*STARRED REVIEW The “Before” was when ZJ’s football-playing father was “everybody’s … next great hero,” but to ZJ, world-famous “Zachariah 44!” was “just my dad … which means / he’s my every single thing.” For most of 12-year-old ZJ’s life, Daddy was the very best parent,...
Eleven-year-old Ellie has been bullied most of her life for being fat. The mean girls are bad enough, but her weight-obsessed mother might unintentionally be her worst enemy – what mother pushes bariatric surgery on her tween? Ellie’s best friend is moving away, which means that...
Once upon a time, Lita “turned from star-stuff thrown off a meteor into a girl” and became “to everyone around” the daughter of the local curandera Bruja Lupe. That meteor gave the New Mexico town its name – yes, Meteor – as well as the...
“I have two lives. / One that is Indian, / one that is not,” 13-year-old Reha introduces herself. During the week, she “swim[s] in a river of white skin” at school; “on weekends / [she] “float[s] in a sea of brown skin and black hair...
The year is 1885 and Mei and her father, Ah Hao, work in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in this mesmerizing middle-grade debut by author/illustrator Shing Yin Khor (The American Dream?). The first few pages of Khor's clever graphic novel delineates underlying racial disparities: "Every night,...
BonHyung Jeong: Different Countries, Different Cultures, All Human Beings BonHyung Jeong makes her graphic novel debut with Kyle's Little Sister, from JY/Yen Press (June 22, 2021). Jeong's energetic title is a delightful middle-grade story that highlights the universal challenges of growing up, navigating friendships and overcoming a bit...
BonHyung Jeong, a Korea-born, internationally raised and U.S.-educated artist, astutely channels the universal experience of growing up – and sometimes growing away – in her delightfully boisterous middle-grade graphic novel debut, Kyle's Little Sister. For her entire life, Grace Bailey has "not once...
Welcome to Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. The year remains somber, as the APA community combats dramatically increasing anti-Asian violence around the country and continues to mourn the eight people, including six women of Asian descent, killed in a Georgia mass shooting. Despite a U.S....
*STARRED REVIEW Kyle Lukoff has already received acclaim for his picture books, including his #OwnVoices 2020 Stonewall Award-winning When Aidan Became a Brother. Lukoff's middle-grade debut, Too Bright to See, is another illuminating story that explores gender identity, featuring a trans tween who's finally ready to...
Relative newbie Mimi Chang and seasoned Josh Hurley prove well-paired narrating two 12-year-old seventh-graders in 1980s Sacramento who initially seem to share little more than loneliness – and the specter of missing fathers. Ro’s father is dead, killed by a drunk driver. She hasn’t moved houses,...
April is National Poetry Month. Of course, reading, writing, and performing poetry can and should be done any time of the year, but April encourages newbies and doubters to give verses a try. Audiobooks are a particularly effective medium for poetry, with well-chosen narrators enhancing and...
Following the success of her lauded “We Set the Dark on Fire” duology, Tehlor Kay Mejia makes her middle grade debut, proving mothers are always right, ghosts exist, and La Llorona is legit. From 12 to eternal, desperate parent to dismissive cop, madwoman to murderer,...
The Night Marchers and Other Oceanian Tales is the fourth installment in Iron Circus Comics' geographically specific Cautionary Fables & Fairytales series: African tales in The Girl Who Married a Skull, Asian stories in Tamamo the Fox Maiden, and European fare in The Nixie of the Mill-Pond. Volume four...
The lively cast of Front Desk returns with narrator Sunny Lu, adding much-appreciated continuity. A relative audiobook newbie, Lu proves her expertise in ciphering middle graders to middle-aged adults. That she’s also an attorney makes the lawyers here – both the pompous and the heroic –...
*STARRED REVIEW Newbie narrator Keong Sim – who, although born in Vietnam, shares Korean American heritage with Mike Jung – has less than a handful of audio credits, but his effervescent energy is a perfect match for Jung’s rollicking, heartwarming MG buddy epic. Matt and Eric are...
Debut author Lily LaMotte draws on her immigrant experiences – as well as her cooking show obsession – for a toothsome #OwnVoices graphic feast vibrantly illustrated by the Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. For 12-year-old Cici, leaving Taiwan means separation from her beloved A-má (grandmother). In Seattle, Cici's...
Welcome back to a new year at Riverdale Academy Day (RAD) School in Jerry Craft's entertaining follow-up to his 2020 Newbery Medal-winning debut, New Kid. Wannabe artist Jordan reunites with his closest friends: Liam, who arrives from his family's Riverdale mansion via chauffeur, and Drew, who...
Ramón De Ocampo, co-narrator of Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly’s Hello, Universe (2017) and a fellow Filipino American, returns to Kelly’s work solo this time, ciphering three siblings who share an address but seemingly little else. Their combative parents are too distracted to be nurturing, leaving...
Duplicating the prose and graphic hybrid format of her award-winning debut, Pie in the Sky, Indonesia-born Remy Lai presents Fly on the Wall, another pitch-perfect middle-grade book about the longing to belong. As the youngest Khoo, 12-year-old Henry is "FORBIDDEN from Doing Anything on His Own...
Readers might need the opening sentence repeated here: “Somewhere in the Américas, many years after once-upon-a-time and long before happily-ever-after, a boy climbed the cobbled steps of an arched bridge in the tiny village of Santa Maria in the country of the same name.” The...
