Young narrator Agnes, plus Mama and Daddy, travel by bus from Birmingham, Ala., to Washington, D.C., in this dream-centered picture book tracing one family’s experience of the March on Washington. Upon arrival, the Black family visits the home of Frederick Douglass. When Agnes sees “people of every color” sharing a water fountain, Mama assures, “We are one today.” A visit to the Lincoln Memorial is followed by figures seen from Daddy’s shoulders: John Lewis, Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, and Martin Luther King Jr. Following the event, people of all backgrounds together soak their tired feet in the reflection pond. Riding home, Agnes dreams that the whole world attends King’s speech, a moment that underlines the book’s themes of freedom for all. Moses provides a child’s-eye view of a pivotal historical event, while Mallett’s straightforward digital illustrations use bright colors to foreground the family’s day amid the large crowd, portrayed with various skin tones. An author’s note and figure biographies conclude. Ages 3–7. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lyrical text with prayer-like refrains joins impressionistic collage and multimedia images as Kusin Pritchard (Where Is Poppy?) and Alko (Sharing Shalom) recount the 1966 fire at New York City’s Jewish Theological Seminary Library. Founded in 1893, the Upper West Side library served as “a keeper of stories. A keeper of memories. A keeper of hope,” welcoming readers of many backgrounds and playing an essential role in Jewish culture: “When others tried to erase these stories and their tellers, the keeper welcomed the words that were safe nowhere else.” Seventy-some years later, flames erupt, and the blaze is shown sending black curls of smoke into the air alongside words and images, the scene seeming to draw parallels with the Holocaust. After firefighters wrap the library bookshelves in canvas, streams of water from firehoses course among the precious volumes (“Rushing water, keep our stories alive,” text implores). Urgency grips the city after the fire, and volunteers form a human chain to remove the books, one by one, while further recovery efforts involve a simple action: “thousands of hands” press the wet pages between paper towels, eventually saving 170,000 volumes. Readers are pulled into the desperate fight to save irreplaceable treasures throughout a work that emphasizes the keeping done not only by libraries but by communities and people, too—guardians of memory and meaning, preserving the past for future generations. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Back matter includes contextualizing information and an author’s note. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. Illustrator’s agent: Marietta B. Zacker, Gallt and Zacker Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Siblings JieJie and DiDi are “left-behind children” living on their own in the desert landscape surrounding utopian Oasis City, in which their mother works tirelessly to save money so the kids can live there with her. After their mother misses their daily phone call— an occurrence that requires JieJie and Didi to brave sandstorms and the constantly shifting dunes on their trek to the desert’s lone pay phone—the children embark on an unexpected journey to the local dumping ground. While digging through Oasis City’s discarded, obsolete tech, they encounter a robot and activate its Mother mode, hoping it will help them navigate their parent’s sudden absence until her planned return for the annual moon festival. Soft lines and simple character designs by Guojing (The Only Child) emphasize JieJie and DiDi’s youthful vulnerability and optimism amid a somber landscape devastated by pollution and climate change. The delicate pencil shading evokes a powerful sense of tone and atmosphere, while large uncluttered panels inject a feeling of intimacy even in the vast desert. It’s an evocative and moving graphic novel tale of sacrifice and what it means to be a family. Ages 8–12. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Debut creator Chang recounts a time of personal and familial tumult in this introspective graphic novel memoir. For the past five years, 12-year-old Taiwanese American aspiring artist Chang has been keeping a huge secret from her friends: her bàba moved back to Taiwan for work and the family—­including her mother and older sisters Em and Jess—has seen him infrequently since. Though the tween wants to enter a district-wide art competition, the theme of “What Family Means to Me” leaves her questioning what to draw. Upon their grandmother’s death, the siblings and Mom must travel to Taipei, where the youth reunites with her father. She also learns more about her mother’s resilience throughout the years, as well as the real reason surrounding Bàba’s departure. Chang cleverly denotes Taiwanese dialogue using dashes to represent aspects of conversation she doesn’t understand and smartly utilizes journal entries to display her youthful interiority. The sunny color palette and emotive facial expressions inject lightheartedness into the tween’s grappling with her parents’ secrets and her own shifting perspective. Readers will root for her growth as an artist and budding adolescent as she embraces the sometimes messy parts of life. Ages 8–12. Agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

It’s Hassan’s third year fasting for the monthlong observance of Ramadan, but it’s the first year he’s gone to the mosque every night to pray alongside his father. The new routine has been affecting his everyday life, especially his studies and his performance as Boss Hassan, center midfielder on the soccer team: he’s been falling asleep in class, and he frequently misses the end of practices, as his mother picks him up after school so the family can nap before dinner. Since the end of Ramadan coincides with soccer playoffs, he avoids telling anyone he’s fasting, but when his friends substitute him with white-cued teammate Rosie during online gaming hangouts (that Hassan can’t participate in due to family obligations), he gets jealous. Then his failing math grades force Coach to take him off the team. Algarmi utilizes a friendly comic-strip style to portray Hassan’s struggles balancing expectations from family, friends, and school administrators. Casual dialogue depicts amiable tween and adult interactions and establishes ample context surrounding the celebration of Ramadan, including the dress, prayer, rituals, and food; dotted eyes, a comma nose, and toothy expressions render Hassan’s furrowed-brow earnestness, whole-body enthusiasm, and high-minded aspirations in navigating his complex feelings regarding his heritage in this wholesome graphic novel debut. Ages 8–12. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

While her cases may not be as mysterious as Nancy Drew’s or as challenging as Encyclopedia Brown’s, debut creator Healy’s ebullient would-be investigator Casey—depicted as a pale-skinned, triangle-shaped 11-year-old with brown pigtails and a red dress—is a welcome addition to the cadre of juvenile sleuths. On her birthday, Casey receives a magnifying glass and binoculars (necessities for a detective), as well as underwear (embarrassing), thus solving this pleasant early reader’s inaugural mystery: the Case of the Wrapped Presents. She uses her new binoculars to get the scoop on tan-skinned Jan, a tie-wearing new girl with an aptitude for science; the two become fast Bert and Ernie–esque friends. Casey joyfully approaches each new scenario, including kickball tryouts, decoding a note (that’s not a love letter) from her crush, and determining the gender of fat cat Mr. Muffin. Uncomplicated paneling and crisp line drawings punctuated by eye-catchingly bright hues encourage readers to join Casey as she endeavors to crack the case in this inviting series starter. Entertaining supporting characters—each rendered using simple shapes and a variety of skin tones—and their side stories inject goofy humor. Ages 7–10. Agent: Hannah Mann, Writers House. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Teenage Page Whittaker thinks “it feels too romantic to be real” after she accepts a scholarship to attend prestigious Agathion College, a boarding school for “gifted” kids located on the Scottish moors, in this expertly crafted dark academia fantasy novel by Wilkinson (Deep Is the Fen). Obsessed with gothic literature, Page finds Agathion—with its tall spires, gargoyle statues, and student body fluent in Latin and Greek—to be an academic’s dream, especially after the nightmare that was her former school, where she was involved in a deadly incident. But the timing of her scholarship is suspicious, and Page starts to wonder if she—and all the other students with their troubled pasts—was brought here for a reason. Covert clubs, dangerous tests of wits, and a mystery shrouded in dark magic and strange and ancient secrets unfurl in this stunning foray whose skillful plotting is reminiscent of Donna Tart’s The Secret History. Painterly descriptions of a rainy gothic atmosphere punctuated by suspense, horror, and humor as experienced by a dynamic and intersectionally diverse found-family cast feel at once as classic as its inspirations, and as an invigorating reinvention of the genre. Ages 14–up. Agent: Katelyn Detweiler, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Six months after her mother’s death, 18-year-old Grace Crain spends the summer in her mother’s hometown of Hermitage, Fla. While working as an intern at the local historical society, she transcribes cassette tapes recorded in the ’90s by a boy her age, Jake Underwood. She soon realizes that if she records herself speaking on the other side of the tapes, Jake can hear her 30 years in the past. The two begin talking, and as they bond over their parallel experiences with grief, they also uncover a secret lying beneath the surface of Hermitage—one that spans five decades and involves some of the most important people in town, who may have played a part in the deaths of Jake’s father and uncle. Through Grace’s assuredly written voice, DeWitt (Wren Martin Ruins It All) deftly balances an examination of grief and healing with a gradually unfolding small-town mystery. Though Grace’s relationships with other major supporting characters—such as her cousin and a coworker—are somewhat threadbare, the story stands out in its depiction of emotional intellect; intriguing supernatural elements add texture. Grace cues as white; the secondary cast is intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up. Agent: Cate Hart, Harvey Klinger Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

After the police declare high school senior Solina Flores’s death an accident, her identical twin sister Luna resolves to prove it was murder by finding the killer. Impersonating Solina, Luna infiltrates her twin’s school, Kingswood Academy, whose tuition Luna dropped out of public school to help pay in their late parents’ absence. Stepping into Solina’s shoes reveals a web of secrets surrounding her wealthy boyfriend Hunter and the expensive designer clothes she’d borrow from similarly affluent friend Poppy. As Luna navigates academic pressures and the complex school social scene, she must also confront her growing feelings for Solina’s cello prodigy roommate Claudia. It soon becomes clear that the only way to learn more about her sister’s death is by understanding herself in this potent portrait of loss and identity. Character interactions informed by economic disparity and the school’s commitment to upholding an unbalanced social hierarchy present a grounded mystery by Rose (10 Things I Hate About Prom) that is both an indictment and reflection of the unjust systems that allow instances of sexual violence to go unpunished. Characters are described as having various skin tones. Ages 14–up. Agent: Uwe Stender, Triada US. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

In her youth Cassia, a Sylvan, is given a ring by her Dracu friend Zeru. When it is revealed to be the Solis Gemma, a powerful magical artifact, their relationship dissolves, becoming a point of contention amid the decades-long feud between the Sylvans and the Dracu. Despite 10 years of training, Cassia can still barely wield the ring’s powers against the underground-dwelling Dracu, much to the consternation of her father, the Sylvan king. To steal back the ring, Zeru captures Cassia, only to discover that she and the ring are bonded. Following a seer’s advice, Zeru persuades Cassia to go to Welkincaster, the origin of the ring’s creators. As they search for answers, sparks fly between the childhood friends turned enemies, even as war looms on the horizon. The central romance often feels unbalanced due to Cassia’s earnest drive to better understand herself and Zeru’s unwillingness to see beyond his own goals. Nevertheless, vivid worldbuilding conjures an expansive setting against which this romantasy series launch by Blake (the Frostblood Saga) unfolds, resulting in a majestic tale that weaves together questions of destiny, love, and self-discovery. Ages 14–up. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink