Elana K. Arnold. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-544-33464-9
Arnold (Sacred) sensitively examines grief and the big questions that arise when someone dies unexpectedly. Sixth-grader Iris Abernathy’s family moves from California to Corvallis, Ore., shortly after the death of Iris’s best friend Sarah. Iris...
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Elana K. Arnold. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $19.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-299085-3
In this searing historical novel set in 1939–1945 Romanian Czernowitz, Arnold (Red Hood) presents a deeply personal telling based on her grandmother’s experience living through the Holocaust. After her philandering father abandons the family, Jewish
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Dung Ho. Walden Pond, $16.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-06-309204-4
Rising fourth grader and narrator Harriet Wermer starts this chapter book with “the worst things first.” Specifically, Harriet reveals, she lies, has night terrors, occasionally wets her bed, and can get what her mother calls “out of hand.” The...
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Elana K. Arnold. Walden Pond, $16.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-293706-3
In an enticing story about “opossums and teacups and kittens and doors. Fathers and sweaters and yarn balls and more,” Arnold (Starla Jean) centers a series of coincidences that lead to magic and change. Eleven-year-old Alder resents the new next-doo
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Elana K. Arnold. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $17.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-274235-3
"There isn’t always a wolf... but there is always the threat of one.” Arnold artfully spins a dark, magic-tinged “Little Red Riding Hood” retelling in which a young woman discovers the power that is her birthright. Bisou Martel, 16, has lived with...
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Elana K. Arnold. Balzer + Bray, $17.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-274232-2
This subversion of fairy tale tropes begins with familiar elements: a prince rescues a damsel from a dragon to make her his bride and prove his worth to become king, as happens with every generation in the kingdom of Harding (“I saved you,” he...
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Elana K. Arnold. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-544-60227-4
Living in an RV is the last thing 12-year-old Odette Zyskowski wants—in fact, it tops her list of “things that aren’t fair.” But her father took a “voluntary layoff” from work, and the family is selling its California house to care for Odette’s...
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Elana K. Arnold. Carolrhoda Lab, $18.99 (200p) ISBN 978-1-4677-3849-1
Sephora Golding, a 17-year-old found-object artist, used to imagine that her gorgeous mother’s life was a fairy tale, but their home on the seedier side of Venice Beach belies those fantasies, and the secret that Sephora is holding inside is the...
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Elana K. Arnold. Delacorte, $16.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-385-74334-1
In a coming-of-age romance driven by a vivid sense of place, Ben Stanley is preparing to head to college, and he's not the only one leaving. His entire town of Gypsum, Nev., is about to be abandoned with the shuttering of the local mine. Lala White,
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Charles Santoso. Walden Pond, $16.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-06-244582-7
When Bat’s veterinarian mother brings home an infant skunk to foster for a month, Bat—a third grader on the autism spectrum—hopes to prove that he’s responsible enough to keep the skunk, Thor, as a pet. Written in third person, this engaging and...
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Elana K. Arnold. Carolrhoda Lab, $18.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-5124-1024-2
According to nursery rhymes, girls are supposed to be made of sugar, spice, and everything nice, but Arnold (Infandous) knows that reality isn’t so pretty or simplistic. Her heroine, 16-year-old Nina, is made of body insecurities, few close friends,
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Elizabet Vukovic´. Beach Lane, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4814-7262-3
On a city street one day, everything appears normal to children playing. But two houses are “unusually” quiet. In one, an old dog is drawing its last breaths; its family, two women and three children, gathers around sorrowfully. Next door, a father,
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Doug Salati. Roaring Brook, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-250-79698-1
In a picture book set when “we all had to stay home for the whole long springtime,” a white-presenting family on a walk finds two eggs in the shallows of a park lake. The family’s brown-skinned neighbor, Ted, who has the distinct knowledge of a...
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Giselle Potter. Beach Lane, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5344-8989-9
The eponymous “himself,” a white-presenting youth who proudly builds an elaborate block structure, doesn’t appear for the first half of this cumulative picture book. Instead, Arnold’s (Just Harriet) “The House that Jack Built”–tinged narrative and...
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Magdalena Mora. Roaring Brook, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-2507-6532-1
In a story with echoes of both “The Fisherman and His Wife” and The Carp in the Bathtub, a brown-skinned girl encounters a fish whose one wish-granting catch proves key to change. After other children, portrayed with various abilities and skin tones,
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by A.N. Kang. Roaring Brook, $14.99 (96p) ISBN 978-1-250-30576-3
Cycling with her father—on a double bike that’s a fun touch—determined, curious Starla Jean encounters “the skinniest, ugliest chicken” she’s ever seen. Struck by a desire to bring it home, she decides to meet her father’s unthinking challenge of “if
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Elana K. Arnold, illus. by Linda Davick. Beach Lane, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4814-7260-9
Riley has an outfit for each day’s experiences. On Monday, the first day of school, the child combats shyness by wearing a bunny costume; for a rainy Friday, it’s rubber boots, a tutu, and a police officer jacket. And for a Sunday trip to the park,...
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