“The world’s falling apart,” young Olive sighs under a starry sky. “Some think it’s coming together,” the chancellor reminds her as she guides Olive home through the forest, subduing an angry beast midway. Cloaked in layers, her face obscured in hooded darkness, the chancellor protects...
The final title in two-time National Book Award-nominated Jason Reynolds’ popular Track tetralogy (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu) is the third of the series voiced by the author’s childhood friend and anointed collaborator Guy Lockard. Meet “Lucky Lu,” “Lookie Lu,” “Lu the Lightning Bolt,” who’s co-captain...
“Dear Diary” started because Sunny's father wanted him to be "more hushy-hushy" than "yelly-yelly." Writing gave Sunny a place "to put the noise…whenever [he] needed to, which was all the time except for when [he] was running or sleeping." Sunny's a gifted runner yet being...
Twelve-year-old Jordan wanted to go to art school, but instead, his parents enroll the seventh grader in "one of the best schools in the entire state." Although his father expresses concern about Riverdale Academy Day's glaring lack of diversity, his mother insists that with Jordan's...
In 2011, author/artist/filmmaker Shaun Tan won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and received an Oscar for the animated adaptation of his book The Lost Thing. What initially brought him to international acclaim was the publication of The Arrival in 2006 (2007 in the U.S.). A...
In one of those “dorky old composition notebooks,” seventh-grader Natalie is “supposed to observe something that interests us and spend all year applying the scientific process to our capital-Q Question.” While she struggles to formulate that ideal Q, Natalie fills the pages with much more...
Inspired by their 7-year-old great-niece's distress over the 2016 elections, Just Us Books’ co-founders Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson created We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices as a contemporary antidote for fear. Recalling their dangerous experiences growing up in the 1950s and...
When he was just 11 years old, George Washington inherited ownership of 10 human beings. By the time he died in 1799, Washington's estate on the Potomac River, Mount Vernon, was home to 317 enslaved African American men, women, and children: 123 people owned by...
*STARRED REVIEW On her 12th birthday, Nisha receives her first diary from Kazi, the family’s cook, presented with prescient words: “he said it was time to start writing things down … someone needs to make a record of the things that will happen because the grown-ups...
*STARRED REVIEW "[T]he school wanted to try something new: Could they put [six] kids together in a room with one teacher and make something amazing?" For Ms. Laverne's fifth/sixth grade Brooklyn, N.Y., class, the answer is a resounding yes. Deemed "special kids," Haley, Holly, Ashton, Amari,...
Time travel, time paradoxes, time shells, time hollows – are they fantasy? Reality? The following titles are billed as fiction, but they're also a look into endless possibilities. Last week, we brought you audiobooks about time travel for adults, but it's time (sorry) younger readers got...
The Unwanted’s first two images couldn't be more jarring: on the title page, a hijab-wearing woman raises her hand to her face in overwhelming distress; a turn of the page reveals a girl holding flowers, smiling back over her shoulder as she walks across a...
In fall 2014, Cécile Brun and Olivier Pichard (fictional versions of the artists who comprise Atelier Sentō) traveled to Niigata Prefecture on Japan’s west coast. To escape the rain, they duck into a dimly lit shop, where they discover a camera that can allegedly “shoot...
*STARRED REVIEW When young Yu’er laments, “People think I’m different,” her grandfather’s immediate response, “Oh, who cares what they think!” sets her free to be just that and more. She’s different because she’s physically challenged, but Grampa ensures her mobility via push cart, wooden chair on...
To his New York City nephew and niece, iconic author and civil rights activist James Baldwin was mostly known as "Uncle Jimmy," although the siblings would realize soon enough that he was also "a famous writer" of world renown. "When you gonna write a book...
*STARRED REVIEW Ten-year-old Ebo has lost his parents, his Uncle Patrick is always drunk, and his older sister Sisi is missing. And then his older brother Kwame vanishes to search for Sisi and find a better life in Europe. With nothing left tying him to their tiny...
*STARRED REVIEW That Elizabeth Acevedo narrates her debut novel-in-verse is a sublime gift. She’s undoubtedly the ideal aural arbiter of her spectacular coming-of-age tale about a Harlem teen whose generational, cultural, religious, and emotional conflicts coalesce to teach her “to believe in the power of [her]...
The last day of seventh grade for two best-friends-since-babyhood should be a day of jubilant celebration. But Austin's unexpected announcement that he's going off to a competitive soccer camp for a month is news that's "gonna ruin [their] Fun Index," Bina laments. Austin's reaction to skipping...
That Clara Shin's favorite place – a hilltop overlooking her native Los Angeles – was made famous by the classic movie Rebel Without a Cause is perfectly fitting. Since getting suspended freshman year for smoking, 16-year-old Clara's been all about causing mayhem – just because. Nominated for...
After a decade of driving the same bus route, "Mr. Bertram Brown has had quite enough." He resents the old ladies, "old blokes," "dippy mothers," "babies puking," "lovey-dovey" lads and lasses "going coo coo coo," but "[d]on't get Bert started about kids! ...
