Squire is the brainy sidekick to the brawny Sir Kelton, a knight whose reputation precedes him but never quite seems to prove itself. Regardless, while Sir Kelton is heralded as a hero, Squire stands quietly by, more interested in books and knowledge than sword fighting and rescuing. When the two come across a desolate village that appears cursed by the presence of a dragon, Sir Kelton vows to slay the beast and rides off to save the town. Squire, preferring to stay behind, notices something amiss. Interest piqued by the townspeople’s strange stories, he begins to investigate, and soon, little pieces begin to fall into place.
Prolific cartoonist Scott Chantler’s middle grade graphic novel Squire & Knight is a short, sweet story about the power of curiosity and the idea that strength and confidence aren’t everything. Chantler illustrates in a simple yet bold style, using only neutral shades and orange tones. The lone ruddy hue pops against otherwise monochrome backgrounds, guiding the reader’s attention through the subtly comedic storyline.
Chantler employs classic fantasy tropes—the sidelined sidekick to the daring knight, a treasure-hoarding dragon—while also subverting expectations. Squire, whose accomplishments and intelligence are frequently ignored by his noble employer, is the true brains behind their entire operation, while the dragon, despite appearances, just wants to collect his treasures in peace. The voices of the characters are dynamic and easy to hear in the reader’s mind. (For this reader, the dragon sounds exactly like Billy Crystal.)
Squire & Knight may not be revolutionary in form or subject, but it’s certainly an enjoyable read that champions the shy, the brainy and the inquisitive. This is the first volume of a planned duology, so we can look forward to at least one more adventure of Squire and his knight.
Squire & Knight may not be revolutionary in form or subject, but it’s certainly an enjoyable read that champions the shy, the brainy and the inquisitive.
Matt James demonstrated his skill for writing about hard subjects in a reassuring way in The Funeral (2018), his first picture book as both author and illustrator. He does so again in Tadpoles, which follows a boy who ponders his own changing habitat as he explores a pond formed by rainfall with his father.
There’s no dearth of children’s books about the topics James explores here—divorce, changing seasons, the life cycles of frogs—but he nimbly imparts a fresh take on all three in an enticingly rich and thoughtful creation. Tadpoles is not quite a science book and not quite a divorce book, in the best possible ways.
James accomplishes this through the strong voice of his narrator. He establishes the boy’s conversation tone from the very first line: “A kid in my class says she saw a two-headed frog.” The boy reveals that his father disagrees: “My dad says . . . that Sita probably just saw two frogs.” The boy is experiencing all manner of changes, including the arrival of spring rains that create a huge puddle in a field near his school. The boy notes that the field contains “neat old junk that people just left lying around,” such as glass bottles, a rusty bicycle and an upright piano. There’s even an old farm silo, which prompts the boy to confess, “Once, when my dad first moved to his new place, I stood in the silo and yelled every single swear word that I know. I guess I was worried that he wouldn’t love me anymore, but my dad says that some things never change.”
James’ moody art is filled with dark clouds and a wide variety of raindrops, which readers will almost feel splattering against the pages. Flashes of pink, green and the bright yellow of the boy’s raincoat guide the eye as the boy and his father study the pond’s tadpoles and discuss their evolution in detail (endnotes offer additional information). Movement on every page—swimming tadpoles, swirling clouds, curlicues on the back of a metal chair and more—adds interest. The backdrop of ongoing transformation in both the natural and manmade worlds dovetails neatly with the boy’s reflections about his father and their relationship. James’ illustrations show that the neighborhood is changing too, with high-rise buildings and a construction crane near smaller homes and green spaces. As the book ends, the skies are clear and blue as the boy and his father head home. One of the book’s many strengths is James’ comfort with leaving things unsaid and allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.
Tadpoles is a reassuring reminder that change can bring positive new developments, and that parental love remains constant, even amid great upheaval.
Tadpoles offers a reassuring reminder that parental love remains constant, even amid great upheaval.
When Rachel Klein was born 12 years ago, Krasnia’s oceanside capital of Brava was a lively, lovely place dotted with palm trees and populated by citizens who reveled in living there. Sadly, in British screenwriter and playwright David Farr’s The Book of Stolen Dreams, lightheartedness is long gone from present-day Brava.
A tyrannical man named Charles Malstain and his army invaded the city shortly after Rachel was born. The emperor of Krasnia was executed in the town square, and Brava was systematically destroyed. Under Malstain’s rule, public spaces are only for adults, posters declaring that “a seen child is a bad child” are plastered everywhere, and children are only permitted to leave home to go to school, where they must study government-issued materials and muddle through dreary days.
But Rachel’s parents, Judith and Felix, create a warm, supportive home for Rachel and her older brother, Robert, where laughter is allowed and creativity is encouraged. On Rachel’s birthday, Felix offers the kids a treat in the form of a visit to the library where he works. What begins as an illicit jaunt soon becomes something the kids never could’ve expected: an urgent, terrifying mission to protect The Book of Stolen Dreams, an ancient magical tome long treasured by good people yet zealously coveted by Malstain, who will stop at nothing to obtain the book and use it for evil.
From an opulent hotel to a mysterious old bookshop, from tenement housing to a massive silver airship, the siblings’ exhilarating and dangerous journey swoops from thrilling to terrifying to heartwarming and back again. Suspenseful action scenes and gasp-worthy surprises abound as Rachel and Robert strive to evade capture while attempting to find the Book’s vitally important but missing last page, which unlocks life-altering magic, before Malstain can.
Farr’s beautifully crafted, thought-provoking story isn’t an easy-breezy read, but Farr is intimately acquainted with its stakes: The Book of Stolen Dreams was inspired by his own German Jewish family’s escape from Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1938. The novel grapples with tough, weighty questions: Is happiness possible under government oppression? When is a risk worthwhile? What do we owe our fellow citizens?
Farr’s characters experience fear and grief right alongside delight and wonder. As his omniscient narrator observes with the mix of hard-won acceptance, hope and love for humanity that echoes throughout The Book of Stolen Dreams, “Such is life, my friend. There is no joy without accompanying sorrow. There is no despair so dark that a sliver of light cannot abate it.”
Two siblings must protect a magical book from the tyrannical ruler of their country in this novel inspired by the author’s family’s experiences during WWII.
The subway train runs right past Nari’s lively New York City apartment building, and she imagines riding it to far-flung destinations that offer quiet spaces away from the bustling city and her boisterous family and neighbors. A beach, a forest, outer space—Nari envisions what it would be like to visit all these places and more. But the farther Nari travels, the closer she feels to home and the people there who love her. Author-illustrator Dan-ah Kim’s The Train Home is a creative adventure, a charming homage to New York City and a sweet reminder that home is truly where the heart is.
Kim’s prose is straightforward and unassuming, underpinned with subtle assonance and alliteration that will make it a pleasure to read aloud. It also contains a few moments of splendid and clever descriptive imagery, as when Nari’s apartment building “grumbles with neighbors left and right, above and below.”
Kim employs a variety of styles and media to create her visually distinct illustrations. She incorporates small pieces of cut paper and thread into images composed with pencil, gouache and acrylic. Nari herself is a simple outlined figure clad in loose yellow clothes, and she appears in stark contrast against busy, textured backdrops. Full-bleed, colorful spreads pull us into Nari’s real and imaginary worlds, while minute details offer much to explore and savor.
Many of the places Nari imagines visiting on the train refer to real places connected by subway in New York City, including the American Museum of Natural History and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library. New Yorkers and NYC fans will love spotting familiar sights such as Patience and Fortitude, the library’s famous lion statues. Subway signs included in many illustrations tie everything together and transform a mundane form of transportation into something filled with wonder.
Many picture books follow journeys “there and back again,” and strong artwork and tranquil storytelling make The Train Home a worthy addition to the tradition.
Nari imagines all the places she could travel on the subway in this sweet “there and back again” picture book.
At a reading in 2022, I heard poet Jane Wong describe her obsession with time-lapse videos of rotting fruit. Her poetry collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, is full of the physicality of food, informed by Wong’s research into the Great Leap Forward, which was a stage of Mao Zedong’s reforms that led to the starvation of 36 million Chinese people. Wong’s great-grandparents died during the Great Leap Forward, and several poems ring with their voices. In others, the speaker reckons with the contrast between the relative abundance in her life—the apples “rotting on the ground,” an egg thrown onto pavement just to hear the “sumptuous splat”—and the false promises of the American dream for herself and her parents. Lucky for me, and you, Wong has a memoir coming out this month, so you can pick up Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City when you finish her breathtaking book of poetry.
Megha Majumdar’s debut was one of the most important social novels of 2020—highly political, furiously propulsive and ruthlessly unsparing—but if you, like so many readers, spent that year sticking to lighter fare, now is the time to go back and see what you missed, because A Burning still hits hard. In contemporary India, a young woman named Jivan unthinkingly voices criticism of the government in a Facebook post, and she is immediately labeled a terrorist and sent to prison, where she awaits her trial. Two other main characters provide additional perspectives on these events: the luminous wannabe Bollywood star Lovely, a transgender woman who was learning English from Jivan; and PT Sir, Jivan’s resentful former gym teacher who gets involved in nationalist politics. Each character is ambitious in their own way, but within this world marked by the tyrannies of rampant corruption, racism, poverty and inequality, their fates are often outside their control, and the few choices available to them are murky at best. This novel is a short shock that leaves a lasting burn.
Author Joanna Ho and illustrator Dung Ho each made their publishing debut in the first week of 2021 with Eyes That Kiss in the Corners,a radiant picture book that became an instant bestseller and launched both creators’ successful careers. To read it is to immediately understand why. Its first-person narrator is a girl who explores, via gorgeous, lyrical prose, how her eyes connect her to her mother, grandmother and little sister and to their shared heritage. Meanwhile, the book’s digital illustrations positively glow as every spread seems suffused with sunshine. Read this aloud to savor similes such as “my lashes curve like the swords of warriors”; then read it again and pay special attention to how the characters in every spread look at one another. You’ll see one of the most moving renderings of love made visible on the page that I’ve ever encountered.
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s form-bending memoir starts with her personal history—contending with her mother’s alcoholism as a child, feeling ashamed of her Japanese heritage in her predominately white hometown, expanding her horizons on the West Coast as a young adult—and spirals out to engulf not only her parents’ story bu also the history of Okinawa, the island in Japan where her mother grew up before meeting Brina’s father, a white American stationed there during the Vietnam War. After years of conflict with her mother, Brina found compassion as an adult for the trauma her mother experienced when she left her homeland for a culturally and linguistically isolated life in a hostile new country. As Brina spells out Okinawa’s past, from an independent land to a pawn in Chinese-Japanese-American relations, readers get a sense of the generational trauma that has shaped her and her mother’s lives as well. It’s a story that encompasses both the broad horrors of colonialism and racism and the deeply personal details of forgiveness and familial love.
Heartfelt and emotional, Samuel Park’s moving debut novel is a must-read for fans of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or the K-drama “Crash Landing on You.” Set in 1960s Korea, This Burns My Heart features a resourceful heroine torn between love and duty in the wake of partition. Soo-Ja meets Yul and immediately feels a connection to him—a confusing development, since she has just decided to marry another man. Unwilling to disgrace her family by going back on her promise, Soo-Ja rejects Yul to marry Min, a decision she will revisit and regret for the next 20 years. Yul and Soo-Ja see each other only periodically and usually by chance, but their fraught encounters are tense with the passion of unconsummated love. Full of poetic observations and memorable lines, This Burns My Heart will leave you pondering the “what ifs” in your own life.
—Trisha, Publisher
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! To celebrate, we’re shining a spotlight on some of our favorite stellar reads by Asian American authors.
Must-reads for May include the latest from bestselling historian David Grann and romance superstar Emily Henry, plus the long-awaited second novel from Abraham Verghese.
Share this Article:
Nonfiction
Our Migrant Souls is one of the most important pieces of Latino nonfiction in several decades. Turning the last page, you will feel the weight of history on your shoulders.
Abraham Verghese, probably the best doctor-writer since Anton Chekhov, upends all of our expectations again and again in his long awaited follow-up to Cutting for Stone.
David Grann’s narrative nonfiction masterpiece about an 18th-century man-of-war that ran aground in South America reveals humanity at its best and worst, from heroism to cannibalism.
Julia Lee’s piercing discussions of Asian American identity are likely to challenge readers across the ideological spectrum. In fact, she even challenges her own views.
Jennifer Finney Boylan’s latest memoir-in-essays, Cleavage, is a sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac, meditation on gender, parenthood and coming to terms with herself.
Must-reads for May include the latest from bestselling historian David Grann and romance superstar Emily Henry, plus the long-awaited second novel from Abraham Verghese.
Carter Higgins has worked in school libraries, visual effects and motion graphics—and all that experience shows in Some of These Are Snails. This ingenious concept picture book with bold and vibrant artwork that expands on the approach Higgins took in her 2021 book, Circle Under Berry, which asked readers to consider shapes, colors and prepositions such as over, between and above. In Some of These Are Snails, Higgins turns our attention to explorations of grouping, sorting and classification. At just over 200 words, the book may seem simple, but as Higgins reveals, it’s anything but.
You’ve mentioned that your favorite children’s author is Ruth Krauss, whose books include The Carrot Seed, A Hole Is to Dig and The Happy Day. In fact, you even wrote a picture book about her called A Story Is to Share. Can you talk about her influence on these books? Krauss’ influence on my life both as a reader and a writer has always felt clear and connected. When I was working on Circle Under Berry, I pitched it as “Hervé Tullet meets Ruth Krauss.” Occasionally, I tend toward overwriting or can get too abstracted to make sense, so I’m always looking to Krauss’ unfussy, authentic language for reminders of writing I respond so deeply to. I hope Some of These Are Snails similarly captures logic and poetry in a playful way.
Can you talk about the beginnings of this book and how it began to take shape from there? I see what you did there! The editorial process on Circle Under Berry exploded with concepts that could have fit in that world, just not in a singular book. Lots of juicy visual ideas were left on the cutting room floor, so I was able to pick up the scraps (so to speak) and create what might come next.
What qualities were important to you to give the text of the book? The text needed to be sticky: the kind whose rhythms stay in your head for a while, sounds really great out loud but is also doing some unusual things. I’m always writing for sound design, like the echo-y assonance of snails and squares or the consonance at the end of circle and purple. With the book’s relatively limited vocabulary, I was cautious about too many true rhymes that might lead a reader to assume they are reading a rhyming book, only for it to . . . not. It can’t feel like a mistake. One of the greatest things about our language is how fantastic kid-facing words sound. Try these out loud: Octagon! Elephant! Oval! Wiggly! It’s good clay to smash around from the start.
“There’s something so mesmerizing about a circle. They are also very elusive and tricky to draw, so it’s satisfying to get that right every once in a while.”
Excluding the jacket and front matter, the book’s text only uses three types of punctuation marks: question marks, a set of hyphens and some apostrophes. How did you arrive at that choice? Poetry gets to play fast and loose with grammatical conventions, and ultimately that’s what we have here. It’s essentially a song, a rhythm, a cadence—not bound by the same punctuation rules as prose. It’s interesting to note that there are question marks but no other sentence-ending punctuation. Maybe that’s a metaphor for this book asking questions of you but not offering precise solutions.
The apostrophes solved a rhythm problem, deploying a contraction to turn two syllables into one. And it’s just so delightful to think of the conversations that happen around a book-making table: “Should it be ‘tweet tweet tweet’ or ‘tweet-tweet-tweet’?” I don’t remember why we landed on the hyphens, but I love them.
Did you begin these illustrations with sketches or doodles, or by working directly with cut paper? I did very simple sketches in Procreate, a drawing app for the iPad. At that stage, it was primarily the basic shapes: an orange circle for a tiger, a blue square for an owl. Knowing how each picture would change from spread to spread helped ensure the text is equally surprising and playful.
Did you experiment with different papers or painting tools (brushes, sponge brushes, fingers)? Are the colors we see single shades of paint or multiple shades mixed together? I painted large sheets of newsprint with acrylics using a very popular process for preschoolers: scrape painting. You squirt the paint directly on the paper and use a scraper of some sort to pull the paint around. I usually chose no more than two colors to make any one piece of paper, but the only color mixing was what happened right on the paper as a result of the scraping. Most of the papers for this book were painted with plastic pizza ads a local restaurant mails out, the kind that snap out like your library card or grocery store rewards cards.
This is a question I think many children will be interested in: Did you use stencils or outlines to cut the shapes, or did you wing it? Yes, I am a big fan of stencils! The bottom of my pencil cup made the snails’ bodies. A Post-it pad for the elephants. If I needed to make something from scratch, like an octagon or oval, I used postcards.
“One of the greatest things about our language is how fantastic kid-facing words sound. Try these out loud: Octagon! Elephant! Oval! Wiggly! It’s good clay to smash around from the start.”
How did you assemble the finished illustrations digitally? Once their design was figured out, I created the individual pieces of art: all the ladybugs at once, all the yellow squares, all the worms. After that, I scanned them and made the final compositions in Photoshop. Everything was handmade and physically exists, but the final pictures were assembled digitally.
The book has so many great color moments—pages or spreads where it’s clear that you’re interested in the contrasting or complementing interplay of colors as well as in shapes. Can you tell us about one of your favorites? Thank you for noticing this! Being intentional with color feels similar to being intentional with the sound of the language. The first four spreads primarily feature green, orange, yellow and blue, so when purple and red are both introduced on the fifth spread, it feels like such a treat. You’ve got a sense of how the book is working, so we suddenly start to experience it differently.
What is one of your favorite shapes and why? There’s something so mesmerizing about a circle. They are also very elusive and tricky to draw, so it’s satisfying to get that right every once in a while. (But I’ll still happily use my pencil-cup stencil!)
You worked as a school librarian for 10 years. What insights did you gain from that work that you were able to bring to this book? One of the best things about being a librarian is constantly growing up with your students. You don’t pass them along to the next grade level in the same way classroom teachers need to. A kindergartener and that same reader in fourth grade? Wildly different, very much the same. For this book, I wanted to create a few different experiences depending on the reader’s age, whether you are a toddler or a big kid.
If you could become a fly on the wall during a library storytime in which someone was sharing this book with children, what would you hope to see the storytime provider doing? What would you hope to see the children doing? You know, I hope it’s a little noisy. I hope kids are shouting out answers and discovering new ways to see something, and that the storytime provider is just happily in the thick of it.
Vashti Harrison, creator of Little Leaders, the bestselling illustrated nonfiction series, makes her fiction debut with Big, a simple yet immensely significant picture book. Harrison marshals her considerable talents for a story that celebrates a young Black girl’s aspirations and highlights how words have the ability to empower or to cause suffering.
The book opens as an adorable baby reaches up to touch a mobile of multicolored stars that hangs over her crib. “Once there was a girl / with a big laugh and a big heart / and very big dreams,” reads the spare text on the opposite page. As the baby becomes a toddler and then a girl, Harrison considers the shifting connotations of the word big in her life. At first, when she’s very young, the girl receives praise from adults who call her “a big girl,” and the word rewards her growth and accomplishments. But the word soon takes on hurtful dimensions that culminate in a playground scene inspired by Harrison’s own childhood. When the girl is unable to get out of a swing, her classmates rain down taunts and an adult scolds, “Don’t you think you’re too big for that? You’re in big trouble!”
Harrison uses powerful visuals to explore the effect of others’ opinions on the girl. Though the girl is illustrated in vibrant shades of brown and pink, everyone else in the book is drawn in shadowy monochromes. Their words hurtle forcefully across the page, and Harrison conveys their negative impact as the girl gradually grows disproportionately large in relation to the people around her. In one scene, she stands twice as tall as her dance instructor, who uses a paint roller to cover the girl’s pink tutu with a shade called “husky blue.” Eventually, the girl becomes so large that she pushes against the very edges of the pages themselves before curling up in a ball, turning her back to the reader and beginning to cry. In the pool of tears that forms around her, the girl discovers words of affirmation (“creative,” “graceful,” “kind”), as well as the words that caused her so much pain. What follows is a beautiful journey of healing, transformation and self-love.
In Big, Harrisoninvites readers to reflect on how we treat others based on their body size and to consider the implicit biases we hold about which kinds of bodies are “acceptable.” Her sophisticated use of color, design and space make for an outstanding reading experience. In a moving and personal author’s note, Harrison writes of her hopes that the book will especially resonate with “those of us who are Black girls in big bodies.”
Straightforward enough for even very young children to understand and appreciate, but with a vital message for adults too, Big is one of the year’s most exceptional picture books.
In one of the year’s most exceptional picture books, bestselling author-illustrator Vashti Harrison considers the shifting connotations of the word big in a young girl’s life.
Noah doesn’t know what to do since his best friend, Lewis, died in a car crash—not that anybody else knew Lewis by that name. Like Lewis, Noah is transgender, but it was a secret they kept just between them, and with Lewis gone, Noah can’t talk about his feelings with anybody . . . except, maybe, Mothman.
Lewis believed in the cryptid, a humanoid figure with enormous wings first spotted in West Virginia in 1966, but Noah didn’t. Now Noah has come up with the perfect way to honor Lewis’ memory: He’s going to prove that Mothman is real for the sixth-grade science fair. He sets up an old camera to record potential appearances, researches Mothman sightings near his Pennsylvania town and writes letters to Mothman to try and get to know him better. But as Noah starts to think he understands a little of what it means to be a monster, he finds his efforts increasingly mocked by his classmates—except for three new friends who want to help. If Noah is brave enough to trust them with the truest parts of himself, maybe Mothman will show his face—or maybe Noah will find the strength to go looking for Mothman himself.
Robin Gow’s novel in verse is destined to join the growing ranks of queer children’s literature classics. Told through Noah’s thoughts and notes to Mothman, Dear Mothman is an affirming ode to queerness and a haunting, beautiful story about what it means to be different.
Noah’s fascination with Mothman begins as a desperate attempt to remain connected to the only person who truly understood him, but it comes to represent what it means to be a creature hiding in the world. Through his project, Noah finds the strength to move beyond a passive existence and do what Mothman cannot: show himself to the world. “What can I do / to show them what Mothman is like? / What I am really like?” Noah wonders. “Then, do I really want to show my class everything? // To show them everything / not just about Mothman / but what being a monster means— / how it’s like being a queer person? / That I’m a queer person. // The beauty of the unknown darkness / and wild magic / of a creature / so few people get to see.”
Queer and neurodivergent childhood experiences deepen this stunning exploration of identity. Noah’s new friends role-play as wolves on the playground despite being “too old” for such activities. Noah worries about his friends judging his emotionally overloaded outbursts and frets that they won’t want to hang out with him anymore. The whole group struggles to explain to their parents how differently they feel from the other children in their class—and how differently they feel from their parents.
Dear Mothman offers a beautiful and moving glimpse into the world of a child who deserves understanding and appreciation, but far more importantly, it’s a breath of fresh air for any queer reader. Noah’s journey honors all parts of the queer experience, regardless of how public that experience may be. This is a book that will make readers feel seen and, ultimately, leave their hearts full.
When his parents decide they need private time to “talk,” 11-year-old Simon and his sisters, Talia and Rose, end up at their grandmother’s century-old house for the week. Nanaleen’s house used to be a comforting place, but now it feels wrong: It smells like wet towels, there’s a scritch-scritch-scritching sound in the walls, and the water stain above Simon’s bed keeps getting bigger. Worst of all, Simon could swear there’s a ghost. He sees it in the shadows of photographs and the dark corners of rooms, and he knows it’s coming for them.
In order to save his family, Simon convinces his sisters to hunt for ghosts, the way they did when they were younger. But sleuthing feels impossible amid Simon’s anxieties about his family, Talia’s abandonment of him to spend time with a cute new friend and Nanaleen’s worsening forgetfulness. Then Simon finds an old photograph of Nanaleen’s sister Brie, who went missing during her senior year of high school. Maybe she’s the ghost that’s haunting Simon—or maybe it’s all that’s gone unspoken in this stressed-out family.
“Too often, when adults talk about ‘protecting’ kids from certain things, it really feels like they’re just trying to protect themselves from having a slightly uncomfortable conversation.” Read our Q&A with Lin Thompson about The House That Whispers.
There are no real ghosts in Lin Thompson’s The House That Whispers. Instead, the novel is a thoughtful, satisfying exploration of how secrets can weigh on the soul. Many concealments weave in and out of the narrative: Simon’s gender identity and new name, which he has yet to share with his family; Talia’s Sapphic feelings for her friend; Nanaleen’s declining health; and the underlying threat of a potential divorce between Simon’s uncommunicative parents.
Initially, the metaphorical haunting gives Simon a distraction from addressing all the problems around him, but eventually it leads to the discovery of his queer family legacy. His great-aunt Brie’s spiritual presence becomes a comfort for Simon (and Talia), proving the power of queer history to strengthen and encourage. Though not the spooky tale that some kids may wish for, The House That Whispers will still please readers of emotional middle grade fiction.
There are no real ghosts in Lin Thompson’s The House That Whispers. Instead, it’s a thoughtful, satisfying exploration of how secrets can weigh on the soul.
Of all the creatures in Milkweed Meadow, the most gifted storyteller is Butternut. She’s one of nine rabbit siblings and by far the most anxious of the bunch. With “brambles” of disaster scenarios running wild through her mind, Butternut knows she has to use her intelligence—what her protective grandmother calls her “milkweed”—to survive in a world where she could be attacked by dangerous predators.
Butternut, however, can’t stop thinking about the creatures in the world around her and how their lives affect one another. When she tries to help some squirrels in need, a rascally blue jay steals one of her warren’s treasures, and Butternut’s defensive brambles momentarily disappear in a fit of fury. Although she considers herself a coward, Butternut climbs a fence and steals the treasure back, and along the way makes friends with a robin fledgling.
As other creatures in the meadow begin to listen to her stories, Butternut finds herself questioning some of her grandmother’s advice and begins to build interspecies bonds despite the prejudices of her family—and the families of her new friends. And when disaster strikes, she must put aside what she’s been told in order to do what she knows is right.
With charming black-and-white illustrations from Caldecott Medalist Doug Salati (Hot Dog), Elaine Dimopoulos’ middle grade novelreckons with the realistic challenges of an untamed animal’s life while preserving the magic of wilderness. Butternut narrates the cozy woodland story with cheeky asides to the reader about how stories work: how she’s going to hold some information to build tension, and how she hopes you’ll love her cast of characters. Ultimately, readers will be left with the impression that, if they can be brave and put aside their stigmas, they too can have an adventure worthy of an audience the size of a meadow.
Young readers who squirm when bad things happen to animals will need to avoid this one: The novel starts with a blue jay stealing and eating a robin’s egg, and later, a car strikes a young mother coyote and leaves her pups orphaned. Children who understand the risky truths of living wild, however, The Remarkable Rescue at Milkweed Meadow will be left with a deep desire to become wildlife rehabilitators—and maybe convince their parents to start on that journey too.
Readers will be left with the impression that, if they can be brave, they too can have an adventure worthy of an audience the size of a meadow.
Chloe Savage’s debut picture book opens with a map of the Arctic Circle. By the time I had oriented myself to this unusual perspective on the globe (and spent a moment appreciating how close the continents—and their diverse cultures—really are), I was in love.
The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish follows Dr. Morley’s mission to find the elusive titular creature. While searching, she and her crew discover many marvels of the Arctic—except the one they’ve set out to find. Will they leave without completing their mission? This is certainly the story of a quest, but it is also about determination, teamwork, hard work and the beauty of the natural world. And it is really, really cool.
Savage’s brilliant art is slightly muted, with colors that have a retro feel despite the contemporary setting (we see laptops in some scenes), giving the expedition a legendary aura. Early spreads provide a sense of preparation: The title page has a classic flat-lay image of well-organized Arctic exploring gear, and the fully stocked ship is shown in a fascinating cut-away, revealing charming and humorous details and telling myriad stories of life aboard. Throughout the book, we return to these cut-aways to observe the crew of scientists, divers, sailors and the captain as they read maps, eat cakes and wait in line for the shower.
The story is told in present tense, with the direct and determined spirit of a captain’s log. Savage captures the depth of Dr. Morley’s passion and courage, her crew’s faith and frustration, and the pride she has in her team. Despite being surrounded by frigid waters and potential dangers, life aboard the ship feels cozy and safe. But the boat has nothing on the mesmerizing world that surrounds it—the flora and fauna, the colossal icebergs and enchanting northern lights. Savage’s underwater images, awash in deep, saturated blues, are worthy of framing and hanging.
With stunning artwork, just the right amount of narration and a hint of irony, The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish is the story of a female captain working to discover and appreciate all that the Arctic Ocean has to offer. Dr. Morley’s quest may continue, but the search for your next favorite picture book ends here.
The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish is the story of a female captain working to discover and appreciate all that the Arctic Ocean has to offer.
In When You Can Swim, readers explore the joys of swimming in various bodies of water—oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers and more—in a text set primarily in conditional statements (the “when you can swim” of the title), as spoken by a parent to a child. This phrase is a refrain that conveys the abundant possibilities and delights of moving in the water: the “clinking / of waves passing in and out / of a million pebbles,” the ripples on a pond, the whitecaps on a river, “the smoke on the lake” and much more.
In Jack Wong’s breathtaking watery landscapes, strong currents surge beneath “rushing waterfalls,” and sunlight shimmers on ocean waves and the surface of a river. Text and illustrations merge seamlessly to illuminate the ways in which swimming animates all the senses, and Wong writes with beguiling lyricism and figurative language: “When you can swim, / you’ll reach landscapes as foreign as the moon / no spaceship required / except the craters are squishy and filled with reeds / ready to swallow loose sandals / but like good explorers, we’ll leave only footprints.”
Wong’s playful perspectives are captivating. In one spread, from the perspective of lying on our backs in the water, we see “treetops drift by” and a dragonfly buzz near. In another, we turn the book for a stunning vertically oriented image of two girls who dive down after breaking the surface of a lake. A rich apricot-colored light adorns the top of the spread with darkness below, and Wong describes “tannin-soaked lakes / pitch dark from tree bark / like oversteeped tea.” The book’s ending features the same child in the book’s opening, ready to take swimming lessons at a public pool.
An appended note from Wong, striking in its tenderness, explains his hesitancy as “an immigrant kid” in Canada to swim at public pools and his desire to tell a story with “differently colored characters” because “representation is power”—a point he makes incisively and beautifully in this splendid picture book.
The text and illustrations of When You Can Swim merge seamlessly to illuminate the ways in which swimming animates all one’s senses.
Sign Up
Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.
Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
