Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (420p) ISBN 978-1-68119-536-0
In Wolf Creek, a small town in upstate New York, middle school students learn that they’ll develop a time capsule project as a summer letter-writing assignment. Best friends Nora and Lizzie, as well as new girl Elidee, imagine sharing tales of ice...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Kat Fajardo. Algonquin, $15.99 (128p) ISBN 978-1-523525-71-3; $6.99 paper ISBN 978-1-5235-2572-0
When cheerleader Emma McKenna begins third grade at Curiosity Academy, she’s eager to befriend her new classmates and thrilled by her quirky teacher Mrs. Z. But Emma isn’t expecting to encounter Lucy, her former best friend, with whom she had a...
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-5476-0281-0
When Mia’s grandma has a mild stroke, the middle schooler’s family moves from Boston to Burlington, Vt., to help her grandmother sell her cricket farm. As a former entomology professor and entomophagist, however, Gram is determined to get more...
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-68119-548-3
First seen in Messner’s first novel, The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z., Kirby “Zig” Zigonski loves tinkering and appreciates the way that “everything fits” in a simple electrical circuit. Zig lives with his mother, who both works and is studying to...
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-61963-376-6
Twelve-year-old Charlie—a devoted friend, loving sister, enthusiastic Irish dancer, and budding ice fisher—has read enough stories to know not to be greedy when making wishes, so she is extra careful when a wish-granting fish turns up at the end of...
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-61963-374-2
Ava Anderson, a 12-year-old chronic worrier, comes across a pencil that appears to be able to talk, telling her the answers to her questions about everything from mathematical formulas for a quiz to concerns over family members' health problems....
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $16.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-8027-2314-7
When 12-year-old Cat Grayson is sent to the International Center for Advanced Neurology (I-CAN), an elite clinic specializing in head injuries, she hopes their revolutionary techniques will cure her post-concussion trauma. Instead, she discovers a...
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Kate Messner. Scholastic Press, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-545-39539-7
Messner (Eye of the Storm) opens a mystery series with a novel as cinematic in execution as it is patriotic in theme—at one point, a character compares this adventure to the Jerry Bruckheimer–produced film National Treasure, and that’s not a bad...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Christopher Silas Neal. Chronicle, $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4521-4542-6
As day turns to night, a boy and his mother take in the sights above and below their rowboat in this contemplative follow-up to Over and Under the Snow and Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt. Messner’s elegant narrative, written from the boy’s...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Christopher Silas Neal. Chronicle, $16.99 (44p) ISBN 978-0-8118-6784-9
Straddling the informative and the evocative, this lovely study of the ways animals spend the winter in a “secret kingdom under the snow” combines Messner’s (Sea Monster’s First Day) graceful prose (“Over the snow, the fire crackles, and sparks...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Heather Ross. Candlewick, $14.99 (56p) ISBN 978-0-7636-7846-3
Classroom pet Fergus the mouse can’t resist sneaking along for a trip to the natural history museum, where he befriends another mouse named Zeke. In a high-spirited series opener set over four chapters, Messner (the Ranger in Time books) lets...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Kelley McMorris. Scholastic, $17.99 (144p) ISBN 978-0-545-63915-6
A time-traveling golden retriever named Ranger stars in this magic-tinged first book in the Ranger in Time series. Trained as a search-and-rescue dog, Ranger is magically transported away from his young owner, Luke, to the year 1850 after finding a...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Matthew Forsythe. Chronicle, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4521-3350-8
Messner draws a poetic analogy between people and corals in this story of Ken Nedimyer, founder of the Coral Restoration Foundation: “Some drift in the currents until they come to rest, not too deep, on the ocean floor. If one is lucky, it lands in...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Adam Rex. Chronicle, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4521-7488-4
Messner (Chirp) and Rex (Pluto Gets the Call) open with a flyleaf bookplate that reads not “This Book Belongs to” but rather “This Country Belongs to.” It’s emblematic of their core idea that “the presidents of tomorrow are always out there...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Alexandra Bye. Simon & Schuster, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-66590-243-4
“Don’t get discouraged,” Anthony Fauci’s pharmacist father told him anytime the boy had homework problems. “Think about it carefully and try to work it out.” Anthony loved to play basketball, but he wasn’t as tall as the other players, so he thought
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Kate Messner, illus. by Mark Siegel. Chronicle, $17.99 (36p) ISBN 978-1-452-15666-8
That muse of fire isn’t going to ascend all by herself, so Messner and Siegel, in their follow-up to How to Read a Story, walk readers through 10 steps of literary creation, starting with “search for an idea” and ending with “share your story.” The...
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Kate Messner and Margaret E. Powell, illus. by Erin Robinson. Chronicle, $18.99 (56p) ISBN 978-1-4521-6160-0
Messner and Powell offer a persevering portrait of fashion designer Ann Lowe (1898–1981), from her early achievements in the South to success designing for Manhattan’s elite, including Jackie Kennedy’s wedding party. Evocative prose describes Lowe’s
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Kate Messner, illus. by MacKenzie Haley. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-3743-9005-1
“It’s not too late for you to choose a different book about something more pleasant,” an unseen narrator warns as readers enter a gothic, albeit bright pink, mansion at the start of this picture book; “When you turn the page and have to run...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Dylan Meconis. Random House, $7.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-0-593-12031-6
Opening the History Smashers series along with the simultaneously published History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote, this entertaining, informative offering by Messner (The Next President) aims to decolonize the story of the Pilgrims and...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Andy Rash. Chronicle, $16.99 (36p) ISBN 978-0-8118-7564-6
Ernest, a goofy-looking green sea monster, wants to make friends at school, but he's too big for the jungle gym, is snubbed by private schools of fish ("It felt like everybody was already part of a group"), and gets teased by the largemouth (and...
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Grace Lin and Kate Messner, illus. by Grace Lin. Little, Brown, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-316-54107-7
In this meta collaboration by Lin (A Big Mooncake for Little Star) and Messner (Only the Best), immersive gouache spreads convey the way books can carry readers into new worlds. Stranded inside by winter weather, Alice, who wears pink glasses,...
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Kate Messner. Bloomsbury, $17.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5476-1639-8
After sullen seventh grader Finn Connelly is detained for damaging the headstone of late local hero Edna Grace Thomas, who once corresponded with and encouraged climbers of the 46 Adirondack peaks, Finn sees the event as further proof that he exists
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Kate Messner, illus. by Jennifer Bricking. Bloomsbury, $17.99 hardcover (128p) ISBN 978-1-5476-1757-9; $6.99 paper ISBN 978-1-5476-1642-8
Drawing from her own volunteer experience, per an author’s note, Messner (The Trouble with Heroes) highlights themes of ecological conservation and wildlife preservation via this accessible series-starting chapter book. In an idyllic opening...
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Kate Messner, illus. by Julia Kuo. Chronicle, $19.99 (60p) ISBN 978-1-4521-7696-3
Stylish, rotoscope-esque illustrations
by Kuo (Luminous) give this inspirational picture book poster-like visual impact as Messner (The Next President) explores the career trajectories of several dozen scientists and researchers of various...
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