PICTURE BOOK
The Boy Who Became a Parrot
by Wolverton Hill; illustrated by Laura Carlin
In this joy of a book, Hill tells the story of Edward Lear’s life with a playfulness that echoes his subject’s own writings. Carlin’s seamless mix of illustrations and sketchy doodles, her art and Lear’s, is not only exquisite but as exuberantly clever and goofy as the nonsense king himself.
Picture book
Island Storm
by Brian Floca; illustrated by Sydney Smith
Floca and Smith present the glory of shared sibling adventure: A brother and sister walk down to the seashore to watch the advent of a stupendous summer storm. “We stand there just to feel it all, wind, stone, wave, water! And then we ask, is this enough, or do we try for more? You pull on me, I pull on you, and we decide to go on.” Captivated, readers will “go on” right alongside them.
picture book
Make New Friends
by Joshua David Stein; illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio
Stein explores an old subject through a fresh lens via a story that’s honest, silly and tender all at once. Tomasso is the new kid in school. His caring, hands-on dad keeps asking if he’s made any friends. Alone on the playground one day, Tomasso draws faces on two deflated balls, and over the next few weeks he crafts a slew of other companions from castoff objects. This lifts his spirits, and allows him to tell his dad that, yes, he has indeed made friends. But when his father proposes he invite his pals to dinner, Tomasso is forced to bring his creations to the table.
picture book
Zip Zap Wickety Wack
by Matthew Diffee
This book feels like a throwback, with its barnyard setting and timeless illustrations. At the start, two farm animals introduce their sounds: “The cow says, ‘Moo.’ The horse says, ‘Neigh.’” But then we’re confronted with a problem, and the delightfully deadpan entertainment begins, as the New Yorker cartoonist Diffee disrupts our expectations in stunning and hilarious ways.
MIDDLE GRADE
Earthrise
by Leonard S. Marcus
Marcus brings to today’s readers the same sense of wonder and discovery that young people experienced in 1968 when they saw the snapshot the Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders took of Earth while in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve. For a brief moment in time, Marcus reminds us, an image of our delicate blue-and-white marbled planet emerging out of the darkness radically shifted our perspective, enabling us to see the fragile beauty of humankind’s home and the critical importance of joining together to protect it.
middle grade
Malcolm Lives!
by Ibram X. Kendi
In this vital, brilliant rendering of the story of Malcolm X (who would have been 100 this year), Kendi adjusts his voice slightly for a middle grade audience — he writes here the way Malcolm spoke, with a piercing clarity. Kendi embraces Malcolm in all his messy complexity, showing young readers an evolution of humanity and political philosophy that many adults still fail to appreciate.
Middle grade
Oasis
by Guojing
It’s rare to find a book so thought-provoking and haunting that also feels like it’s welcoming the reader with a warm hug. This graphic novel, about a big sister and little brother left to forage for sustenance in a postapocalyptic desert, does just that. Guojing’s softly shaded pencil illustrations of the round-faced kids bring unusual comfort to a harsh landscape, while her oddly uplifting story lets readers see how the children’s once-desolate home becomes its own oasis of nurturing, where an unconventional and beautiful family blooms.
middle grade
A Sea of Lemon Trees
by María Dolores Águila
While this novel in verse about the first U.S. case in which school segregation was deemed illegal (paving the way for Brown v. Board of Ed) is meticulously researched, it is Águila’s gorgeous language and deeply human depiction of Roberto Alvarez, the Mexican American boy who was the case’s lead plaintiff, that set it apart from other historical works for young people.
Middle grade
The Teacher of Nomad Land
by Daniel Nayeri
The setting — mountains, brush and beleaguered cities, during the 1941 Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran — is vivid and gritty. The three main characters — a pair of orphaned siblings and the Jewish boy they meet as he flees a Nazi — are so authentic you can hear their breath when they speak. But the glory of this novel is the way it reaches across cultures and time to find an essential truth: “What we want others to know, we must teach them.”
Middle grade
A World Without Summer
by Nicholas Day; illustrated by Yas Imamura
Day — who excels at pointing out connections, ironies and paradoxes to young readers — skillfully presents the hard science behind the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. The event led not only to darkness and famine on the other side of the globe, but also to explosive thunderstorms over Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where Mary Shelley caught the spark of an idea and began writing “Frankenstein,” the perfect artifact for the era.
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