Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
The Gray by Chris Barron (Feiwel & Friends, June 2023) tells the story of a young teenager with anxiety that experiences panic attacks. During his forced device-free vacation in the country with his aunt, Sasha finds his own confidence. His trip into the country becomes one of self-discovery as he makes new friends and faces
Front Desk by Kelly Yang (Scholastic, 2018) is a story about a family of immigrants from China who are trying to achieve the American dream, but they haven’t been having much success. In this first novel of a middle-grade series, Mia begins to see just how she can help her family with her skills and
The One and Only Ruby by Katherine Applegate (HarperCollins, May 2023) is the third in the series that started with The One and Only Ivan (based on a true story) and continue with The One and Only Bob. (My kids and I listened to the audio of Bob last year, fantastically narrated by Danny DeVito,
A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner (Aladdin, May 2023) is a middle-grade novel in poetry about an overweight boy struggling with bullying, his weight, and a growing eating disorder. Told in first person and accompanied by emotional sketches, A Work in Progress shares the spare thoughts of a sixth-grade boy who has struggled with
Riding an ostrich? It’s a long shot, but Suzy Bowles hopes that’s her key to finally leaving her small Michigan town in Long Road to the Circus by Betsy Bird (Knopf, 2021). Her story entails a one-of-a-kind summer in the 1920s in this historical fiction novel for young readers. Long Road to the Circus is
Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin (Sourcebooks, 2018) is a graphic novel that illustrates the fictional story of two orphaned brothers traveling illegally from their home in Ghana to Europe, hoping to reunite with their sister, who illegally traveled the same route years before. On their journey, they face robbers and homelessness as they
In the middle-grade novel Indigo and Ida by Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books, April 2023), teenager Indigo Fitzgerald discovers a biography (with loose personal letters) about the nineteenth-century investigative writer Ida B. Wells. As she reads of Ida’s reporting on frequent lynchings in the South during the post-Reconstruction era, Indigo is inspired to focus her
You Are Here: Connecting Flights, edited by Ellen Oh (Allida, March 2023), is a collection of related short stories by a variety of Asian-American authors that captures the Asian-American experience by telling the stories of 12 different children waiting in an airport for their flights. By tying the children’s stories together, Oh has created a
The Turtle of Michigan by Naomi Shihab Nye (Greenwillow Books, 2022) picks up right where the The Turtle of Oman ends, as young Aref sits on an airplane to head to the United States from Oman. In The Turtle of Oman (reviewed here), Aref had spent a week with his grandpa, coming to terms with
Can you imagine a Harry Potter-type boarding school set in the Rocky Mountains and using the musical instruments to provide magical power instead of boring old wands? The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury (Clarion Books, 2020; Audible Studios) does just that. Amelia’s life’s dream has been to attend the same musicraft school as
Lina, the main character in Finally Seen by Kelly Yang (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, February 2023) has grown up with her grandmother in China, while her young sister and parents have spent the last years living in California without her. Now it is her chance to move to the United States to
It is not often that I find a book that takes place in the Middle East, let alone a children’s book. The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye (Greenwillow, 2014) is a unique look into not just the culture and traditions of living in a different country but also the sweet geographic feature and
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