In this luminous middle grade novel, Michael L. Printz Honor author Helen Frost mines family history to explore the little-known experiences of children in state-run psychiatric institutions in mid-20th-century America. Artistic and bright, Henry was born hearing but became deaf after an illness in early childhood. At first, Henry continues to speak to his loving older sister, Molly, as well as to his parents, but the teasing and bullying of others soon silence him.

When his parents seek professional help, a school for the deaf deems Henry “unteachable,” and he is sent instead to Riverview, a deplorable institution. There, Henry develops close friendships with two other boys; despite mistreatment, he manages to maintain his compassionate nature and his humanity. Henry’s life changes for the better when, after the U.S. enters World War II, a conscientious objector named Victor is assigned to Riverview.

Henry’s story unfolds in plainspoken yet evocative third-person free verse that brings the story’s setting to life. For instance, when he arrives at Riverview, Henry reacts most strongly to its awful smell, a combination that includes “something like potatoes / forgotten in a corner of the kitchen.” Victor’s portion of the narrative includes epistolary poems in sonnet form that add context to Henry’s experiences as well as to the time period. The relationship that develops between Molly and Victor—also told through letters—is especially lovely as the two young people work together to improve Henry’s life.

Although Frost’s subject is weighty, she handles it with skilled sensitivity. All He Knew is a significant and poignant exploration of a difficult moment in American history and serves as a loving tribute to the young people whose experiences it brings to light.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Helen Frost shares her personal connection to the story of All He Knew.

Jacqueline Woodson’s Before the Ever After places professional football’s concussion epidemic front and center.

ZJ had it all: musical talent, a solid group of friends, a strong, supportive mom and a famous football-player dad he adored. But that was before. Before his dad’s hands began to tremble. Before his dad’s memory began to fade. When his father is diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease caused by the multiple concussions he experienced on the playing field, ZJ must face the prospect of losing his father and the relationship he holds most dear.

Award-winning author Woodson tells ZJ’s story in intimate, compelling poems that slip through time. We see ZJ as a small child riding on his father’s shoulders, far above the fray of reporters and fans. We hear their heart-to-heart conversations, listen to ZJ’s dad muse on his love for football and watch as the cracks and fissures of memory loss, anger and confusion creep into their idyllic life.

A stirring, character-driven novel in verse, Before the Ever After doesn’t sugarcoat harsh realities but addresses them with considered care and optimism. Woodson is far too adept a storyteller to directly answer many of the questions she raises, but ZJ’s quiet resilience and the network of nurturing figures who surround him suggest a path lit by glimmers of hope.

Stories of orphans making it on their own and finding family are a staple of children’s literature, and Newbery Honor author Polly Horvath’s Pine Island Home has an old-fashioned feel. It’s a comforting coming-of-age tale about four sisters whose missionary parents are killed in a tsunami. Their great-aunt Martha agrees to take them in, but when Fiona and her younger sisters, Marlin, Natasha and Charlie, arrive on Pine Island, they discover Martha has just died.

The sisters move into her house anyway. Determined to keep her family together, Fiona negotiates with Al, the eccentric and often inebriated writer who lives on the property adjacent to Martha’s. He agrees to pretend to be their guardian in exchange for beer money and dinners cooked by budding chef Marlin.

Horvath (One Year in Coal Harbor, The Night Garden) is a master at creating winning characters, and each sister emerges as a distinct individual. In particular, Fiona is a study in resilience, shouldering the burden of financial responsibility and the insistent emails from their great-aunt’s attorney. The girls’ efforts at self-sufficiency are appealing, as are the cast of townsfolk and the bucolic setting, as the sisters discover that families can be created in surprising ways.

“A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee,” Daniel Nayeri writes in Everything Sad Is Untrue. Nayeri’s patchwork story forms a stunning quilt, each piece lovingly stitched together to create a saga that deserves to be savored.

Everything Sad Is Untrue is the mostly true story of Khosrou, who becomes Daniel, and the two lives he has lived in just 11 years. First, there’s his life back in Iran, where his family was wealthy, where he went hunting for leopards and where his parents’ veins were filled with the blood of divinity. Then there’s his life now, in Oklahoma, where he has to learn to survive the bus ride home, where his mother has to learn to survive her new husband and where he realizes his memories of his first life are slipping away.

In the voice of his younger self, Nayeri casts himself as Scheherazade, with readers as his king; we hold his life in our hands. Should we believe his tales? His classmates in Oklahoma don’t. No one believes that the smelly kid who is too poor to pay for lunch in the cafeteria once lived in a beautiful house and dined with the prince of Abu Dhabi. Even Nayeri admits his memory is shaky. Was that really the prince of Abu Dhabi? It’s hard to know when you’re a kid who’s just escaped a religious death squad by fleeing to a foreign country.

The stakes here are life and death, not only for young Daniel and his family during their journey but also for Nayeri the storyteller, who stands before us in “the parlors of our minds,” spinning tale after tale. To stop reading is to condemn him to a death of indifference. But Nayeri is a gifted writer whose tales of family, injustice, tragedy, faith, history and poop (yes, poop) combine to create such an all-consuming experience that reacting with indifference is simply not possible. 

A deeply personal book that makes a compelling case for empathy and hope, Everything Sad Is Untrue is one of the most extraordinary books of the year.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Daniel Nayeri and publisher/editor Arthur A. Levine go behind the scenes of Everything Sad Is Untrue.

“I’ve learned that some things are almost impossible to talk about because they’re things no one wants to know,” says Delicious Neveah Roberts, the narrator of Newbery Honor author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s magnificent Fighting Words. The 10-year-old, who goes by Della, already sports a tattoo and openly admits that she has a “big mouth” and that her superpower is, “I don’t take snow from anybody.” (Della uses the word “snow” as a substitute whenever she’d rather use a “bad word,” which is frequently.) “Sometime you’ve got a story you need to find the courage to tell,” Della informs the reader with characteristic directness.

Della is inseparable from her 16-year-old half-sister, Suki. Their mother was incarcerated in Kansas after blowing up a motel room while making meth with both girls at her side. Her parental rights were terminated, and the girls fell through the cracks and continued to live with Clifton, their mother’s boyfriend, in Tennessee. As the book opens, the girls have just made a bold escape from Clifton’s house and have been placed into foster care after Suki caught Clifton abusing Della. Della reveals, “I’d had sixty seconds of terror. Suki had had years.”

Bradley depicts the girls’ story, including Clifton’s abuse, directly but gently, in a way that never once feels inappropriate for a middle grade readership. She carefully recounts the aftermath of their trauma (Suki has screaming nightmares and attempts suicide) as the girls are placed first in temporary care with a woman Della describes as an “emergency replacement witch” and then with cigarette-smoking Francine, about whom Della observes there is “nothing motherly,” but who turns out to be exactly the protector the sisters so desperately need.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley reveals why Fighting Words is the book she was put on earth to write.

Della makes a few friends at her new school, most notably Neveah, with whom she shares her middle name. As Della and Suki debate whether and how to testify against Clifton, Della clashes with her teacher and a bully named Trevor, who likes to pinch girls’ backs to see whether they’re wearing bras. These tensions culminate in a powerful moment in which Della proclaims, “Never touch me again. Never touch me or any girl in this class without permission ever again.”

In all truthfulness, I was reluctant to read Fighting Words when I learned about the topics its plot would include. “How depressing,” I thought. But oh, how wrong I was. Bradley handles these tough subjects in ways that are enlightening, empowering and—yes—uplifting, thanks largely to the irrepressible Della’s engaging narrative voice, which itself is a testament to Bradley’s immense talent.

As their friendship deepens, Della’s friend Neveah, whose family lost their apartment and briefly lived out of their car, lends her a copy of Barbara O’Connor’s How to Steal a Dog. Though Della fails to connect with O’Connor’s tale of another girl in a “tough spot,” Neveah’s articulation of the book’s importance in her life is certain to be echoed by some readers of Fighting Words: “I was glad, you know, to read the book. To know it didn’t only happen to me.”

An award-worthy tale about a feisty survivor, Fighting Words is a story readers will draw strength from, and Della is a heroine they’ll be unlikely to forget.

Trevor can’t get enough of his great-grandfather Jacob’s stories of World War II. Jacob stormed the beaches at Normandy, courageously fought Nazis and spent grueling days and seemingly endless nights in trenches. His battalion even liberated a small French village. Jacob’s heroism is an unquestionable fact, and Trevor’s life revolves around his great-grandfather’s war, from the video games he plays for hours on end to the memorabilia he collects and the posters that adorn his bedroom walls.

It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime for Trevor when the French village of Sainte-Régine wants to honor Jacob as the last surviving participant in the battle for the town’s liberation. It’s a chance to travel with Jacob to a place where the war was actually fought. But was Trevor’s great-grandfather really as heroic as he seems in all his stories?

Trevor, his father and Jacob embark on a pilgrimage of sorts, retracing Jacob’s footsteps during the war from basic training at a base in Georgia to England and then to France. Trevor takes in the sights and the history with enthusiasm, but Jacob becomes less excited and more tired as they come closer to Sainte-Régine, and the trip is plagued by a series of unpleasant coincidences. There’s no telling what truths will be revealed when the pilgrims arrive in Sainte-Régine.

Alternating between the present and flashbacks to Jacob’s wartime experiences, bestselling author Gordon Korman’s War Stories juxtaposes a boy’s admiration and belief in his great-grandfather’s heroism and valor with the gritty and morally complex reality of war. Korman strikes a perfect balance between compassion and honesty as he unflinchingly explores the sometimes fine line between heroes and traitors, victors and villains. It’s a masterful demonstration of how the effects of war don’t end when battles are won or lost but continue to ripple down through generations.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Gordon Korman goes behind the scenes of War Stories and shares how he keeps young readers turning the pages in book after book.

At first glance, The Summer We Found the Baby, a short novel about a baby discovered in a basket on the steps of the new children’s library in Belle Beach, Long Island, appears to be a sweet snapshot of life in a small town during World War II. But author Amy Hest packs much into its pages—an intricate plot, deeply imagined characters and relationships and adroitly tackled big issues such as death and unplanned pregnancy—and handles it all with delicacy and care.

Alternating rapidly among three narrators—12-year-old Bruno Ben-Eli; his next-door neighbor, 11-year-old Julie Sweet; and Julie’s 6-year-old sister, Martha—the book begins in the morning just before the library’s opening–day celebrations. Julie and Martha have arrived early with a homemade cake for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to whom Bruno and Julie have both written letters in the hope that she might attend the day’s festivities. It’s the girls who discover the baby nestled in a basket on the library steps, but it’s Bruno who spots them walking away from the library with the basket. “Holy everything,” he thinks, “Julie Sweet is a kidnapper.”

The action unfolds quickly from this auspicious beginning. With each twist and turn of the plot, Hest is adept at filling in only as much backstory as is needed for each character. The three resourceful children are united by an undertone of sadness and longing. Bruno’s beloved older brother, Ben, is serving overseas, and Julie and Martha’s mother is deceased. The war casts a long shadow over the book’s events, and Hest adds spare but effective historical references throughout the story. 

Hest’s prose is wonderfully unadorned, her narrative voices natural and the story deliciously satisfying. The Summer We Found the Baby is a quiet wonder and a rare delight.

Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh’s Seven Clues to Home is a deeply emotional story that alternates perspectives between Joy, who is about to turn 13, and her best friend, Lukas, who narrates from the day of Joy’s 12th birthday—which is also the day of his sudden, untimely death.

Joy and Lukas share August birthdays and have celebrated with a joint scavenger hunt for as long as they can remember. As Lukas’ side of the story opens, he’s preparing the clues that Joy will follow and planning an extra surprise for her. Thanks to the extra money he’s made walking dogs, he’s bought Joy a necklace and written her a letter that will reveal his feelings for her. Before he dies, he leaves the first clue at Joy’s house, where it will stay in her dresser drawer for the next 364 days. Lost in her grief, Joy just can’t bring herself to read it.

When Joy finally reads the clue, she immediately knows where Lukas wants her to go next and decides that she’ll follow wherever his final scavenger hunt leads her. After successfully tracking down the first few clues on her own, she must reach out to her older sister and a former teacher in order to complete Lukas’ final mission.

Polisner and Raleigh brilliantly portray a strong yet tender connection between two young people that not even death can sever. Joy’s narrative voice is credible and compelling, while Lukas’ honest and lively language hits just the right notes. With simple but evocative prose, the authors succeed in weaving threads of peace and hope into a bittersweet story of friendship, tragedy and loss. 

Rufus has never made a mistake. “Mistake” is too small a word for what Rufus does. No, Rufus makes fatal errors. He gets excited about a bird called a masked booby in front of his whole class, or sits on a bundle of berries that stain the back of his pants—situations that make being around other people unbearable. But summer means no more school, and, Rufus thinks, no more fatal errors. But this is the summer everything changes for Rufus.

With his dad out of work and his mom moving out of state for a job, Rufus is looking forward to spending the summer with his grandfather at his home, which is called Feylawn. Feylawn has always been a persnickety place, but when things get out of hand and his dad bars him from visiting the property, Rufus must conspire with his cousin Abigail in order to sneak back in. Together, the two discover that there’s much more to Feylawn than meets the eye, and Rufus’ next fatal error could be his last.

A seamless combination of fantasy and mystery wrapped around a classical coming-of-age narrative, Dashka Slater’s The Book of Fatal Errors grabs the readers hand from the first page and tugs them along at a breakneck pace through twist after twist. Slater is careful not to lose track of the complex relationships among Rufus and the various members of his family; as a result, the book’s magical elements feel grounded in emotional realism. Put this fun tale into the hands of any kid who’s ever wished to find fairies in the backyard.