A narrating chameleon who has quite a high opinion of himself doesn’t appreciate his camouflage capability: “I am a KING! But how can I command a king’s respect…when color-changing skin makes me so tricky to detect?!” The chameleon proceeds to regale readers with a series of springy rhymes that offer hints about his location in the corresponding outdoor scenes—e.g. “Don’t stare at boring dirt mounds while I’m looking oh-­so fine! / YOU BETTER COME AND FIND ME NOW! I’m near that leafy vine!” (Readers will likely need to make use of the answer key: King Chameleon is devilishly hard to spot.) The latter part of the book is given over to a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story in which the chameleon rolls around in the mud in order to become visible to readers but this decision also attracts the attention of (uh-oh) a hawk. (The idea is that the reader—the chameleon’s “friend”—saves the day.) Okon is making a hard sell for King Chameleon as an outlandishly fun picture-book star but it’s the seek-and-finds that are this offering’s calling card. The art has a somewhat garish look although it isn’t ill suited for a book designed to be visually challenging. The story closes out with further items to go back and search for.

A black-haired peach-skinned girl visits her Grampa on the reserve. They plan to collect cedar branches to bring as an offering for drummers performing at their community feast. The young girl shares her concern that taking the branches might hurt the tree. Grandpa assures her they will snip branches sparingly and bring an offering of tobacco to “show the Tree Spirit and the Creator that we are thankful for the gifts” that the cedar provides. As they travel through the woods they discuss aspects of the trees they pass including pine needles rich with vitamins and birch bark used for building canoes. Though Cooper’s (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) text feels didactic at times it’s earnest and effusive designed to inspire deep reflection in readers. Small details like a yummy taste of honey toast or Grampa removing his shoes to tread on forest paths further enliven their quest. Pichette’s (Muskhego Cree) illustrations feature bold outlines bright blocks of color and simplified yet specific depictions of plants and animals enhancing the straightforward narrative.

Ten-year-old Kabir doesn’t fit the boxes everyone else does; he draws crayon monsters in his science textbook and keeps a list of things he’s not allowed to make up that includes imaginary friends voices of aliens who live on the roof and shadows. After a fight and a public rebuff from a popular older boy Kabir disappears—triggering police interrogations and media frenzy centered on a scapegoated stranger. De Suza an Indian author based in Singapore writes with verbal playfulness and structural inventiveness: verse interludes concrete poetry lists and metafictional asides that invite readers to write their own endings. Bhembre’s grayscale art warmly renders the Indian cast of characters. At times the relentless whimsy undercuts the emotional stakes; the climactic town-hall reconstruction—each character narrating a piece of Kabir’s odyssey—strains plausibility and the sheer volume of embellishment blunts the reunion’s impact though the message about seeing neurodivergent-coded children clearly is heartfelt. Frank references to a missing child’s possible death including mentions of suicide and morgues may unsettle some sensitive readers.

Sparky’s no mutt; as his young owner tells us he’s the “perfect mix of French bulldog German poodle and Andalusian rat terrier.” “His style and elegance without a doubt come from his French side.” (The accompanying illustrations show a chuckle-worthy parade of extravagantly modish canines.) His “loud bark” and “curly fur” are from his poodle side. What does he get from his Andalusian rat terrier side? A desire to find the “perfect spot.” Mom and Dad each take him on walks to no avail. The protagonist hopes he won’t find it in the house; later the child and a sibling take him on a walk and amid the rocks in the park Sparky locates it: the perfect poop spot. But he’s mortified to realize that the rock he chose to do his business on is in fact an annoyed tortoise’s shell and the kids laugh uproariously. The language conceit and loud scribbly cartoonish art are droll. Winking grinning uber-expressive Sparky is irresistible whether loudly caterwauling on the piano (to the family’s dismay) or scanning the night sky with binoculars for the perfect spot. Vera adds panache with scenes featuring dotted lines tracing Sparky’s circuitous path. The protagonist of this Spanish import is brown-skinned; the family is multiracial.

In a village by a river several round anthropomorphic blobs called blue fuzzies live in little round huts. One day a storm damages their homes and as the blue fuzzies try to rebuild a stranger—an orange fuzzy—arrives to live with them. The blue villagers shun the newcomer until one of them realizes that “sometimes the lonely are right in front of you” and befriends the stranger. Together they build a village “filled with the warmth of feeling seen and being known” that eventually welcomes red and yellow fuzzies too. When another storm arrives the town’s residents weather it well due to the strength of their many varicolored vines. On the last pages the authors reveal that the fuzzies represent microbes whose village lives inside us all helping us to digest food and keeping us healthy. The book is credited to Pen & Pipette (a group of nearly two dozen high schoolers) and their executive director Miao; together they’ve delivered a superbly tender and emotional tale followed by easy-to-grasp introductory science. Although the fuzzies are merely circles with limbs Gousset’s watercolor-like illustrations do a wonderful job of bringing them to life.

A dreamy secretive teenage girl named Teddý living on a farm in rural Iceland has a chance encounter with a visiting cartographer in 1962. When he discovers her gift for mathematics she unexpectedly finds herself encouraged to pursue a college education. Another chance encounter this time with a U.S. astronaut preparing for the moon mission changes the course of her life again—this time after her graduation. Teddý herself struggles to chart her own way: “Every time she tried to think about the future her mind wandered wrestled with something entirely unrelated.” Pálsdóttir often approaches her characters at a slant from different angles. Midway through Teddý’s first very formative airplane ride the pilot of the small plane collapses. We learn how she handles the emergency only later through a conversation at a party between characters who don’t reappear. Teddý remains in many ways opaque even as she finally finds “the courage to plan something she who appeared lost in the strange world her life had now become.” The plan she hatches requires a double life a great deal of lying and bank fraud. Pálsdóttir has broad interests and a playful slyly unconventional style; sections in first person on a commercial airline flight in 2004 pull the reader out of the 1960s and ‘70s and into the novel’s future. Other sections have a dreamlike quality. As we watch Teddý strive to achieve her ambitions Pálsdóttir gives us glimpses of Iceland’s changing position in the world and the nascent women’s liberation movement.

Wall Street Journal sports editor Robinson and executive news editor Clegg open with a football fanatic named Howie Roseman who had pursued a position with a NFL team since high school. Finally hired to formulate salary-cap strategy he became the league’s youngest ever general manager. For all his analytical savvy Roseman was edged out of management by an old-school jock; Roseman gets some sweet revenge but it takes a while to get there. Meanwhile Robinson and Clegg have the hard job of explaining just how that salary cap works for which it helps to have a math degree. Its intent along with the structure of the annual draft was to level the playing field so to speak so that dynasties could not form. The draft for instance gives preference to the teams with the lowest record of wins in the previous season. In theory this makes it hard to guess who’ll end up at the Super Bowl. Sometimes it works that way as with the Seattle Seahawks in their time of glory with little money but plenty of psychotic on-field rampages. Sometimes it doesn’t. Teams soon figured out how to game the game though some by playing the equivalent of penny stocks picking dozens of low-value rookies in the hope that some work out others by putting all their money on blue chips. In the end the authors note it was all about math: “You could no longer win on the force of talent or grit or Xs and Os alone” not when suiting up now means Armani and not shoulder pads. Of course the money side has worked out just fine for the owners given that viewership of Game 7 of the 2025 World Series “was outdrawn by thirteen NFL matchups from the regular season alone.”

“Whatever the final assessment of Trump’s second term his achievement in recovering from ignominy and surviving the efforts of an entrenched establishment to destroy him will stand as the greatest political comeback in modern presidential history.” So exults Hanson a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a Trump booster from way back. Hanson is a classicist which he signals by suggesting Trump is “a classically tragic figure”—though he doesn’t add that classically tragic figures are always so through their own hubris and arrogance never by accident. Hanson also tosses in Latin tags—primus inter pares damnatio memoriae bellum omnium contra omnes and such—for good measure. And he faults Democrats for ignoring Thucydides’ dark warnings about Corcyra (Corfu)—an author and place one suspects are unknown to Trump and his supporters as well. Along with glib references to Shakespeare and Nietzsche though Hanson belatedly allows that the MAGA base is made up of white men without college degrees and so he recites an all-too-familiar litany of talking points and grievances. The only person to die on January 6 2021 was MAGA acolyte Ashli Babbitt shot “apparently for the probable misdemeanor of unlawfully entering the Capitol through a previously broken window.” There were “far more violent earlier attacks…such as the storming of the same Capitol on March 1 1954 by armed Puerto Rican terrorists.” Liberal academicians think it their charge “to indoctrinate youth in progressive ideology as part of a greater project to fundamentally alter the nature of the culture at large.” Trump insults individuals not “the citizen poor minorities women or any particular racial or religious group as a whole.” The Epstein files are “so-called.” And so on.

When Gaspar Ruiz a widowed nobleman from neighboring Domingo comes to Kindred Orphanage and offers to adopt 17-year-old Cataleya Donant she’s hesitant—until he says the magic word: revenge. Witches killed many people including Ruiz’s family before being exiled from Domingo. And Cata wants to exact justice against the longtime friend who betrayed her; Sebastjan Arroyo helped the Domingan witches after they fled to Coventry where they enacted a bloody takeover. Sebastjan is now close to the Domingan Prince Tomás Castellan and Ruiz’s plan involves morpher witch Caya’s transforming herself into Lady Marisol Vinyet infiltrating the Domingan social season known as the Coronet and finding the plants used to create potions so Ruiz can create neutralizing counter-potions and restore the pre-magical world. During her mission Caya forms attachments that may upend everything they’ve set in motion. This tropical world which centers on Black and brown leads is hierarchical: If young people show signs of magical abilities they’re claimed by the High Houses (one for each of the three types of magic). Welks who never develop magic exist at the lowest level of society. In this simmering story Cole explores themes of segregation classism and colorism. Twists abound as do moments of manipulation deception and betrayal.

Poet Aptowicz turns to the history of her native Pennsylvania with the story of William Parker enslaved in neighboring Maryland. After having been forced to fight other enslaved men in bare-knuckle contests a teenage William came to blows with his own enslaver. He fled making his way to a little Quaker community across the state line where “whenever strange white men showed up waving ‘runaway slave’ notices the town’s Black residents had a remarkable talent for vanishing—and not a soul in Christiana would tell you a thing about it.” Years passed after Parker’s arrival in 1839 but a vigilante posse tracked him down. “When kidnappers beaten by Parker and his men arrived bloodied and broken-limbed at a local tavern” writes Aptowicz “white doctors…refused them treatment once they learned why the men were injured.” A natural leader Parker had formed a self-defense organization. Well-armed they were prepared when his former enslaver arrived in September 1851 with a gang of “paddy rollers” accompanied by a federal marshal. In the ensuing gunfight known as the “Christiana Riot” the enslaver was killed touching off a long inquest that ended with true justice being served. William meanwhile escaped a second time making his way to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Aptowicz places these events against a backdrop that includes a portrait of Philadelphia as a center of the abolitionist movement and more of a thriving Black community of free often prosperous citizens. She also places William’s story against the fraught tensions between free and slaveholding states with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 giving kidnappers and bounty hunters free rein to travel throughout the country in search of runaways. It makes for a swift-flowing narrative with appearances by Frederick Douglass and John Wilkes Booth thoroughly documented but accessibly written.

Drew’s returned from Vancouver to her hometown of Stanfield after inheriting her Aunt Hannah’s store Good Vibrations which specializes in all things magic. In her absence her lab partner nerdy Nick Campbell has morphed into a hot guy. He’s now a journalist based in Toronto and he wants to write a story to mark the 20th anniversary of Ginny Evans’ disappearance which was never accounted for despite its massive media coverage. Aunt Hannah had used her mystic powers to try to find Ginny but the failure of her clues—lake saint and gardenia—aroused hatred from local people who consider magic anathema. The store isn’t doing well and Drew’s mother a realtor thinks she should sell it but Drew stubbornly resists the suggestion. Her best friend Gigi supports her and Drew realizing she has powers of her own begins using the Tarot to find answers. When Nick asks to see Hannah’s journals Drew finds herself reluctantly reading them and recalling Hannah’s faith in Drew’s power to see things by just holding an object. Her efforts are complicated by the presence of her ex-lover lawyer Foster Banks who’s a member of her father’s firm. Despite her reservations about taking up with him again she has a hard time saying no. Using her newfound powers she makes discoveries about Ginny that had never come to light and uncovers more suspects. With help from Gigi Nick and her genderfluid assistant George Drew continues her quest for the truth.

Margaret Douglas’ role as one of Boston Rowing Club’s varsity captains was the center of her life. But she’s mysteriously absent from training over the summer shocking her team and costing her the leadership role. Jo Bryant has moved to Boston where her dad a former Olympic gold medalist in rowing coaches the Kenmore Boat Club the all-boys counterpart to BRC. Jo who has “pale blond hair” and presents white is giving crew a shot to please her divorced parents though she couldn’t be less interested in the sport. As the Head of the Charles the season’s most important race nears Jo’s and Margaret’s lives become inextricably linked throughout their cutthroat BRC training. Their teammates are complex well-developed characters especially India Manning who’s gay and a fierce competitor; she rowed in a varsity pair at Nationals with Margaret who has “warm olive-toned skin.” Unfortunately the perspective shifts between Margaret and Jo slow the pace of the story and a frustrating lack of details and delayed reveals make the emotional beats once they finally arrive less resonant. The novel’s many disparate elements—training romances family conflict privilege and questions surrounding Margaret’s past—make the novel feel too long and don’t allow for a fully developed mystery that would please genre fans.

Mizushima’s long-running Timber Creek K-9 series is deeply rooted in the daily responsibilities and duties of a Rocky Mountain sheriff’s station. As it’s tackled contemporary crimes its police procedural roots have extended to explore the personal lives of local residents. This time a welfare check by Deputy Mattie Walker and her K-9 partner Robo leads to the discovery of a deceased young mother and a screaming toddler. A drug overdose is indicated in Jaclyn Reynolds’ death and babysitter Isabel Webb fills in some details of Jaclyn’s tumultuous recent life. The child whose name is Emma tells Mattie that her mother was hit by “Audie Beebee.” After Mattie launches her investigation by checking in with the sheriff’s office and Child Protection Services she and Deputy Lester Hitchen stop a motorist behaving erratically and with Robo’s help discover a cache of illegal drugs hidden in the spare tire of the car. They take Delgado the nervous driver into custody and his behavior becomes increasingly suspicious. Meanwhile Mattie’s new husband Cole a veterinarian is dealing with Butch a strangely aggressive Rottweiler. Not surprisingly all of these threads are intertwined in Mattie and Robo’s 11th mystery. Chief among the many local subplots is a discussion between Mattie and Cole about expanding their blended family.

This entry picks up several months after the first book ended. The previous fall Tuva defeated the sea serpents threatening the Stockholm archipelago. She’s just spent spring break hanging around the house alone because her friend Rasmus inexplicably ghosted her. As school resumes Tuva who’s still wrestling with her discovery that she’s neither human nor her parents’ biological child but rather the last of the ancient merfolk now must contend with an unemployed father who’s slipping into alcoholism a mother who seems to be rejecting her a best friend who’s avoiding her and a strangely stubborn fog that won’t let spring come to the archipelago. When the mysterious fog attempts to drown her classmate and his mother Tuva realizes that a new—and far more malevolent—presence has entered the war between humanity and nature in the Baltic Sea. As this new threat turns increasingly active and lethal Tuva has to learn more about her innate abilities and the network of secret allies among her island neighbors. This translated work from Sweden seamlessly continues the storyline from the first book. Readers will immerse themselves in the familiar world and atmospheric writing style even as the stakes rise the struggle escalates and more than ever is required of Tuva.

“What if it sucks forever?” This is the question Willa asks as she surveys her moderately crappy studio apartment in Jersey City and obsesses about seeing the guy who was until quite recently her fiancé at her friends’ wedding. What she can’t know is that she’s about to get a sense of what “sucks forever” feels like as she experiences her own death and those of her closest friends over and over and over again. With books like So Thirsty (2024) and Such Sharp Teeth (2022) Harrison has reinvented classic baddies like vampires and werewolves in ways that feel new and just a little bit feminist. Her haunted house novel Play Nice (2025) went a bit deeper than those earlier works in using the conventions of horror to express experiences and emotional states that are impossible to speak about in everyday language. Her latest feels like a bit of a retreat which is not to say that it isn’t enjoyable. Willa is going to encounter her ex at a Hudson Valley locale that “transitioned from silver spoon summer camp to dreamy wedding venue.” This is a perfect spot for indie-rustic nuptials and—as any slasher fan knows—a masked murderer. Willa dies along with her besties…only to wake up in her own bed in Jersey City about to start the whole thing over again. Each time she relives the wedding weekend she develops new strategies for surviving saving her friends and processing her feelings about her breakup. This is of course exactly what’s supposed to happen in a time-loop narrative and Harrison adds some nifty twists. But the repetition begins to feel repetitive as the horrors start to become a bit silly.

“When setting out to write a book about Asian American mothering I did not intend to write about tiger mothering” writes Kang a professor of Women Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “I wanted to tell stories of progress and celebration—look how far we have come!” And yet she adds “I kept hearing an incessant whisper that turned into a hiss and then an exhortation: ‘Tell the truth.’ We are not there yet.” The tough-loving “tiger mom”—a term that entered the cultural conversation with Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011)—“is just the latest figure in a long line of unsavory gendered and racialized stereotypes of Asian women” writes Kang. The tiger mother she argues “has solidified as a matritrope a widespread representation of a group of mothers that imbues them with characteristics based largely but not solely on race.” Matritropes about Asian American motherhood she says reinforce the historically entrenched treatment of Asian Americans as “other.” She writes “Heated debates about the tiger mother have revealed and heightened the perception of Asian American mothers as foreign threats.” Interviewing more than 100 second-generation Asian American mothers for the book Kang makes the case that understanding Asian American motherhood is key to understanding the experience of being Asian American regardless of parenting status or gender. Her thesis is insightful and trenchantly argued and her interrogation of the ways in which narratives about motherhood have been overlooked in other scholarship ring true. Sudha an Indian American professor who is among the mothers interviewed says “The Asian American women I know are a bunch of badasses. We joke about being failed tiger mothers. We’re like slackers who drink wine in front of our kids and if they don’t want to brush their teeth one night that’s OK….It’s more important that [my daughter] be a good social citizen.”

“Between day / and night” a moth flies by flutteringly releasing a contrail of magical dust. “Between near / and far” a cricket rests on a leaf watching a waning crescent moon amid a galaxy of stars. Sometime during “hide / and seek” and “between question / and answer” the nocturnal insects meet and quickly commence a game with the cricket hiding “under” the foliage the moth seeking a spot somewhere “over.” But perhaps they venture out a bit too broadly caught between “sound // and silence.” Luckily their moment of “lost” is brief quickly becoming “found” and transforming them into playmates “you and me” joyfully dancing and twirling “now // and forever.” Walker enhances her clever spare text with evocative illustrations presented in an overlapping tri-color palette—blue peach and in-between gray softened with dotted white. Her meticulous pointillism creates invitingly soft spreads that suggest a dreamy wonderland ripe for slow exploration. Her insect protagonists are anthropomorphized just enough to capture curious questioning welcoming emotions they shyly gently reveal to each other.

Maxie Roo is an Eastern Grey kangaroo. He rests beneath a distinctive yellow-blossomed golden wattle tree digs with his claws munches on flowers and goes bounding amid the rosellas galahs and cockatoos jumping so high that he feels like he’s flying among the birds. Maxie’s best friend is another young kangaroo named Indie. One day Indie spots a fox and hops away in fright. She and Maxie are separated and for a while they become lost in the bush. Relieved to find each other again they make their way back down to the pasture where a “mob” of kangaroos has gathered in the setting sun. Maxie’s mother hugs him tight. The author narrates in gentle verses their uncomplicated meter capturing something of a kangaroo’s hopping gait: “The pair made a plan. / Their steps they retraced. / Along the cool creek / they hopped in great haste.” The joeys’ explorations provide a safe adventure for young readers and Ryner’s delightful double-page watercolor illustrations bring the Australian outback to vivid life including the subdued landscapes and stately gum trees the bursts of color in the forms of birds and flowers and the young roos themselves full of soft-eyed wonder. The book concludes with a two-page addendum relating facts about Australian flora and fauna wildlife sanctuaries and the real-life Maxie and Indie.

Fifteen children let out for recess engage in energetic animal action. They “roll like a passel of hogs” “kick like a mob of wallabies” “leap like a flock of lambs” “march like an army of busy ants” and more. (After these very lively and specific action verbs the last one “play” seems a bit weak.) The collective names for various animals are marvels. Many are likely to be unfamiliar like “a chime of wrens” “a shiver of sharks” and “a walk of snails.” As for the kids? They’re just “a group” though adding “of friends” somewhat redeems the generic collective. The relevant animals appear as ghostly gold or silver outlines joining in as the youngsters imitate them. The children are all different in appearance with a spectrum of skin tones a couple wearing spectacles. One brown-skinned tot has close-cropped very blond hair; one child’s hair is completely covered by a snug knit hat. Their bright clothes pop against the mostly flat backgrounds. This combination of solid rhymes unusual words and action encourages participation making for an engaging read-aloud.

The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden OQA’s leader and most faithful member who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting and his best friend shy artistic Rob both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”) all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict trauma and let’s face it a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.