Mara Rockliff, Running Press, $10.95 paper (112p) ISBN 978-0-7624-3745-0
This savvy guide encourages teens to be knowledgeable and media-literate consumers. Gently iconoclastic Pop Art–style images spruce up the pages (made from recycled paper), while quizzes and tips urge reflection and action. It's all about making...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Ann Tanksley. Knopf, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-84569-7
Inspired by a true incident, Rockliff’s (The Busiest Street in Town) story demonstrates what real generosity looks like. It takes place in a Cameroon village, where an American teacher tells his students that the Great Depression is worsening in his
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Iacopo Bruno. Candlewick, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-7636-6351-3
Rockliff (Me and Momma and Big John) sashays into the scientific and political world of the late 18th century with a playful narrative that explains the origin of the word “mesmerized” as it details Benjamin Franklin’s role in debunking a miracle...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Iacopo Bruno. Candlewick, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-7636-6841-9
Rockliff and Bruno (Mesmerized) reunite for another spectacular book about the often illusory world of human showmanship. Standout illustrations lend a magical aura as they spotlight the life of female magician Adelaide Herrmann. Bold as their...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Vincent X. Kirsch. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-544-13001-2
Rockliff (The Grudge Keeper) and Kirsch (Noah Webster and His Words) pay playful tribute to a Revolutionary War hero whose legacy lies in his culinary talent. Just before the outbreak of the war, Christopher Ludwick emigrated from Germany to...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Eliza Wheeler. Peachtree, $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-56145-729-8
Wheeler’s (Miss Maple’s Seeds) sure hand and lyrical pen-and-ink spreads are the source of this story’s charm. Long skirts billow, the fairy-tale cottage of Cornelius the Grudge Keeper leans sweetly to one side, and the white scraps of paper on...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Hadley Hooper. Candlewick, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-7636-7893-7
In an account as lively as it is informative, Rockliff (Mesmerized) commemorates the centennial of a daring, dangerous, and successful publicity stunt undertaken to promote women’s voting rights. With car travel in its infancy, suffragists Nell...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Kyrsten Brooker. Candlewick, $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-5528-0
Designed to cook unattended for 12 hours over the Sabbath, when observant Jews cannot perform work, cholent is a fragrant stew. Goldie Simcha, a youngish woman living in a big-city apartment building, “doesn’t celebrate Shabbat exactly as my grandma
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Michele Wood. Calkins Creek, $17.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-62979-555-3
Lil Hardin Armstrong played jazz piano at a time when female musicians were expected to be “canaries” (singers) and not to “play hard” the way she did. Though Armstrong was Louis Armstrong’s second wife, her own career was established before she met
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Mara Rockliff, Author, Sarah McMenemy, Illustrator , illus. by Sarah McMenemy. Knopf $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-84020-3
Agatha May Walker and Eulalie Scruggs are lifelong friends who live directly across from each other on Rushmore Boulevard. The aptly named thoroughfare has become so congested (“Cars zipped
by. Motorcycles roared
. Giant trucks rumbled
and...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by William Low. Candlewick, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-4359-1
When John’s mother trudges home from her first day as a stonecutter, “She is gray as ashes, from her headscarf to her boots. Even her bouncy beaded earrings have gone dull as dirt.” What’s more, it’s all from cutting just one stone, “and it’s not...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Juana Martinez-Neal. Clarion, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-358-12543-3
Rockliff (Sweet Justice) and Martinez-Neal (Tomatoes for Neela) tell how a Lithuania-born Jewish emigrant to America became a name that’s now a mainstay of shopping centers and malls. Once in the U.S. with her sister, young Lena Bryant (1877–1951),...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Elizabeth Baddeley. Putnam, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-525-51779-5
“Anything Billie Jean did, she did it ALL THE WAY.” This intensity is a recurring motif in Rockliff’s tale of the early life of tennis player Billie Jean King, born in 1943. From a childhood in which tennis was presented as the only sport for girls,
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by R. Gregory Christie. Random House Studio, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5247-2064-3
This mouthwatering motivational picture book centers Georgia Gilmore (1920–1990), a Black cook in Montgomery, Ala., who raised money through food sales to help support transport costs and cover fines for those participating in the Montgomery bus...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Giselle Potter. Beach Lane, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5344-6007-2
Faced with a sea of predictable produce at L.A.’s Seventh Street market—“apples and bananas and potatoes and tomatoes”—Frieda Caplan wanted to try selling mushrooms. “Nobody eats those,” the existing salespeople—all men—said, but Caplan trusted her...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Melissa Sweet. Abrams, $19.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4197-5221-6
Just right for young creatives, this optimistic biography
of artist Corita Kent (1918–1986) shimmers with the figure’s energy and sense of possibility. The story launches with an art lesson explained by an unidentified narrator: “Sister Corita...
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by S.D. Schindler. Candlewick, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-7636-9410-4
Kids obsessed with asking “How many?” and “How much?” will find a kindred spirit in the relentlessly inquisitive, if notably incomplete, Thomas Jefferson portrayed in this volume, who “jotted down numbers everywhere he went. He counted strawberries.
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Mara Rockliff, illus. by Gladys Jose. Abrams, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4197-6817-0
This fairy tale mash-up from Rockliff and Jose lobs scraps of fairy tales at readers as fast as they can recognize them—and foils expectations, too. Crisp, cartoon-style illustrations open on a princess trapped in a tower with long... hair? No, a...
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