and Big Hair by Zachariah OHora. Abrams, $18.99; ISBN 978-1-4197-5190-5. There’s more than one kind of fuzzy in this picture book about community care: the abundant hair of protagonist Fuzzy Haskins, a skateboarding pink dog who requires two hair dryers after a bath, and the warm fuzzies that Fuzzy radiates as he moves throughout an animal-populated city, taking cookies to a friend.
Detective Mole by Camilla Pintonato, trans. from the Italian by Debbie Bibo. HarperCollins, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-06-305178-2. A chef with a “great nose” that can “sniff out anything,” Oscar the mole believes that he would make an excellent detective. Pintonato drafts colorful digital artwork to accompany her tale, and her sense of humor loses nothing in Bibo’s fine translation, allowing English speakers to enjoy this quiet rib-tickler of a detective picture book.
The Ice House by Monica Sherwood. Little, Brown, $16.99; ISBN 978-0-316705-34-9. Sherwood’s lightly magical middle grade debut deftly mixes tween friendship difficulties and familial frustrations with an alternate reality that mirrors pandemic schooling, exploring the loneliness of an event that requires insular experiences—a feeling with which many readers will relate.
Xo, Exoplanet by Deborah Underwood, illus. by Jorge Lacera. Little, Brown, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-7595-5743-7. “The planets were swirling around the sun, as usual,” writes Underwood, when Neptune, peering through binoculars, spots another planet “circling another star, far, far, away!” The planets dispatch a “welcome to the galaxy” letter, but when they blithely address the recipient as “Exoplanet”—a planet outside the solar system—civility fails to launch.
Dream Street by Tricia Elam Walker, illus. by Ekua Holmes. Random/Schwartz, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-525-58110-9. Each spread in this powerful evocation of a warm, closely knit Black neighborhood offers a short sketch-in-language of one of its inhabitants by Elam Walker and a vivid collage portrait by Holmes—cousins who, they explain in a note, grew up in such a neighborhood themselves. The picture book earned a starred review from PW.
Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells. Simon & Schuster, $18.99; ISBN 978-1-5344-8842-7. Wells reinterprets “Sleeping Beauty,” centering light brown–skinned Lena, 17 and cursed since birth with the power to kill through a single touch. This take on fairy tale magic leans into fast-paced adventure.
A Rush of Wings by Laura E. Weymouth. S&S/McElderry, $18.99; ISBN 978-1-5344-9308-7. In a lush YA retelling of “The Wild Swans” that’s rooted in Scottish history and folklore, 18-year-old Rowenna Winthrop must hone her untrained witchcraft to break the family curse conjured by a monster masquerading as her deceased mother.
Tidesong by Wendy Xu. Quill Tree, $12.99; ISBN 978-0-06-295580-7. Sophie Wu, 12, is determined to nail her Royal Magic Academy audition in this middle grade graphic novel. Xu gives her solo debut fresh allure with richly evoked Chinese mythology–inspired dragons and a supporting cast of idiosyncratic, endearing characters.
For more children’s and YA titles on sale throughout the month of November, check out PW’s full On-Sale Calendar.
