Twelve-year-old Chinese American Evie Mei Huang traverses the netherworld searching for her mother in Lim’s imaginative debut. Evie always disliked helping her mother operate her tailor shop. But now that her mother is presumed dead following a drowning accident, Evie doesn’t know how to feel about the empty building. While alone in the establishment, Evie startles when a mischievous yaoguai resembling a monkey arrives. He tells Evie that her mother was the head of a magical guild and possessed the power to command the Spindle of Fate and, as her eldest child, Evie must now take up the mantle. He also claims that Evie’s mother is in Diyu, the netherworld, and that if Evie wants her back, she must go there to save her. Accompanied by Chinese and Icelandic American Kevin Chengsson, the son of another guild member, Evie hones her magical and innate strengths and battles her way through Diyu, a multilayered maze of hellish obstacles—“There’s a mountain covered with long swords and pits of excrement and flaming cattle”—populated by denizens intent on capturing her. Fast-paced action and dark humor combine with Chinese mythology to deliver an engrossing fantasy adventure about grief and healing. Ages 8–12. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Employing elegant verse, Ojibwe author Quigley (the Jo Jo series) crafts a story of two Ojibwe kids learning to cope with sorrowful life events. Eleven-year-old Ariel loves to dance ballet; it’s something she has in common with her beloved aunt Bineshiinh. But when Bineshiinh disappears, ballet doesn’t feel the same. Trying to find comfort in movement again, Ariel practices traditional Indigenous jingle dancing and, in delving into its history, learns that Native women are “ten times more likely to/ be murdered.” Meanwhile, Ariel’s 12-year-old neighbor Tomah uses humor to hide the fact that he struggles to read. Despite his academic insecurities, he discovers that he is a gifted storyteller and uses his talent to call attention to the disappearances of women in his Turtle Mountain community. Through Ariel and Tomah’s steadfast resolve, this heartbreaking yet heartening story tackles themes of grief and the strength it takes to grow through adversity. Even as the tweens confront personal challenges, they remain committed to bettering their surroundings in a moving narrative that highlights issues relating to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis while celebrating the healing power of art—including dance, folklore, music, and poetry—and the solace one can find in connecting with one’s heritage. Ages 8–12. Agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Employing even keeled pacing and distinctively rendered characters, Gutman (the My Weird School series) chronicles how Cleopatra’s Needle became a New York City landmark in this delightfully fact-ional blend of history and adventure. In an introduction, the novel’s unnamed contemporary narrator ventures through Central Park with their mother and younger sister. Upon arriving at their destination—the eponymous obelisk—their mother, “who makes her living as a storyteller,” regales her children with the history of the monument. Via varying POVs—including that of an Egyptian boy in 1460 BCE, a female inventor in 1880s N.Y.C., and others—Mom explains how Cleopatra’s Needle was commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmosis III in the granite pits of Aswan, Egypt, which she gleans from the hieroglyphics etched into the structure, and its subsequent removal from the country. Each successive event in the obelisk’s history is rendered with keen attention to sociopolitical details, including housing insecurity and child enslavement. These weighty topics are counterbalanced by the protagonists’ diary-style narrations, which ground this sweeping introduction to the lesser-known history of an iconic monolith. Ages 8–12. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Channeling personal experiences of emigrating from China to Australia, Marr (All Four Quarters of the Moon) examines one 11-year-old’s desire to turn back time in this thoughtful read. James Greenaway is sent adrift when his parents announce that they’re getting a divorce. Within days, he’s splitting time between his white-cued father’s familiar house and his Chinese Australian mother’s dilapidated new apartment. Worse, his parents are having him decide which parent he wants to spend his weekends with. At school, James befriends Yan Chen, a Chinese immigrant classmate who reads obsolete 40-year-old computer programming manuals for fun. When Yan says she invented a time machine, James scoffs. As he increasingly takes solace in memories of perfect days with his parents, however, he starts to believe that living in the past would be preferable to the present. But to do that, he’ll need Yan’s help. A subplot surrounding a school baking competition that relies on classic Australian cake constructions leads to laugh-out-loud antics and touching insights. Discussions of time travel lean more toward wistful fantasy than hard science, and the tweens’ desire to bend time provides a framework through which James gains new perspectives on his own memories. Ages 8–12. Agent: Gemma Cooper, Bent Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this witty and whimsical early chapter book series launch, a debut by married collaborators the Dutras, vampire Frankie D and his family—including his three-legged pet wolf—are excited to emigrate from Transylvania to America. To help Frankie blend in with his human classmates, his parents set special rules: no biting, no showing off his fangs, and no sneak attacks. Though Frankie’s meticulously practiced human manners hilariously fail him on his first day of fourth grade (attempts to make small talk surrounding his taxidermy expertise result in peers’ confused staring), his idiosyncrasies soon net him new friends, each with quirks of their own. Only one classmate gives Frankie pause: Eddie, a bully who smells of “forest trolls.” Eddie’s attempts to torment Frankie test his resolve not to bite. But when Frankie discovers Eddie’s secret insecurity, Frankie does his utmost to help Eddie overcome his challenges. Eager to fit in and rarely deterred by perceived setbacks, Frankie is a fang-tastic protagonist whose many triumphs and foibles will immediately endear him to young readers, even those without sharp teeth or pet wolves. Movement-filled grayscale spot illustrations by animator Brown depict characters with varying skin tones. Ages 7–10. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

“Now” is the name Doyle (You Are Part of the Wonder) gives to a great white horse who stands in a daisy-studded field at the start of this picture book—a horse whose gift is being able to stay in the moment. Now notices “buds opening, dragonflies dancing” when Rabbit and her babies arrive, hearts racing, crying, “Fox is chasing us!” “Can you see him now?” the horse asks, before responding to further concerns (“No... but he might sneak up...”) with “Or he might not.... At this moment, all is well.” Hen and her chicks fear Magpie; Sheep and her lambs, the farmer’s new dog. When thunder booms and the frightened animals flee to the barn, they find unexpected visitors, and Now’s patient words help the animals wait in peace. Finkeldey (When the Storks Came Home) uses soft, pastoral shades and textures to capture the horse’s shaggy mane, and the fur and feathers of the smaller creatures, whose faces express believable emotion. Barnyard detail and background scenery ground the abstract nature of Now’s calming techniques (“I breathe in... and out...”) and mindfulness teachings (“even the wildest storms will always end”) in this evocative pairing of barnyard life and inward reflection. Ages 4–8. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Debut creators Plourde and Fassler summon the feel of summer’s languor as they take readers to a car, seemingly abandoned and open to the air, parked in a semideserted strip-mall parking lot near a hotel called The Sea. Lolling and blowing bubbles in the back seat are two pale-skinned kids feeling summer’s heat (“We are microwave molten goo”). Though “we know all corners of The Sea.../ we’ve never been to the beach,” and for entertainment, they scatter French fries splattered with ketchup and sauce around the vehicle and watch a “tangle” of gulls appear (“One thousand, TWO THOUSAND wings!”). The cloudless sky turns to psychedelic hues as the kids imagine the blue-winged birds hoisting the car over the strip mall signage (“We are weightless./ We are Deals! Deals! Deals!”) to the ocean, where the occupants splash with abandon. Both the language and the expressively textured drawings, rendered in digitally finished pencil, crayon, and graphite, strive for poetic heights. Though the result is occasionally more perplexing than transportive, it’s a wild and wonderful seasonal tribute to the way that children, left to their own devices during a long summer’s day, can be immensely creative. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Jen Newens, Martin Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

A desert sunset cues a large family to make music alongside “the coyotes, the cicadas,/ and the giant barn owls....// a chorus in need of a band,” in this lyrical picture book written by Zea Kemp (A Crown for Corina). As a rich, warm sunset palette slowly gives way to the deep, beautiful blues of nighttime, Uncle Eduardo drums his hands on his jeans, Aunt Ofelia plays the flute, and other family members take up percussion and stringed instruments, until, “when my mother opens her mouth to sing,/ a hush falls over the desert.” After the moon rises and Mami sings of memory, the child’s father acknowledges that the Latinx-cued family plays “your great-great-grandfather’s vihuela and my godmother’s ocarina. To remind us that they’re still alive between the notes. That when we sing to them, they’re listening.” Amid naïf-style scenes of the family collaborating with each other and the natural world, digitally finished acrylic gouache and colored pencil illustrations from Gutiérrez Hernández (Benito Juárez Fights for Justice) visualize the child’s forebears in this work about connection that ends with “the glittering sky overhead, an audience of our ancestors”—and a development that sounds like applause. Creators’ notes conclude. Ages 4–8. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Making a lively picture book debut, Woodfolk (Nothing Burns as Bright as You) pays homage to seaside ’dos of all kinds. When the child narrator and their family wake up “with the wildest bed head,” and Mommy calls it “beach hair,” the grinning trio packs up and heads to the shore. Upon arrival, the young protagonist uses comparative prose to describe various hair styles: Black-cued Mommy’s is “fluffy and big,/ like the fat white clouds,” while pale-skinned Daddy’s dark hair “is straight, going sideways with the wind,/ like the tall seagrass,” and the brown-skinned protagonist’s is “like the soft waves in the ocean.” Mata (I Love My Spots) employs brilliantly colorful digital art, portraying people of varying ages, body types, and skin tones interacting by the water: “I see BOUNCY beach hair/ and FLOUNCY beach hair./ WISPY and WOOLLY and/ UP-IN-THE-AIR beach hair.” After swimming, the family’s sun-baked ’dos change again, into “tiny spirals” like seashells for Mommy, “feathery and floppy” tresses like a seagull’s wings for Daddy, and “fat curls,/ the same shape as soft-serve” for the protagonist. It’s a well-observed celebration that’s a day at the beach. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Beth Phelan, Gallt & Zacker. Illustrator’s agent: Christy Ewers, CAT Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

A winsome little white goat with a bright kerchief around her neck, this picture book’s protagonist loves to climb and sing nonstop—digitally colored drawings, rendered in bucolic sunny tones, show joyful notes cascading from her mouth. But the neighbors, portrayed with brown skin, are not charmed when the goat mounts their roof. “That goat is driving me nuts!” they complain, and when the animal falls down a well, they choose not to rescue her, instead filling the well with dirt while she’s still trapped inside. “CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?” bright typography asks as the goat looks straight at readers with incredulous eyes. With a refrain of “Shake it off. Pack it under!” the goat quickly begins to shift the accumulating shovelfuls of dirt beneath her feet, gradually lifting herself to safety. Brantley-Newton (Becoming Vanessa) prefaces this folktale-feeling story of adversity overcome with the assurance that it will end happily, but the casual cruelty and visceral sense of peril may nevertheless alarm some readers, even if the goat is ultimately triumphant and wins the humans’ respect. An author’s note concludes. Ages 3–7. Agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words. (June)

Reviewed on 03/15/2024 | Details & Permalink