In Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan, the story is told by Ivan, a silverback gorilla who is the main attraction at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall. Ivan doesn’t miss the jungle much, not since Mack gave him a TV and showed him how to create art inside his “habitat.” Ivan also has lots of friends—Stella, the elephant who lives next to him; Bob, the stray dog who sleeps on Ivan’s belly at night; and George, who brings his daughter Julia each night when he cleans the mall. Ivan is content—that is, until a new baby elephant is brought to the mall, and changes forever the way Ivan thinks about the cages in which they all live.

The One and Only Ivan is a simple story whose power lies in the raw, unchecked emotions that pour from Ivan, Bob, Stella and Ruby, the new baby elephant. It is both heartbreaking and uplifting to journey along with Ivan as he attempts, for the first time, to venture outside the safety of his cage.

This brave, moving story is perfect for anyone who loves animals and has ever wondered what they think about life inside a cage.

When there’s no end in sight to the nightly rain of Nazi bombs over London, 12-year-old Beatrice Sims is sent to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with public health nurse Clementine Pope. Armed with a trunk of proper dresses and a little red notebook to record her observations, Beatrice finds herself unprepared for life in the Wild West.

First shocked by New Mexico’s centipedes and other creatures, Clementine’s unladylike trousers and attending school in everyday clothes—and with boys, no less—Beatrice soon finds herself in awe of the region’s vast beauty. She enjoys the freedom of expressing her own opinions and the excitement of befriending cute classmate Esteban. The girl’s (and readers’) true eye-opening experiences come when she accompanies Clementine to an impoverished Indian pueblo, where she realizes that the battle against poverty and disease is just as important as the war back home.

What makes Rosemary Zibart’s True Brit most engaging is the attention to detail, from descriptions of mud homes and piñon trees to “A-okay” American slang. Beatrice’s journal entries add more insight into her evolution from a privileged girl to the beginnings of a modern woman. The first in a series, this fresh take on the era will continue with more stories about displaced children during World War II.

All the magic of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the Caldecott Medal-winning story of the little boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, comes alive in The Hugo Movie Companion. Brian Selznick takes readers behind the scenes of Hugo, the 3D movie directed by Martin Scorsese, through pictures, essays and interviews with cast and crew. Supplemented with full-color photographs from Hugo and illustrations from the original book, the movie companion reveals the scaffolding behind the film while providing a fascinating view of Hugo’s world, both real and imaginary.

The Hugo Movie Companion includes essays on the history of automatons, Paris in the 1930s, the life of French film pioneer George Méliès and more—plus a piece by Scorsese titled “The Birth of Cinema,” which elaborates on the early French films by Méliès and the Lumière brothers. Méliès’ films helped to inspire The Invention of Hugo Cabret’s unique format, as the mixture of text and illustrations allows parts of Hugo’s story to become visual, like a movie.

The cinematographer, researcher, costume designer and many more—plus screenwriter John Logan, composer Howard Shore and actors Sir Ben Kinsley and Sir Christopher Lee—all share what inspired their love of movies and how their talents contributed to the creation of Hugo. Selznick brings these interviews together in the last chapter, where the final two minutes of the film are deconstructed to reveal the work behind it—from the intricacy of the scene’s long take (one continuous shot) to the after-effects. Selznick even reveals a surprise about his own participation during that day of filming.

The vast history that inspired Selznick’s novel and the many people who contributed to its cinematic debut never detract from the magic of Hugo’s tale. Instead, The Hugo Movie Companion transforms the story into a piece of film history, one that children and adults alike will cherish.

A snowy day in February and a young visitor named Karl remind nursing home resident Lizzie (once known as Elizabeth) of another snowy day in February 1945, when an elephant came to live in the garden of her home in Dresden, Germany. While Karl is instantly fascinated, his mother (who is Lizzie’s nurse) dismisses the idea as an old woman’s rambling. But once Lizzie begins her seemingly unbelievable story, Karl and his mother—and readers—can’t help but be drawn into the tale of survival told in An Elephant in the Garden, which is loosely based on a real event from World War II.

With her father off fighting in Russia and much of Germany already destroyed, 16-year-old Elizabeth, her younger brother, Karli, and her zoo worker mother know that it’s only a matter of time before Dresden succumbs to ruin, too. When the order is given to destroy all of the large and potentially dangerous zoo animals if a bombing strike occurs, Elizabeth’s mother convinces the zoo director to spare a kind and playful four-year-old elephant named Marlene (for Marlene Dietrich). Marlene quickly becomes a part of the family, and when Dresden is indeed bombed, there’s no question that she will flee the city with them.

Along with thousands of other refugees, Elizabeth, who is often hungry and tired, finds the determination to escape through Marlene’s persevering spirit. The drama escalates when Peter, a downed Canadian airman, joins the family after a near-tragedy. With the Russians always advancing behind them, the family continues its trek toward the approaching American forces. As Peter tries to avoid suspicion among this foreign land and Elizabeth tries to reconcile her romantic feelings for this “enemy,” Marlene once again eases tension and instills a sense of wonder among the other downtrodden people they meet.

A surprise, heartwarming ending reveals the fates of Elizabeth and her family. Of course, Marlene’s outcome will be foremost on children’s minds.

Some books take you on a roller coaster ride—flinging you from one exciting or terrifying event to another, with no room to take a breath. Other books are like a lazy stroll on a fall day—quiet, calm, and measured. The Inquisitor’s Apprentice, the first children’s book by award-winning author Chris Moriarty, uses the best of both approaches. The result is an engaging book that draws you slowly into its creative new world, filled with wonderfully detailed characters, and then suddenly whisks you straight in to the middle of the crime of the century.

Sacha is a young Jewish boy living with his parents and grandparents in the Lower East Side of New York City, around 1900. However, this is not the New York of history books. Magic is a part of every day life, especially in the Jewish community, and it’s the job of the Inquisitors to keep that magic under control. That’s why the family is shocked when Sacha’s hidden talent gets him apprenticed to the most important Inquisitor in New York City, Maximillian Wolf. The other apprentice under Inquisitor Wolf is the rich, spoiled, and snobby Lily Astral. Together, the three must discover who is trying to kill Thomas Edison – the inventor of a machine that can detect magicians. Sacha soon discovers, however, that all of the clues lead back to the Lower East Side, and right back to his family.

The Inquisitor’s Apprentice is unlike any book currently available. Sacha is a Jewish boy, and that affects every part of his life. It also makes him a very deep and strong character, and someone you like and identify with right away. Moriarty creates a world that begs to be explored, filled with characters that have you coming back again and again. Mark Edward Geyer’s illustrations are beautiful, and add even more depth to the story. Part mystery, part fantasy, part coming-of-age story, The Inquisitor’s Apprentice is a book for anyone who has ever thought that maybe there is more to this world than what we can see.

Children soak up information like sponges because everything is new to them; that sense of wonder we often hear about comes naturally. When it comes to history, a child might tell their parents about the neat new book they’re reading, and the parent will usually smile and nod and go back to what they were doing—it’s history, right? We’ve heard it all before. However, Samantha Seiple’s new book, Ghosts in the Fog: The Untold Story of Alaska’s WWII Invasion, will be an exception to that rule. This nonfiction narrative tells a story that’s totally unknown to most people, one that’s so fascinating parents will be tempted to take the book right out of their child’s hands!

It seems that shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II, American forces engaged Japan on battlefields throughout the South Pacific, but they were also involved in defending this country farther north. As Seiple tells us, not only did Japan bomb the Alaskan Aleutian Islands—a fact that may be known to most history buffs—they actually invaded the remote islands. In a clear, you-are-there style, she recounts the horrific circumstances of war that came to one of the loneliest areas on the planet.

Seiple helps young readers see through the eyes of people like Mike Lokanin, who came to the Aleutians as a seven-year-old orphan, and who as an adult saw his village destroyed and was forced onto to a ship bound for Japan. Then there’s Charlie House, a Navy weatherman who was stationed on one of the bleakest of the islands, and who subsequently lived off the land for weeks following the invasion, almost starving to death before his capture.

War is not a pleasant subject, but while Seiple pulls no punches in her description of the invasion and the bloody battle to free the territory, she makes it as palatable as she can for her pre-teen audience. In many ways, Ghosts in the Fog is the story of the Pacific war in microcosm: the brutality and implacableness of the Japanese (along with the cultural background of their soldiers to put that in perspective), the fear of the civilians, the heroism and mistakes made by the military, even a relocation program aimed at Native Aleutians to rival what happened to Japanese Americans.

Ghosts in the Fog is a gripping look at an obscure part of American history, and at the reasons this episode was deliberately forgotten. Middle schoolers who read Seiple’s account will have a surprising piece of history to share with their parents.

James Neal Webb works in the Interlibrary Loan department of the Vanderbilt University Library.

“I saw change coming and that’s always a worry,” Helena says at the start of Richard Peck’s Secrets at Sea. The Upstairs Cranstons are going to Europe in search of a husband for Olive, “pushing twenty-one without a man in sight.” If the Cranstons shutter the windows and shut up the house, life will change for Helena’s family, for they are mice, among the First Families on the Hudson River, having arrived ages before the Dutch or the English.

They were all family—the wealthy human Upstairs Cranstons and the mice Cranstons below—but with the usual inequities of wealth and social class. The mice knew all of the joys and sorrows of their counterparts, but the humans knew nothing of theirs, didn’t even know a word of their mouse language. Peck sets his tale on the eve of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, masterfully delineating the domestic world of the Cranston families from Helena Cranston’s mouse-eye view, including her brothers and sisters—the skittering Louise, reckless Lamont, meek (even mousy, you might say) Beatrice and her own worrying self.

They are all off on an ocean voyage, along with the Upstairs Cranstons. The sea journey is deliciously related, full of funny scenes that beg to be read aloud, and readers will sense the fun Peck must have had in the writing. The Upstairs Cranstons are, of course, in the ship’s first-class section; Helena and her family are not. But, as Helena knows, it is the job of mice to keep the families together, so she overcomes her fear of water and does what must be done. What ensues are adventures galore—lifeboat drills, cat-and-mouse chases, the dispatching of an evil nanny, a hilarious princess’ reception and plenty of romance.

Ever versatile, Peck has fashioned a social comedy that is a pure delight.

It is 1952 and Janie Scott’s parents are blacklisted from their jobs as writers in Hollywood. They are lucky to find work in London, but Janie is resistant to leaving her warm California home. Moving to cold, rainy England in February and starting at a new school where she is expected to take Latin makes Janie extremely homesick. The one thing that helps her feel better is her budding friendship with the local apothecary’s son, Benjamin.

Janie is quickly drawn into a story of intrigue when Benjamin’s father is kidnapped by Soviet spies. The last thing they hear from Benjamin’s father is that they cannot trust the police, so the two teenagers set out to rescue him on their own. The apothecary has entrusted them with the Pharmocopoeia, an ancient book of medicines and magic, and with it and the help of some odd adult characters, they set out on their dangerous mission to rescue Benjamin’s father, and then the world, from nuclear devastation.

Though the book is a fantastical adventure story, author Maile Meloy—in her first work for young readers—weaves in the political intrigue that flavored the 1950s as well. Janie’s parents are suspected of being Communists, and while they neither confirm nor deny being so, they are clearly sympathetic to the ideal of Communism. The Soviets are not heroes, but neither are the Americans, as the Cold War builds and the arms race becomes the central focus of the world. The politics of the book may be lost on younger readers, but they will all grasp the potential destruction of nuclear weapons and the desire of the characters to thwart their development.

This well-paced fantasy is woven seamlessly with the reality of the times, making it all quite believable. We root for Janie and Benjamin as the suspense builds to a climactic ending that will excite readers old and young alike.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a pre-K through 8th grade Catholic school.

Mrs. Scullery, Mina McKee’s teacher at St. Bede’s Middle School, tells her students that writers never write anything until everything is planned out carefully. “What nonsense!” thinks Mina. “Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line?” Her own story, related in her journal, reflects the clutter and wonder of a mind trying to make sense of her loneliness after the death of her father, her treatment as a somewhat loony outsider at school, and her earnest hope for a friend or two, perhaps in the boy moving into Ernie Myers’ old house down the road. Her mind “is a clutter and a mess,” and the stories, reflections, questions, quotations, poems and creative writing activities are written in a variety of font sizes and shapes, adding visual appeal and making the novel look just like a young girl’s messy notebook full of tentative observations about her world.

In this prequel to his 1998 Carnegie Medal-winning novel Skellig, David Almond’s My Name Is Mina continues the themes and ideas of its predecessor and, indeed, of many of Almond’s novels: the mystery and beauty of the world, why Mina’s father died, the creation of creatures out of clay, the pitmen digging coal in the depths of the Earth, and the horror and wonder of the world. In fact, readers new to Almond’s work may be intrigued enough to go on to Skellig, Heaven Eyes, Kit’s Wilderness, Clay and The Fire-Eaters to discover the full range of his philosophical concerns. He is one writer who, in simple and poetic prose, manages to suffuse characters’ worlds with rich and perceptive insights into the human condition.

Mina’s world is a grand landscape of ordinary people, heroes and monsters, where Daedalus, the Minotaur, Persephone and Pluto, Orpheus and Icarus are as real as the old lady next door. Mina wishes she could journey to the Underworld like Orpheus and bring back her father, or make an owl-leap into the skies like Icarus and fly like the birds she observes from her perch in a tree. Mina lives an ordinary life, yet it’s the stuff of the gods.

Mina’s journey via her journal becomes the readers’ journey, leading them right to the beginning of Skellig, when Mina meets a boy named Michael.

Dean Schneider teaches seventh- and eighth-grade English at the Ensworth School in Nashville.

Kadir Nelson confesses in his author’s note to Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans that history was never his favorite subject in school. Why, then, would he tackle a topic as vast as the history of African Americans? Because, he says, “the American story came alive to me” through his research, writing and painting—as it will for readers of this strikingly beautiful picture book that spans centuries of African-American life, from the days of slavery to the inauguration of President Barack Obama. 

Best known as an award-winning illustrator, Nelson proved his abundant skill as an author in his recent—and equally stunning—We are the Ship, illuminating the people and personalities of the Negro League. In Heart and Soul, Nelson further proves his exquisite talent at both writing and illustrating.

Atmospheric, penetrating full-page (and some double-page) paintings are billboard-like backdrops that powerfully reflect the text. The book is narrated colloquially in the first person by a grandmotherly figure who often addresses readers as “honey” or “chile” as she recounts the experiences of slavery (“like mother’s milk to a new country”), Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, the advent of the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil Rights Movement and more watershed events in American history.

There is raw emotion in both the illustrations (the spread of an orating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is especially powerful) and the words, rife with the reality of African Americans’ alternating pride, shame, anger and fear. One painting shows the steely resolve of two African Americans at a lunch counter sit-in in the South, with angry white customers pressing close behind them—the tension palpable on all the faces. The story of the African-American experience is hard to tell, and hard to read at times, but as the prologue notes, “You have to know where you come from so you can move forward.”

Nelson may say he never liked history much. But you’d never know it by all the heart and soul, and extremely diligent research and insight, he pours into this profound and important book—a definite Newbery and Sibert medal contender.

Sharon Verbeten is a children's librarian and freelance writer who lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.