Spring 2024 Children’s Flying Starts

We spotlight the authors of five of the season’s most promising children’s and YA debuts

By PW Staff |

Jun 21, 2024

Amber Chen

Growing up, Amber Chen was an avid sci-fi/fantasy reader. Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series is still one of her all-time favorites, and she sees echoes of its heroine Alanna’s journey in Of Jade and Dragons, her first YA novel.

LaDarrion Williams

LaDarrion Williams is having his “I told you so” moment. After struggling to have his short film featuring Black boy magic picked up by Hollywood executives, Williams is sitting on a New York Times bestseller: his YA debut fantasy novel, Blood at the Root.

K.A. Cobell

It was K.A. Cobell’s Blackfeet father who guided her throughout her life, teaching her about their culture and greatly supporting her goals. She put everything he taught her into her YA thriller debut, Looking for Smoke, and getting that book into his hands was the final step of a roller-coaster journey.

Xin Li

Xin Li’s picture book debut, I Lived Inside a Whale, came into being during the upheaval of the pandemic. “I thought about this girl wanting to run away from all the chaos and mess,” Li says.

Cassandra Calin

Cassandra Calin's career as a cartoonist began on the internet. Ten years later, Calin is reintroducing herself with the middle grade graphic novel The New Girl, her debut long-form endeavor, in which she highlights the parallel experiences of moving to a new country and the start of her first period.

A version of this article appeared in the 06/24/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Spring Flying Starts