Hitting shelves next week are a picture book about an ice cube who dreams of more, a middle grade novel about a girl’s uncommon education, and the last YA novel from a bestselling author.

Fireworks by Katie Cotugno. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-06-241827-2. In this YA novel, two friends both in a band are discovered by a talent agent, and begin training to be pop stars while falling for a fellow star in training.

Alex and Eliza: A Love Story by Melissa de la Cruz. Putnam, $17.99; ISBN 978-1-5247-3962-1. This YA novelization of the romance between Elizabeth Schuyler, second daughter of a prominent colonial family, and Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s handsome aide-de-camp, may confuse or confound those who have committed to heart the Broadway musical’s cast recording.

Poppy Louise Is Not Afraid of Anything by Jenna McCarthy, illus. by Molly Idle. Random House, $16.99; ISBN 978-0-385-39086-6. In this picture book, Poppy Louise’s bravery—and hubris—are tested.

Curiosity House: The Fearsome Firebird by Lauren Oliver and H.C. Chester (HarperCollins, $16.99; ISBN 978-0-06-227087-0. In the third volume of Oliver’s middle grade series, four kids must stop a wave of bank robberies.

Apartment 1986 by Lisa Papademetriou. HarperCollins, $16.99; ISBN 978-0-06-237108-9. In an attempt to escape her fraught home situation, Callie begins skipping school and educating herself in museums in this middle grade novel.

Beck by Mal Peet, with Meg Rosoff. Candlewick, $17.99; ISBN 978-0-7636-7842-5. A gritty and inspiring survival story, Peet’s final novel, completed by Rosoff after his death, has the stoic quality and soul of a Steinbeck tale. Set in the 1920s and early ’30s, it traces the saga of Beck, a British youth born out of a tryst between his destitute mother and a visiting sailor from West Africa. The book earned a starred review from PW.

Charlie & Mouse by Laurel Snyder, illus. by Emily Hughes. Chronicle, $14.99; ISBN 978-1-4521-3153-5. In four linked stories, Snyder (Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova) and Hughes (A Brave Bear) introduce the two eponymous brothers and their down-to-earth family as they go about their days. The book earned a starred review from PW.

Ice Boy by David Ezra Stein. Candlewick, $15.99; ISBN 978-0-7636-8203-3. In this picture book, Stein’s ice cube protagonist wants more from life than a tenuous existence in a freezer and a destiny of being “chosen”—his fatalist family’s euphemism for becoming part of someone’s drink or cold compress.

My Life as a Ninja by Janet Tashjian and Jake Tashjian. Holt, $13.99; ISBN 978-1-62779-889-1. The sixth book in the My Life series follows protagonist Derek’s love of cartoons as it expands to incorporate manga and anime.

For more children’s and YA titles on sale throughout the month of April, check out PW’s full On-Sale Calendar.