Kwan lives on a quiet mountainside in 1941. Whether his family eats depends on what his father a woodcarver and his mother a painter can sell at the farmers market. After Kwan overhears his parents worrying over the lack of food in their onggi pot he ignores their warnings to stay away from Suka’s Farm and approaches the old Japanese man for a job introducing himself as Aoki—his legally assigned Japanese name. Cantankerous Mr. Suka initially turns Kwan down but finally lets him help care for the goats. Bit by bit Kwan chips away at Mr. Suka’s harsh exterior with persistence and kindness that the old man eventually returns. Kwan solidifies Mr. Suka’s respect when he recovers the goats after they go missing and Mr. Suka asks Kwan to tell him his real Korean name. The well-paced narrative artfully weaves in Korean terms and cultural references such as the children’s song “Santoki” which Kwan’s parents sing on the way to market and Kwan whistles to entice the goats. Chen uses soft washes and blends of bright colors to bring warmth to the detailed landscapes and cartoon portraits. In an authors’ note the Parks explain that they drew inspiration from their father’s experiences working on a goat farm as a child.

It’s easy for others to ignore the soft-spoken Marabella. But she has a gift: She notices things that others don’t. She even finds beauty in the tiny flowers that are almost choked out by weeds. To bring attention to their plight she uses chalk to draw a larger-than-life flower on the outdoor wall before school starts. Her classmates call her out for breaking the rules but her teacher Miss Tin recognizes her hidden talent and provides additional colors so she can draw more objects and moments she considers noteworthy. Inspired by her creativity others join Marabella and together they turn a dull ordinary wall into something beautiful. Even when rain washes away the lovely garden the youngsters have created over the course of a week Marabella remains hopeful pointing out other special images in the rain’s aftermath. Her keen sense of observation is rivaled only by her optimistic heart. Delicate softly colored illustrations perfect for a child’s eyes enhance this charming story with an important message. Marabella has light tan skin and a perky ribbon in her hair; her class is diverse in terms of race and physical ability.

“It’s worth the climb” Lily’s mother says as they open the door to their new apartment on the third floor of a walk-up. Though their home is just a few blocks from their old one in many ways it’s been a long journey; Mom and Lily have transitioned from a shelter for unhoused people to their own place. They’re supported by friends at the shelter a social worker and a kind neighbor who offers to watch Lily on weekends while Mom works to build a better life for them. The story celebrates their new opportunities—like Lily’s excitement about Mom cooking lasagna in their own kitchen—but also acknowledges the bittersweet emotions of leaving behind shelter friends particularly Lily’s BFF Madeline. Visits to the shelter offer comfort and continuity showing how Lily and Mom maintain meaningful connections while expanding their world with a new day care and friends for Lily and college for Mom. Sensitively illustrated by Everson in purples blues and cheerful yellows (Lily’s favorite color!) that add joy to the narrative this simple yet heartfelt tale balances realism with optimism. An author’s note with facts about homelessness provides valuable context making this a poignant and much-needed story for children and their caretakers alike. Lily and Mom are brown-skinned; their community is diverse.

This exuberant rhyming ode to reading is primed to get kids excited about the wonders awaiting them between the pages of a book. As the authors wisely point out books are perfect anytime anywhere—and they’re for everyone. Readers are encouraged to give books as gifts to share them with friends and family and even to write and illustrate their own books. Savor them at bedtime too. There are even options for the youngest kids—board books with flaps to lift and mirrors adorning the pages so that tiny listeners can admire and make faces at themselves. Just like readers books vary in appearance and type—long short hard soft and everything in between. And who says books must only be read? Some books even help us sing. Best of all you don’t have to buy books: Public libraries offer them for free! Return what you finish then borrow more—as often as you like. What’s a better deal than that? If this book doesn’t turn kids into ardent readers nothing will. Besides the bouncy jubilant verses the energetic illustrations will do the trick brimming with ebullient colors and featuring a cast of spirited readers diverse in terms of both race and age.

Dubbing each a “super-small superhero” the author profiles 20 compact creatures in his main gallery and adds brief cameos for 21 more at the end. Writing informally he brushes in general observations about each one’s habitat diet and distinctive features then points to what makes each a “champion”— the honeybee is a “champion of teamwork” for instance while the reef sea star is a keystone species. For the main set presented in no particular order but ranging from the gopher tortoise to the microscopic and wonderfully durable water bear (aka tardigrade) Jones supplies both an isolated life-size image with labeled parts and a (usually) larger one in a natural setting. Not all of these animals are “cuddly or colorful” as the author notes of the cacao-pollinating chocolate midge but readers who take up his grand invitation to “step into the STADIUM OF THE SMALL” will come away with a deeper appreciation for the often-essential roles many of these mighty mites play in the natural world.

In some ways the author’s childhood was like one long summer at camp—he and his seven siblings were raised on a sprawling 84-acre Community Conservation Corps–built park property his parents bought at the end of the Depression and rehabilitated over the course of the 1940s. The seventh of eight children Antil enjoyed an idyllic upbringing surrounded by the hills and waterfalls of Central New York. Jutting from a nearby cliff that overlooked the property was the eponymous big white rock where the young Antil would sit and think about the world and his life reflecting on events from the eruption of a new war in Korea to a satisfying and profitable day of selling hot dogs with a friend. His childhood was characterized in part by the schemes of his father a commercial bakery owner which included building a bomb shelter to protect the family during the height of the Cold War. (“My father’s plan was that the flat roof of the bomb shelter would serve as a sun deck off the living room as if it would mask the structure’s hidden agenda its fictional purpose of withstanding a hydrogen bomb blast.”) The author who would eventually grow to a height of 6 feet 10 inches tried to resist “the tall fellow’s sport” (“playing basketball would be a charade” he thought “a ridiculous cliche”). Eventually however he was urged onto the court where he played well enough to help his team win a championship his junior year of high school. His senior year saw him switching schools and sleeping on a cot above a partially constructed ice cream parlor in Syracuse—one of his father’s failed business ventures. With humor and a great sense of time and place Antil spins stories of his coming of age in this unlikely setting.

The author has a novelistic sense of detail writing of his family members in a way that makes them seem slightly larger than life: “My father’s entrance coming in the house and into the light of the dining room was as matter-of-fact as a ship’s captain…He offered no formal greeting or smile; he paced about as if the meeting was a necessary interruption to a whirlwind he was riding on.” The narrative is episodic offering short vignettes that range from the incidental to the comic to the unexpectedly poignant. After a fairly jocular story about the “sex talk” he received from his father Antil reveals the significantly more earnest counsel his sisters received which he only learned of years later: “If you get in trouble bring the baby home. We’ll raise it.” Together these anecdotes perhaps don’t amount to quite enough to engage an audience with no connection to the author’s previous books or to the Central New York region. Even so there are many wonderful moments here that capture not only America at mid-century but also an off-beat family whose way of life for better or for worse feels quite remote from the present day.

Emma Moskowitz has a lot going for her—she’s a licensed marriage and family therapist who’s just turned in the first draft of a book on maintaining healthy relationships; she has a successful YouTube channel; she lives in a very nice Los Angeles apartment; and she’s happily planning her wedding to Ryan a man she loves. And yet after a conversation that’s over in "less time than it took to watch a network sitcom" she’s suddenly very single and focused on all the other traits that make her who she is: She’s someone who’s always getting dumped; she has generalized anxiety disorder sensory sensitivity issues and a lack of innate knowledge about social expectations; she hates vegetables and sharing food. What she decides to do next is unexpected: Rather than canceling the wedding she initiates Operation: Save My Date. She determines that she will despite all the initial arguments from her loved ones and online fans find a replacement groom and prove that Western ideals of dating and marriage are not the only ways to establish a loving worthwhile relationship. Her following explodes and she winds up partnering on a podcast that does extremely well which lands her on a very well-known talk show. And along the way she experiences failures embarrassment and successes in her quest.

Jessamine Bricker has a history of succeeding even in the worst of circumstances. When her teen mother opted out of raising her Jess’ Nana Blanche “clipped coupons like a fiend” to pay her tuition at Wren Hill Day School for Young Ladies where blue-collar Jess rubbed elbows with Nashville’s old-money princesses. Jess went on to nurture her upper-class connections at tony Harrow University parlaying them into a three-year stint working for one of the city’s “most feared wedding planners.” Realizing that spoiled young women with more money than sense might crave more than a single day of indulgence she opens Bricker Consultants helping wealthy young men create over-the-top proposals to delight their prospective brides. Working with grooms-to-be when the real clients are of course the brides is a tricky business that Jess handles with exceptional finesse. Still Trenton Tillard IV provides a special challenge. Trenton’s already proposed to Diana Helston but without the spectacle the social media influencer feels her Helston LuxeGram brand deserves. So Diana calls in Jess to guide Trenton into a more appropriate “Will you…?” Diana spirits Jess away to Golden Ash spa for a week of yoga facials and proposal planning. Unfortunately the getaway also includes weird lights in the woods corpses and a police investigation. The silver lining is Golden Ash chef Dean Osbourne and his wonderfully quirky family who offer Jess a tantalizing glimpse of life outside the perils of princess-pleasing.

It’s 2025 and Hannah a frustrated young fusion scientist vacationing in Scotland’s Western Isles is visited by a disfigured young man who was born in a colony on Mars and has come back from the future to help her perfect fusion technology in time to save Earth from runaway climate change and civilizational collapse. Now it’s the 2070s and Hannah’s son Andrew has become one of Scotland’s leading political figures by fighting against billionaire futurists and arguing that society has “the means to save ourselves… if we work together.” Yet his daughter Kenzie is building on her dead grandmother’s unfinished research to construct a fusion reactor for the Tevat Corporation which has given up on the planet and intends to evacuate its Shareholders (wealthy investors corrupt politicians and useful scientists like Kenzie) to Mars. Now it’s 2103 and Kenzie’s son Roban who lives with the painful physical disabilities experienced by the first generation of humans born in the Corporation’s frighteningly totalitarian Colony is learning to function with the assistance of a mechanical exoskeleton—and to gradually distrust the Corporation’s vision for a better future. Can Kenzie build the reactor her grandmother first theorized? Can Andrew convince his daughter to labor toward a better future on Earth rather than off it? Can Andrew’s political career survive Kenzie’s plans to abandon Earth and its people? Can Roban find a way to communicate his mother’s fusion discoveries to his long-dead grandmother before it’s too late? Is “the alteration of the past by the future” even possible? Dancing between decades characters and planets Reed’s latest may lack some of the lyrical beauty that marked his previous two books but it succeeds in brilliantly dramatizing some of the great questions of our time. Can we technologize our way out of the climate crisis or should we instead focus our energies on collaboratively solving the problem with the tools we have? Is Earth our only viable planetary home or can we adequately replicate its richness elsewhere? If the latter who will get to go? And what fate awaits those left behind? And is the future worth living for those who manage to leave?

Narrator Molly Gray may now be head of special events at the five-star Regency Grand Hotel but she and her fiancé Juan Manuel the pastry chef are as cash-strapped as ever; the wedding they are planning is to be a budget affair. Meanwhile the Regency Grand (its geographical location remains unspecified) is hosting an event with the Antiques Roadshow–like reality TV series Hidden Treasures of which Molly and Juan are loyal viewers. After the hotel manager invites the Regency Grand staff to present any collectibles they may have to the show’s hosts before the shoot Molly learns that what she thought was a valueless ornamental egg is a Fabergé prototype worth a bundle. But just as Molly’s egg has been auctioned off at the hotel for $10 million it vanishes from its display case. The novel’s present-day chapters alternate with diary entries addressed to Molly by her now-dead grandmother who gradually tells the story of the egg’s provenance. To arrive at the truth readers have to wade through an awful lot of Gran’s personal history not all of it interesting or surprising and much of which would be more at home in a romance novel than a crime caper. Prose is hoping that fans of the series will inhale Molly’s family history even if it means being served a less fully fleshed present-day mystery and that gamble may well pay off as the book has the series’ customary charms: a stouthearted protagonist who has trouble reading social cues and an elegant anachronistically wholesome setting in which platitudes are considered worthy of not snark but serious reflection.

After his parents fall “on hard times” young Edward Lear (1812-1888) the 20th child in a big family is sent to live with his older siblings. Amid this nurturing environment he explores his creativity while dealing with his “Demon”—chronic epilepsy. By age 20 he’s in high demand throughout England as a talented natural history artist but he feels like an outsider due to his humble origins and his Demon. His work documenting the Earl of Derby’s private collection of animals and his interactions with the earl’s young visitors inspire some of his most famous written works for children. After traveling the world yearning for companionship he settles down with his beloved feline; both would die months apart embodied in a stunning spread with Lear slowly transforming into the titular bird from “The Owl and the Pussycat” as he flies to his grave. Though playful Hill’s lengthy text may find a more receptive audience among adults interested in the history of children’s literature. While young readers will find Lear a sympathetic figure they may not entirely understand his frustration with marriage and relationships (“Such odd couplings could only happen in the world of nonsense”) or his feelings of alienation in restrictive Victorian society. Still Hill’s writing complements Carlin’s ethereal illustrations creating a fanciful world full of wonder and nonsensical imagery.

Three days ago Marin James’ cousin Sam Bullvane died. Sam was her best friend her port in the storm as she grew up in their tiny mountain town with a uninterested father and an absent mother. Though his death was assumed to be an accidental drowning due to an overdose Marin knows Sam was murdered. Now she’s determined to find the culprits and make them pay. Assuming the fake identity of Jamie Vane and enrolling in Huntsworth Preparatory Academy are easier than expected. But ingratiating herself with Sam’s former friends—and murder suspects—proves riskier. Quiet girl Baz Hallward feels like the easiest mark. Henry Wu is all games tinged with danger. And Adrian Hargraves with his perfect face initially wants nothing to do with Marin—and she immediately loathes him. As her investigation deepens she enters a heated entanglement with Henry and Adrian while uncovering their secrets. Mirrors show her supernatural horrors and she’ll have to confront them too if she wants to learn the truth. Marin’s early sleuthing sings with tension but aimless philosophical musings and twists that attentive readers will see coming make it unravel quickly. Overwrought language obscures the escalating danger. Most characters present white; Henry’s surname implies Asian heritage.

Moose’s gift is strength but he hasn’t mastered controlling it—or apologizing for the chaos he leaves in his wake. Shadow the puppies’ feline instructor tells them that today they’ll have to leave the “magical puppy world” behind and locate the rest of the superpup pack who have disappeared—possibly to the human world. Moose leaps through a portal and finds himself in the middle of a fountain. He soon meets his first human Violet who’s stunned to discover he can talk but offers to help him on his quest which involves tracking down a magic ball. Moose and Violet realize that the ball is on exhibit at a local museum but their attempts to extract it strung out over six chapters wear thin. Powell never makes it clear what the magical puppy world is or what dangers the pups are protecting the human world from. Still the titular characters make an entertaining pair with Type A Violet serving as an effective foil for goofball Moose. The pooch’s irrepressible high spirits are endearing; readers will identify with his moments of doubt and his inability to remember the rules that govern the human world. In the perky cartoon illustrations Violet presents East Asian.

Zoe Grossberg always wanted to be a famous pop star—but it was her sister Cassie who had the voice everyone noticed. While Zoe longed for the spotlight though Cassie never wanted to be seen hiding behind her piano and under layers of clothing. Cassie’s voice couldn’t be hidden quite so easily and eventually the sisters were discovered signed to a label and promoted as The Griffin Sisters. In the early 2000s they were as famous as any teen pop star but they only produced one album before breaking up. Twenty years later the sisters don’t speak and have completely different lives. Zoe is a housewife in New Jersey while Cassie is secretly living in Alaska where no one knows she can sing. But when Zoe’s daughter Cherry starts pursuing her own singing career she tries to hunt Cassie down. She discovers more than just Cassie—she uncovers the entire history of the band including the truth behind what happened to Russell D’Angelo the bandmate who came between her mother and aunt. Weiner deftly explores the pop landscape of the early 2000s when public body-shaming was even more prevalent than it is now. Zoe and Cassie are both realistic and flawed characters each with their own challenges. Zoe knows that although she’s the prettier sister she’ll never be talented like Cassie and Cassie struggles with the size of her body and longs to hide from the audience despite her miraculous voice. Theres’s a compelling and dramatic love triangle here too but the true love story is between two sisters and their music.

One spring brown-skinned Annie discovers something new: periodical cicadas. She follows their lives with the help of her great-grandmother grandmother and pregnant mother. Much waiting is involved which frustrates Annie. First holes appear in the ground. Next insects emerge climb trees shed their shells and unfurl their wings. A few days later they begin to sing calling out from the trees. Annie wants to get closer to observe them but she isn’t yet big enough to manage climbing a tree. Still “some things are worth the wait”—a realization the child comes to with the help of her loving family. Seventeen years later she climbs cicada-filled trees with a younger sibling. Bontje’s clear expressive text provides the basic facts about the cicada life cycle supplemented by helpful backmatter that offers a timeline of the insect’s life. Whang’s cozy illustrations include photos of Annie’s great-grandmother grandmother and mother as children helping readers follow along as the story moves back and forth in time and the older family members recall the cicadas of their childhoods. Along the way this multiracial family prepares for the new baby—a narrative device that nicely underscores the theme of the cyclical nature of life.

In City of Glass a traumatized mystery writer finds himself playing detective. He becomes embroiled in a case involving a femme fatale and her deeply troubled husband who had been inhumanely raised by a mad professor in an attempt to rediscover “God’s language.” Ghosts—presented mostly in picture-book format (one large image above a chunk of text) rather than the sequential panels of the other two stories—follows a private investigator who stakes out the apartment of a man who seems to do little other than write and read. As the investigator (named “Blue”—all characters’ names are colors) compiles reports of his mundane observations he comes to question exactly who is observing whom. In The Locked Room a hack writer inherits the literary legacy (and wife and child) of his vanished and exceptional childhood friend attaining a blissful life—until he can’t resist trying to track down the friend who forbids being found on penalty of death. Themes of identity run through the books as do literary references and contemplations on the writerly life—particularly the idea that a writer does not have a life of his own. (“Paul Auster” also appears as a character.) The stories resist easy interpretation but opaque moments like characters’ descents into madness or explanations of complex theories receive rich visualization from the talented trio of artists: Mazzucchelli’s crisp confident lines; Mattotti’s sumptuous shading; and Karasik’s inventive paneling.

Espionage writer Waller’s long narrative begins at the beginning of Frank Wisner’s end: a nervous breakdown culminating in an intervention by three friends in the national security game and a hospitalization for “a complete rest.” Wisner would never quite recover and he ended his own life after leaving the CIA under duress. Interestingly Waller notes the CIA all but expected its field agents to crack up drink heavily and require therapy so it came as no surprise that the agency’s “clandestine service chief was seriously ill.” Wisner had the kind of imagination necessary for his job: He helped set up MKUltra part of a program comprising scores of top-secret projects this one involving dosing human subjects with LSD. Recruited into military intelligence during World War II he saw the work of Soviet intelligence agents up close which converted him to an implacable anti-communist fully committed to the Western cause in the Cold War. This commitment played out in part by Wisner’s insistence on hiring former Nazis to spy in the Soviet occupation zone even as Wisner himself spied on French and British allies discovering among other things that the French were also putting Nazi intelligence veterans to work. After the war Wisner recruited news agencies and film studios to such projects as a conspicuously anti-Stalinist animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Students of modern intelligence and its political discontents will find an odd continuity in the CIA’s being the target of a jealous J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI focused especially on rooting out gay agents while Wisner fell afoul of Joseph McCarthy even as he was spending his hours organizing such things as an “assassination capability” and executing mischief all over the world.

Philip Bell a doctor and his wife Florence live a comfortable middle-class existence in the Northern Ireland capital with their two adult daughters Emma and Audrey and younger son Paul. But in the spring of 1941 they like so many endured the Belfast Blitz a sequence of intensely destructive German bombing attacks that included on one single night the dropping of 100000 incendiary devices. Caldwell uses the Bells’ joint and individual perspectives to depict many facets of these events. Audrey newly engaged to Richard Graham helps a 6-year-old child reunite with her family. Emma a First Aid volunteer survives a close impact but also suffers a terrible loss. Philip is fundamentally shaken by what he witnesses at the hospital. And later among scenes of tremendous destruction with uncounted numbers missing and presumed dead Florence realizes Paul must be evacuated out of the city for his own safety. Around them Caldwell introduces a lesser population of associated characters widening the story’s scope to include black market smugglers children co-workers and more. There’s a documentary quality to this broad fact-driven panorama which lends detail and texture although it also slows the storytelling. Emma (“kind stubborn awkward”) Audrey (“flighty impulsive earnest”) and Florence—haunted by a long-lost love—emerge most strongly their differing perspectives lending emotional depth. The figures around them often seem less fully imagined. Similarly Caldwell creates some moments of piercing self-knowledge or realization for her characters in contrast with other more predictable scenes. But overall her efforts to capture the literally earth-shaking experience of such a violent and terrifying overthrow of normality are effective affecting and achieved with sincerity.

The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to since they hang out underwater and they’re always eating those poor innocent crabs. Soon the narrator introduces readers to Jeff a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are apparently hellbent on world domination the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally at the tail end we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly pairs perfectly with Santat’s art which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).

In a fancy colorful castle a young king named Liam awakens from a dream in which his birthday was ruined—by something starting with the letter P! Liam can’t remember exactly what so he instructs his beleaguered adviser Cedric to rid the kingdom of everything that begins with P. This task seems achievable at first but things soon get out of hand. The pepperoni pizza must go along with the presents not to mention pants and people…even Liam’s sister the princess. Piling everyone into paddle boats and sending them on their way Liam believes all is well sitting in his throne in his…uh-oh—PALACE! Liam too must leave until he comes to a very practical solution all on his own and finds a way to enjoy his birthday just the way he wanted…well almost. In this slight somewhat amusing tale all P words are set in bold. The characters are flat; King Liam doesn’t seem to learn his lesson or evolve. The story is didactic; its sole purpose appears to be teaching children P words. The cartoonish illustrations are dominated by greens yellows and reds bringing to life a kingdom apparently plentiful with P-related vocabulary—piranhas in the moat the royal goat (named Percival) housed outside the castle. Liam and Cedric are light-skinned; other characters are diverse.