After a quartet of 4-year-olds built a block tower together at a Drag Queen Story Hour during Provincetown’s Family Week their parents—an interracial interfaith (Asian/white and Jewish) lesbian couple an interracial interfaith (Black/white and Jewish) gay couple and a single lesbian mother (presumed white)—all decided to vacation together henceforth. But this Family Week they’re bringing more emotional baggage than luggage. Milo (who’s academically gifted as well as trans) and his twin sister Lina are struggling with Milo’s upcoming departure for a fancy boarding school. Avery is heartbroken over her fathers’ impending divorce and the forthcoming baby sibling (Daddy’s new female partner is pregnant). Meanwhile Mac who’s been attending summer school to avoid repeating seventh grade is just trying to figure out what he’s good at especially in comparison to the gifted and people-pleasing Milo. With each weekday forming its own chapter this short book packs in a lot and relies on overwhelmingly long sentences; as a result the characters conflicts and emotions end up feeling rushed and underexplored. The breathless pace also means that each family feels more like a rough sketch rather than fully fleshed-out individuals. Milo and Lina are biracial (Asian and white) Avery’s biracial (Black and white) and Mac presents white.

While housesitting for her grandmother young Willow has been dealing with some of the grosser items on her to-do list like shoveling manure. She’d rather invite a friend over for a sleepover but her pal Sam Squirrel (introduced in the series opener) is tied up with school. But before Willow can start cleaning the chicken coop the birds erupt into chaos with the appearance of a rude queen bee who loves stealing other people’s homes. The only known beekeeper in the Quiet Woods is an allegedly fearsome stink badger. Determined to solve her own problems without calling in Mother Nature Willow sets out to find the stink badger and oust the queen and her swarm from the coop before it’s too late. Her journey is gently amusing as she discovers strengths (like a gift for songwriting) confronts weaknesses (her practically nonexistent sense of direction) and figures out ways to resolve conflicts. Finally when everyone else is too afraid Willow must ignore (literal) warning signs to ask for expert help. Along the way she makes a misunderstood friend. Though older readers may find the story’s resolution a bit predictable all will enjoy getting to know the charmingly self-aware Willow as Selfors drops in a few hints about her backstory. Spotlight illustrations showcase adorably anthropomorphized animals. Willow is depicted with paper-white skin and described as having silver hair.

Best friends since kindergarten Maya Delaney and Plum Kenner are both 16 and daughters of single moms. Plum’s dad Ross is a world-famous rock star; Maya’s most definitely isn’t that glamorous. Maya has rarely seen her father since he left when she was 12 and Ross occasionally flies Plum to visit him in Berlin. When his band arrives in Toronto to record an album Ross tells Plum to bring Maya along to dinners with his entourage on successive nights. It’s a heady experience—the fans lining the sidewalk phones out angling for a glimpse of Ross. Maya enjoys the lavish restaurant setting abundant prosecco and Ross’ flattering attention until when he’s seeing her home in his limo he kisses her. Initially thrilled then alarmed Maya draws back but lets him walk her to her door and steady her when she trips. When a photo capturing that moment of contact circulates on social media before she can explain to Plum Maya feels desperate. Is Ross a predator or merely irresponsible? Sorting out what happened how she feels and what to do will take time. The straightforward syntax compelling topic and appealing relatable characters make this a strong choice for reluctant readers. Maya and Ross present white and a reference to Plum’s Indonesian grandmother cues her as biracial.

Amane is still a child when she learns the disturbing truth that her mother became pregnant with her through sexual intercourse with her father. In Amane’s Japan technological advances designed to “produce lots of children for the war effort” have replaced traditional modes of conception; sex in general is considered to be old-fashioned and sex between husband and wife is seen as incest. In fact many of Amane’s contemporaries find the idea of partnered sexual gratification so foreign that they are increasingly asexual forging romantic attachments solely with anime characters. Amane a rare woman who insists on sex creates a division between the romantic life she enjoys with both real-life boyfriends and the 40 characters she loves and the sexless family life she’s built with her husband Saku; this works well until Amane’s mid-30s. In the throes of a difficult love affair of his own her husband decides to move to Experiment City a government-run enclave where the last vestiges of the “family system” are being eradicated in favor of algorithm-controlled breeding. In spite of her doubts Amane joins him in the name of “the religion of family” but she can’t help but bring her belief in the physical union of two bodies along with her. The novel’s frank exploration of desire from the perspective of an entire civilization of naïfs exposes some base-level assumptions about the part sexual reproduction plays in society. Unfortunately the naïveté of the main characters seems to imprint on the novel itself with the result that even the most potentially incendiary elements of this new world order are explored with neither nuance nor depth. The characters remain suspended in a kind of enforced adolescence—unable to either grow from worldly experience or totally abandon their society’s inherited structures and forge something new.

From the beginning of Geye’s novel it’s clear that the marriage of Willa and Theodulf Sauer is deeply flawed. The year is 1910 and Theodulf has recently taken a position as the keeper of a new lighthouse overlooking Lake Superior. He takes his job very seriously at one point telling Willa “My responsibilities are first to God then to the Lighthouse Service then to you.” Willa a scientifically minded woman with a penchant for the piano is frustrated by her husband’s beliefs and his controlling tendencies. Late in the book she reflects on how they came to marry pondering that “it was less a courtship than a mugging.” When she meets a girl named Silje and her uncle Mats Willa finds people with whom she can be more herself; eventually she and Mats begin an affair. In a series of flashbacks to 1900 and 1905 Geye recounts an earlier encounter between Theodulf and Willa as well as a trip to Paris when Theodulf met a man for whom he continues to pine years after they parted. The death of Theodulf’s father provides another shift in this book’s interpersonal dynamics: “How was it that not a single emotion coursed through him save a slight peevishness at needing to leave his post?” Both halves of the unhappy couple demonstrate different sides in conversations with their respective mothers and Geye illustrates his characters’ contradictory aspects well. There’s also an impressive attention to detail and some knowing humor as when one character says “Fathers and sons the Russians write novels about them.” This isn’t an epic Russian novel but it might be a Minnesotan take on one.

“Who were these two people?” asks Griffon Keming the protagonist of Fellman’s fourth book set centuries into the future. “Who were these two people? Revolutionaries or half-revolutionaries. Survivors or half-survivors. They spoke a language that was half one thing and half another and they had spent half their lives together.” Griffon a transgender man is writing about his parents Etoine and Zaffre Zipporah Keming who are also transgender and who took Griffon in when he was younger and fleeing his abusive father. Griffon’s parents have died and he has resolved to discover more about them; the novel switches perspective between Griffon and Etoine the latter through diary entries that he wrote partly while in prison for allegedly trying to overthrow the ruler of the city-state of Stephensport where he and Zaffre lived when they were younger before moving to New York. Etoine’s diary reveals his longtime friendship with Zaffre and their roles in the city-state’s revolution movement while Griffon reflects on his childhood growing up as closeted and trans: “In fact through my whole adolescence I stayed a little girl….Everybody liked me this way and I proceeded invisibly through the world.” Fellman’s worldbuilding is subtle but beautifully done; he captures the essence of a future New York that is covered in canals and also brings Stephensport to life. His dialogue sparkles particularly in sections featuring Etoine and Zaffre bantering and bickering and others where they tenderly reassure a young Griffon. Most notably though Fellman paints a tender portrait of Griffon and his journey to coming out as trans which he handles with real compassion and insight. This beautifully written self-assured novel is a major accomplishment.

The child dances onto the school bus invents a beach-cleanup tool writes poetry and explores a range of other activities with smiling confidence. The young narrator has yet to master each skill but no matter—this little one is eager to grow practice try and create. Written in four-line stanzas the rhymes scan consistently with an energetic singsong rhythm perfect for storytime. Readers’ voices will build in speed as they race through descriptions of the child’s passions: “With stickers scissors cardboard cotton / pom-poms paper glue. / deconstruct and re-create; / imagine something new.” The meter changes at the end of each segment though as readers must slow down to consider the future: “The galleries don’t know me…yet. / (Perhaps one day. We’ll see!) / But still I know no matter what I will always be… // an artist!” In each instance the child’s identity is clearly separate from the occupation in question: The protagonist is a dancer inventor artist scientist writer athlete and baker because these skills bring joy and joy is worth cultivating regardless of the child’s professional future. Featuring a combination of ink drawing and photo collage Bell’s digital illustrations capture the narrator’s exuberance; the full-bleed spreads brim with motion texture and excitement. The protagonist has chin-length black hair and tan skin; background characters are diverse.

This comprehensive catalog of a major exhibition of Thiebaud (1920-2021) at the Museum of Fine Arts San Francisco gathers four essays a bibliography of publications by and about Thiebaud and an appendix of notes from Thiebaud’s lessons in figure drawing. Contributors include Timothy Anglin Burgard the museum’s senior curator; Rachel Teagle founding director of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California Davis; Eve Aschheim Thiebaud’s teaching assistant from 1985 to 1987; and Burgard’s colleague Lauren Palmor associate curator of American art. Both Burgard and Palmor address Thiebaud’s self-proclaimed penchant for appropriating and reinterpreting other artists—even his students. “I see myself as a total thief” he once boasted. Yet Burgard notes although he freely admitted that he was influenced by others’ work (“I feed on it” he remarked) among his prolific output—up to 100 works each year for 70 years—only a small percentage are appropriations; all reflect the capaciousness of his artistic interests. Although he spent most of his life in Sacramento in 1956-57 Thiebaud took a year’s sabbatical in New York with the goal of meeting leading figures of abstract expressionism and he came away impressed by those artists’ engagement with European and American art traditions. At UC Davis where he was a professor from 1960 to 1991 he taught painting drawing and art theory and criticism. Even after he retired at age 70 he returned to teach his lecture course and to offer private lessons in his studio almost until his death at age 101. Teagle and Aschheim drawing on interviews with his former students portray a vibrant provocative teacher who brought to his classes and his work a broad knowledge of art history and an energetic spirit of invention.

Kate was 14 and Maggie was only 11 when the Fox family heard mysterious rapping sounds in the cottage they’d just moved into in rural New York state in 1847. A neighbor believed the sounds were emanating from an “injured spirit.” Maggie and Kate along with Leah their much older married sister became known as the Rochester rappers mediums who could speak to the dead by asking questions and translating their raps for clients. The sisters made an independent income by holding séances creating the foundation for Modern Spiritualism. Against a backdrop of social upheaval—Christian revivals cholera abolitionism the Civil War and Reconstruction—the Fox sisters practiced their trade despite facing religious and personal criticism skepticism from those who exposed frauds financial crises and alcoholism. The work highlights several famous believers including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Todd Lincoln. In this meticulously researched work Rosenstock effectively and objectively presents historical facts alongside primary sources—journal entries letters newspaper clippings photos—as she explores whether the Foxes truly experienced supernatural phenomena or whether it was a hoax all along. She also excels at integrating the larger social and historical context in which Spiritualism rose to prominence drawing clear connections between the facts presented.

In this accessibly written story that centers on the emotional costs of trying to take on too much responsibility Charlie Abbott is thrown into a panic when her father vanishes—and she realizes he’s stopped taking his medications. Following his trail leads Charlie from Toronto to a campsite deep in the woods while at the same time plunging her into a perfect storm of conflicting feelings. She’s reluctantly forced to call on both Lachlan Tomic her crush from school and her mom who’d given up on and left Charlie’s dad for help. She also discovers that both of her divorced parents have been keeping shocking secrets from her. Charlie’s frantic search for clues to where Dad might have gone culminates in a canoe trip that’s marked by mishaps and that parallels an inner journey that leaves her ready by the time the neat resolution arrives to make changes in her life that turn out to leave her her mother and even her father happier. Beam leaves readers with food for thought about the roles they should—and perhaps should not—be expected to take within their families. He concludes with teen helplines in the U.S. and Canada. Main characters are cued white.

In London’s post–WWI Jewish East End shopkeeper’s wife Bea minds her business. While her best friend CeeCee is organizing rent strikes and demonstrating against fascists she’s more concerned with the unwanted advances of her husband’s pompous friend Haich and with the angel who appears to her periodically bringing with it “a feeling of vague irritation and a strong flavor of peace.” She records these otherworldly incursions in a thin red notebook picked up three generations later by her great-granddaughter Kay a temp worker who stumbles perpetually hungover through present-day London’s queer nightlife with her friends El and Cue. Kay sleeps in Cue’s bed and attends El’s experimental drag shows but she doesn’t tell her compatriots about the time travelers she has imagined visiting her since childhood or her fixation on her great-grandmother’s diary. In a future London laid bare by mass poverty and climate collapse Ess lives on the “unloved outskirts of the city” gardening for a newly established branch of the Network a left-aligned collective that her mother calls a cult. In accordance with the beliefs of the “Basin” that the world is in its “Last Human Chapter” Ess has been voluntarily sterilized. While organizing the papers of her mother’s friend Mr. J she comes across Bea’s notebook passed down from Mr. J’s own great-grandparents and now faded to pink. She receives an invitation from another branch of the Network who believe that through Ess’ circuitous connection to Kay’s London they can—and are in fact morally obliged to—help her travel backward in time. Dunnett’s languorous prose evokes the beauty and unease of a slow-dying world. Kay sprints to the supermarket under a “blue hard dusk”; Ess pulls up an unremarkable stone with “a tart metallic look to it that made her think of the inside of a very rare steak.” These passages often overpower the diaphanous narrators that deliver them. Bea Ess and Kay are oddly dissociated from their interpersonal relationships and as ambassadors of their time periods they read as all but interchangeable. The meditations that move through them—on reproduction queer kinship climate grief and the permeability of time—are nevertheless profound.

In this debut book Stefanou draws on his work advising clients and his personal experience of helping his immigrant father to manage his finances in his later years. It offers readers a roadmap to investing responsibly managing tax obligations and using accumulated wealth for charitable or legacy purposes. The book’s title refers to the wealth of its target audience—people who have accumulated more than $1 million in investable assets often concentrated in retirement accounts. The book guides readers on how to invest that wealth to preserve and maximize its value as well as how to spend it responsibly and enjoyably and pass it down to one’s heirs. Stefanou covers some familiar topics such as how to balance growth and risk over the lifetime of a portfolio minimize tax liability through legal means and manage spending during retirement. The book also dedicates a chapter to the needs of business owners arguing that they should diversify their investments beyond their own enterprises and recommending exit planning well in advance of retirement for a smooth sale or transition. Other chapters address less concrete aspects of financial planning such as assessing personal and ethical values deciding how to get the most enjoyment out of spending one’s available money and anticipating and mitigating conflicts among heirs. Stefanou also advises readers on how to avoid financial scams and find a capable financial adviser. Each chapter concludes with “SWIM [Stefanou Wealth and Investment Management] Lessons” combinations of summary and workbook exercises that guide readers through taking action on the topics covered.

The book provides a solid base of information and it’s enhanced by the many anonymized stories that Stefanou shares from his clients’ adventures in saving investing and bequeathing inheritances. For instance he explains the steps that he took to help a young man with a low salary minimize his income tax exposure. However what makes the book unique is Stefanou’s inclusion of stories about his father a Greek immigrant who lived frugally while working low-wage jobs and acquired enough capital to buy a rental property; he ended up with a portfolio worth more than $1 million while continuing to work long hours into his later years. The author explains that the penny-pinching habits his dad practiced out of necessity were hard to shake when his financial situation was less precarious and he takes readers through instances when he coached his father into occasionally spending some of his money. For instance Stefanou encouraged his father to hire a builder to replace his porch instead of doing it himself. “It was a fear of embracing and utilizing wealth because he felt like he needed permission to spend or else he was squandering money” the author explains and it took the combined effort of himself and his sister to help their father to overcome it. Such insights set this book apart from others in the genre. Throughout Stefanou writes with empathy for his readers while offering advice that will guide them to responsible financial behavior.

The Evans women have long operated the only funeral parlor in their small Texas town. Now there are only two of them left to carry on the tradition of protecting the town from the restless dead—Lenore and her late daughter Grace’s teenage daughter Luna. Not even including missing pets many locals have mysteriously died or vanished over the years including Lenore’s mother Ducey. Now that the sheriff has also become a victim Undersheriff Roger Taylor blames everything on attacks by a rabid “ghost wolf” a coyote–red wolf hybrid seen in the area. Lenore who knows the deaths have been caused by a strigoi—a troubled spirit—goes along with the tale of ghost wolves but Luna who’s the offspring of Grace and a monster may be the key to finding the killer. Taylor who loved Grace does everything he can to protect Luna as she and her boyfriend Crane frantically research every possible mention of strigoi. As the reporters covering the story and the townspeople grow skeptical of the ghost wolves theory Taylor struggles to hide the gory details of the deaths and Lenore hires an outsider to help make the corpses look a bit more normal. When a farmer finds his prize heifer slaughtered and partially devoured a wolf expert from the local university shows up to examine the carcass and wonders why the animal’s teeth are missing since the canines don’t eat teeth. The horrifying deaths continue as the Evans women struggle to find a solution.

In this informative overview of speech writing and delivery Nielsen focuses his attention on applying oratory skills to address climate change. The nine chapters address key concepts including rhetoric and persuasion the role of emotion framing your worldview building connections motivating people and thematic consistency in messaging. The author informs readers about other important considerations including maximizing your digital impact the power of word choice and understanding what types of messages increase polarization. The book’s central purpose—helping readers inspire others to act in support of climate justice—is supported through topics and methods that build momentum and help overcome barriers like “scale mismatch” that are clearly explained. Accounts of and quotes from diverse speakers and influencers in history illustrate skilled communication techniques and provide a balanced integration of theory and practice. The outcome is a sturdy lesson on crafting the bones of a personal story to fuel direct sustained engagement. Addressing the need to move from climate anxiety and silence to action Nielsen guides readers to strategies that are sure to appeal to a generation of wordsmiths and movement-makers. This thorough well-written work will be invaluable for classrooms and debate teams as well as young activists seeking guidance.

Liam feels like a lion. He loves to stretch and roar. But sometimes he also likes to bite. Readers follow Liam throughout his day as he navigates temptations. At school frustrated when a friend plays with his favorite blue train he pounces. Dad who’s here to drop Liam off steps in: “I heard your angry sounds Liam. Friends are not for biting. When we get upset we can try taking belly breaths or asking for help.” Later when the classroom gets so loud it makes Liam’s “teeth buzz” his teacher suggests he visit the calming space and eventually Liam internalizes the titular message. Allen focuses less on Liam’s biting and more on the motivations behind his actions. Many kids will recognize themselves in the protagonist but the message-heavy narrative feels more like a tool for parents and those working with children than a story youngsters will clamor for. In an appended note Allen provides useful strategies for understanding and redirecting biting. Tan-skinned Liam is illustrated with a hint of leonine features: He has a mane of wild brown hair wears a hoodie with ears and has sharp incisors that come out when his lion tendencies are the strongest. His classroom is diverse.

Steven is now over 50. His modest career as an academic has plateaued and his marriage has gone stale in large part due to his emotional withdrawal a lifelong pattern he recognizes. Now he and his wife have separated—“taking a break” is her preferred term—and he decides that to grope his way through this limbo he’ll need to do the long-avoided work of excavating what happened back in 1984 when he was 12 and his father a talented scholar and popular teacher disappeared abruptly and permanently from Steven’s life after a negative tenure decision that came during a spectacular public crackup. As Steven drives northward in California toward Berkeley and his young son and estranged wife he stops off to interview his father’s brother and several former colleagues. Steven’s twofold goal is to learn more about the context and the causes of his father’s flameout—the onset of paranoid schizophrenia a near-compulsive tendency toward self-sabotage and a conspicuous affair with a male colleague with whom for a time the father cohabited in a backyard cabana—and simultaneously to reflect on his own awkwardness and uncertainty back then as a kid on the cusp of adolescence whose parents were suffering. Steven is aware and we become ever more so of the ways his own life and troubles have rhymed with his father’s and figuring out those stubborn intricate connections is the goal; he is searching not for the missing father (if he’s still alive) but for the insight (to be found in the imagined life that emerges from memory and notebooks and interviews) that might help get Steven unstuck.

The family has moved away from Vancouver British Columbia to start over on a farm. Jed who has an unnamed intellectual disability is thriving; he enjoys and is highly skilled at farmwork. But Poppy isn’t convinced. She dreams of traveling the world and teaching English and worries their fresh start might not have been entirely wise. But wildfires pose a more pressing concern. When their father volunteers to help fight a fire Jed and Poppy are left on their own as the flames bear down on the farm. This simply told breakneck story focuses on Poppy and Jed’s struggle to make their way to safety. While depth of characterization is sacrificed in favor of plot the action is compelling. The siblings race against time to save their animals face natural destruction and devastation and are forced to rely on their trust in each other. The damage the fire wreaks on their community in an era of climate change is topical and dramatic but not overwrought in its presentation. Jed is competent and resourceful able to hold his own on their journey and support Poppy. However he’s framed entirely through narrator Poppy’s first-person perspective and often described via his struggles and symptoms. The characters are racially indeterminate.

Readers are instructed to flick a switch on the opening page literally shedding light on an unseen narrator’s collection of neatly displayed “small things” including a puzzle piece a snail a paper clip and a button. Woollvin’s fetchingly stencil-like glowing graphics imbue most objects even inanimate ones with lively eyes as in her Little Red (2016). Next up is a collection of “BIG things”—an elephant a whale and a car—spilling off the page. Quick help the narrator “squash them back in!” Whew! The narrator shows off a collection of “pointy things” and then one of “prickly things” (“Expert collectors know the difference”) followed by a “most exciting” collection of rocks. Every page invites reader participation: Kids are asked to blow away cobwebs grab an errant spider sniff the pungent offerings in the “stinky collection” and sort a variety of especially delicate objects (“Gently does it!”). Uh-oh: You dropped the narrator’s teapot! But don’t worry; it soon finds a new home in the collection of broken things. And hey there’s that spider! Readers successfully corral it and the narrator adds it to a “many-legs” collection labeled “DO NOT LET US OUT.” The last page encourages youngsters to become collectors themselves but they won’t need much convincing; Woollvin’s quirky conversational text and artwork will have already persuaded them to follow suit.

Lionel a Black 16-year-old has always admired his grandpa’s drive athleticism and ambition—and he’s acutely aware that by comparison he and his dad don’t “measure up.” When a fire breaks out while he’s at a local pet store Lionel finally has the chance to be seen as a hero. Leaked video footage seems to show him saving the life of another customer. The only problem is that Lionel doesn’t actually remember these events. Nevertheless he leans into the narrative and quickly finds himself at the center of a whirlwind of interviews extra attention at school (including admiration from his crush Josefina Ramos) and viral stardom. But when a mystery witness calls his heroics into question Lionel’s newfound fame is threatened. Wasson explores hypermasculinity and unhealthy intergenerational dynamics among men and boys as Lionel works through what it means to be a hero both on and off screen and while people who knew his grandfather paint a picture that challenges his hero worship. The book’s initially slow pace later ramps up significantly and Lionel reflects on challenging issues that will spark recognition from many readers.

The flight from New York to Puerto Vallarta Mexico is a long one but Evan and little brother Andy need time to brace themselves for their roles as the ring bearers in the upcoming wedding of their Tío Welly and their new tío Ross. After they land in Mexico where the air feels “thick and humid and smell[s] like sweet flowers” Mami and Papi explain their wedding-day duties: The brothers will walk down the aisle to present the rings to their uncles…in front of everyone! After the boys find a safe place to store the rings they dance the night away at the pre-wedding party. They meet their tíos’ guests including confident pint-size flower girl Drew (a child version of Barrymore who was the flower girl at the authors’ actual ceremony and who penned the book’s foreword). That night bad dreams about the big day plague the brothers. Will Evan and Andy step up for their beloved tíos? The authors serve up pure comfort combining coziness with low-stakes antics. Though the wordy narrative is a tad overwrought in spots the focus on familia stands out in the end. Doyle’s pencil-etched digital illustrations flash bright colors and smiling faces amid a tropical paradise. Mami and Tío Welly are Dominican while Tío Ross reads white.