Squishy Taylor and the Bonus Sisters

Wild doesn’t avoid touchy topics in one of four titles launching a series starring Sita “Squishy” Taylor, who lives with her remarried father and stepfamily. Squishy doesn’t love her “new normal,” especially twin stepsisters Jessie and Vee, who are “95% annoying and 5% really, really annoying,” so she’s excited to discover a boy hiding out in their apartment building’s parking garage. The sisters grow closer as they recognize that a runaway boy isn’t a secret they should be keeping. Though the text doesn’t dwell on it, Wild creates a multicultural blended family for Squishy (readers will pick up that she’s of Indian descent on her mother’s side), and children’s struggles with divorce and remarriage factor into the plot in other ways, too. Squishy’s big personality comes through clearly in the vivid first-person narration as well as in Wood’s interspersed cartoons. Ages 7–10. (Feb.)