Twelve-year-old Lawrence and his family have had “a double dose of hard lately.” His dad left his mom and has been in and out of prison ever since, and Lawrence, his mom and little sister have recently moved from Charlotte to “the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina,” to live with Lawrence’s no-nonsense grandmother. When Lawrence is expelled from his new, mostly white middle school for fighting, Granny is quick to quash his plan to stay home and watch TV. 

When Mr. Dennis, who lives nearby, spots Lawrence walking aimlessly around the neighborhood, he invites the boy to join him at the local rec center, where he teaches Lawrence to play competitive chess. “Chess is a game for thinkers,” Mr. Dennis explains, and through the game, Lawrence learns lessons that apply to both chess and life, such as the importance of seeing the big picture and how to plan ahead and avoid falling into enemy traps. He also connects with other kids at the rec center, including brilliant Twyla, who captures his heart, and combative Deuce, who turns out to share something important in common with Lawrence.

In Not an Easy Win, author Chrystal D. Giles turns chess into a drama-filled endeavor that reaches its peak when Lawrence returns to Charlotte to compete in a junior chess tournament. These scenes are filled with all the tension and thrill of a high-stakes athletic final, and even readers with little or no knowledge of chess will be lured in.

Lawrence makes an appealing narrator, and his honesty will quickly win readers over. Giles has a knack for believable turns of phrase that memorably convey Lawrence’s emotions. For instance, when Lawrence recalls the day he was expelled, he observes, “There’s something about being constantly reminded that I’m different that makes me extra edgy, like a revved-up engine ready to spin out.”

Giles explains in an author’s note that, like Lawrence, she grew up in “a multigenerational home . . . with a parent who was absent and often incarcerated,” which led to “moments of embarrassment and shame.” Lawrence’s father doesn’t appear in the novel, but his son maintains a significant, supportive connection with him through an old iPod filled with his favorite songs. 

As Lawrence thinks back to how he felt when he first moved to his new home, he recalls wishing that his family could be “a normal family. I’d already figured out normal wasn’t real. Still, that didn’t stop anyone from wanting it.” With understanding and authenticity, Giles captures Lawrence’s feelings of confusion, displacement, anger, sadness and, eventually, hope. Not an Easy Win is a meaningful, moving read, especially for those who feel misunderstood or out of place. 

Anya is about to become a Moth Keeper, a guardian tasked with protecting the Moon-Moths. According to the lore in Anya’s desert village, the moths were a gift from the Moon-Spirit, who wished to show her gratitude for the villagers’ choice to forswear daylight. Instead, they live their waking hours at night so the Moon-Spirit doesn’t have to be alone. Every year, the luminous Moon-Moths pollinate the Night-Flower tree, which the village relies on to thrive.

At first, Anya is convinced that caring for the moths will keep her “warm inside even on long, cold nights,” but the temptation of daylight chips away at her resolve. When the solitude and darkness become too much, Anya makes a decision with consequences that ripple across the desert and history itself. In The Moth Keeper, Eisner Award-winning graphic novelist K. O’Neill portrays how isolation can break even the strongest will, but a supportive community can mend all rifts.

O’Neill (The Tea Dragon Society, Aquicorn Cove) has established themself as a phenomenal graphic novel creator for middle grade audiences. Their work often explores themes of community and the natural world, and The Moth Keeper is no exception. In one scene, Anya’s friend Estell tells her about the essential role that the Night-Flower tree’s pollen plays in the desert: “That’s the magic of it—it’s part of the rhythm of nature. Everything is connected.” 

In their signature style, O’Neill’s soft, gentle artwork invites readers into a fantasy world dominated by every shade of blue and yellow. O’Neill plays subtly with graphics conventions to great effect. By eliminating the gutter when folktales are being told, for instance, they convey the larger-than-life significance of the stories to the village’s culture. Similarly, double-page spreads of the vast, rolling desert landscape capture “the smallness one feels standing amid such scenery,” as O’Neill explains in an afterword.

O’Neill’s books have a singular quality that makes them difficult to compare to anyone else’s work, aside from their own. Although its world building isn’t quite as rich as in the Tea Dragon series and the character development not as deep as in Aquicorn Cove, The Moth Keeper is still a charming story that will delight O’Neill’s fans and new readers alike, drawing them in like Moon-Moths to a lantern. 

In a note included with advance copies of Gillian McDunn’s fifth novel, the middle grade author shares that When Sea Becomes Sky is her “once-in-a-lifetime-book.” It is an undeniably beautiful story made for pondering and revisiting, and a tale that readers will surely treasure.

It’s been almost a year since rain fell on Pelican Island, a lovely place amid the coastal Carolina salt marshes where 11-year-old Bex and 9-year-old Davey live with their parents. In the summertime, Mom, a biology teacher, kayaks around collecting samples and specimens; Dad pilots a ferryboat and writes poetry; and Bex, Davey, and Davey’s cat, Squish, row out to the Thumb, their favorite spot on the island. The isolated, peaceful area contains a huge old live oak tree in which Squish lounges, Davey reads and Bex valiantly tries to conquer her writer’s block. 

But then, as Bex and Davey are enjoying their “just-us kind of summer,” two strange things appear. First, they find an orange X painted on their tree, a harbinger of a bridge-development project that will bring more tourism to the island while destroying so much of what the siblings hold dear. The second surprise might offer a solution: As the drought drags on, a statue slowly emerges from the marshy water at the Thumb, and Bex and Davey think they might be able to use it to stop the development project.

Bex convinces Davey to keep the statue a secret so they can figure out its origin without the interference of grown-ups, but they’ll have to hurry. The developers will break ground soon, and it’s going to be really hard for Bex and Davey to keep their investigation hidden from their parents and island neighbors for long. 

McDunn creates delicious and often funny tension as Bex and Davey sneak around in search of answers and discover even more questions. Readers will be intrigued and moved as they join the inseparable pair in their musings: If something is fleeting, does that make it less meaningful? What does it mean to endure? What does moving on look like, and is it different from leaving something—or someone—behind?

Illustrations by Yaoyao Ma Van As heighten the sense of place, and readers will practically smell the island’s salty air as they’re reminded of the importance of conservation and stewardship. When Sea Becomes Sky is an emotional, realistic chronicle of a special summer that considers big questions and appreciates quiet moments with mastery, compassion and care.

If you’ve done any amount of air travel, you know that airports are perfect places for people-watching. And if you’ve ever encountered a flight delay, you’ve seen firsthand how overcrowded terminals combined with the frustration of changed or canceled plans can become a recipe for a uniquely stressful environment. That mixture makes a busy Chicago airport the perfect setting for You Are Here: Connecting Flights, a collection of linked short stories written by a dozen of the most acclaimed Asian American writers for children and young adults and featuring Asian American characters discovering their strengths and voices.

You Are Here opens with Christina Soontornvat’s contribution, which follows a boy named Paul as he prepares to pass through airport security with his parents, little sister and grandmother for a flight to Thailand. He learns that his grandmother has a secret in her carry-on bag, which begins a chain reaction that reverberates throughout several other stories.

The collection takes place on the weekend before Independence Day, so many characters are heading off on summer adventures, such as Mike Chen’s Lee, a talented Chinese American guitarist who’s en route to visit his uncle, and Susan Tan’s Ari, who’s navigating the recent divorce between her Jewish mother and her Chinese father. Others are preparing to discover their heritage through visits to their family’s countries of origin, though Meredith Ireland’s Mindy isn’t as eager to visit her Korean birthplace as her white adoptive dads seem to be.

Many characters experience racism and must find ways to counter stereotypes, including some that are internalized. Characters’ paths cross just like they would at a real airport, and careful readers will enjoy discovering how the stories intertwine in clever and revealing ways.

You Are Here was edited by We Need Diverse Books co-founder Ellen Oh, and it’s the first release from Allida, a new imprint at HarperCollins Children’s Books led by author Linda Sue Park and editor Anne Hoppe; both Oh and Park also contribute stories to the volume. In the book’s back matter, biographies of each author indicate who wrote which story and what contributors like Grace Lin, Minh Le and Erin Entrada Kelly have in common with their characters.

You Are Here vividly illustrates the talents of a diverse group of creators as well as the rich and varied range of Asian American experiences and identities.

In previous bestselling, award-winning books such as The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck and The Marvels, author-illustrator Brian Selznick has centered his richly imagined, deeply cinematic stories on children growing up alone and navigating worlds both dangerous and wonderful. Selznick explores similar themes in Big Tree, but this novel’s children aren’t human; they’re the seeds from a massive sycamore tree.

Louise and her brother Merwin (a nod to the poet W.S. Merwin) have spent their entire lives packed onto a seedball alongside their countless siblings, dangling from a branch of their enormous tree. Like all parents, Mama hopes to give her children “roots to settle down, and wings to bravely go where [they] need to go.” Louise is a dreamer, while Merwin is more of a pragmatist, and when a fire ravages their forest, the two must work together to find a safe place to put down roots. But the world and time itself have more in store for the siblings than even Louise’s wildest flight of imagination could conjure.

It’s not uncommon for middle grade novels to focus on the natural world, but Big Tree’s devotion to plants rather than animals sets it apart. People do make an appearance in the book’s final chapter, but even then, their presence takes a backseat to Louise and Merwin’s story, which spans millennia and poses provocative questions about the relative prominence of the human species when compared with the vast history of planet Earth.

Like many of Selznick’s novels, Big Tree is, well, big. At more than 500 pages, it’s epic and substantial, filled with significance, yet its text is spare and often feels like a fable. The narrative unfolds through both words and pictures, and some plot points are only conveyed visually. Exquisite double-page spreads of Selznick’s signature pencil artwork compose much of the book.

Louise and Merwin’s story is an odyssey, a survival tale and an invitation to think both philosophically and scientifically about the world around us. It’s truly awe inspiring, and it’s sure to prompt readers to bring a sense of wonder to their next walk in the woods.

A boy and his dog—it’s the beginning of a story that’s been told a thousand times. But when the dog is a Bulgarian elf-hound who magically appears in the woods, the story might be a little different. Elf Dog and Owl Head by National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson, with black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu, upends familiar tropes with imagination, poignancy and just enough realism to allow the reader to see themselves in at least one character. 

Clay is sick of being stuck in his house with his morose older sister, DiRossi, and obnoxious little sister, Juniper. A global virus has shut down the world, and he hasn’t seen his friends for months. His only escape is to the woods near his house, where he ventures alone—until an amazing white dog comes out of nowhere to protect him from . . . something. “It must have been a bear,” Clay thinks, but was it really?

The beautiful white dog with strange red ears and the name “Elphinore” on her collar follows Clay home, and after some halfhearted searching, it appears that no one is looking for her. Together they begin to explore the depths of the forest. Elphinore leads Clay to places he’s never seen, including past a group of sleeping creatures older than time and to a village filled with owl-headed people, where Clay makes a new friend named Amos. As Clay’s world begins to overlap and clash with these new realms, he must decide where he, Elphinore and Amos all really belong. 

Elf Dog and Owl Head is a sly novel, told in a droll, wry cadence that conceals the increasingly fantastic nature of the story. Just as Clay begins to slowly realize the extent of the hidden worlds around him, so does the reader begin to understand the depth of the story being told. Clay, DiRossi, Juniper, their parents and even Amos and his community each relate to different feelings and situations of the real COVID-19 pandemic, thus allowing all readers to see themselves reflected wholly, not just positively, in the book. 

Anderson’s world, hauntingly rendered in Wu’s bold crosshatched pencil illustrations, is complex, broken, hopeful and real, even in its most fantastical moments. Like Clay, readers will want to continue to explore, even when they feel afraid to take the next step.