Ojibwe teen Ezra Cloud hates his Northeast Minneapolis home; he’s tired of the bullying he endures from his peers regarding his heritage (“White people didn’t have to live that kind of fear,” Ezra thinks). He much prefers the surroundings of Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation, his reservation on the other side of the U.S.-Canada border. The taunting becomes more personal for Ezra when bully Matt torments Ezra’s Ojibwe friend. That night, Matt’s father and uncle die in a house fire, and Ezra is the prime suspect. To escape police suspicion, Ezra’s father sends him to Nigigoonsiminikaaning, where he will work the winter trapline with his grandfather. While navigating the snowy wilderness, he learns about the animals of the area, as well as his grandfather’s past. He also struggles with unresolved anger at his father over his mother’s death while working at a dangerous lumber company. This leisurely paced novel by Ojibwe author Treuer (Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask, for adults) contains immersive detail about trapping methods as well as Indigenous tales about the natural world, making for an intriguing if meandering adventure. Ages 12–up. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Following his parents’ deaths in 1881, 14-year-old Henry is ready to do whatever it takes to keep him and his younger brothers together on the family farm. Henry strikes a deal with local sheriff Quigley: if Henry can use his writing talents to get rid of outlaws, the sheriff won’t report his parents’ deaths to the state. And so begin the tales of the Kid, whose stories Henry sells to editor Herbert at Gunslinger magazine to keep him and his siblings afloat and evildoers away from his Destiny, Colo., hometown. Soon, the Kid becomes the most legendary gunslinger to ever drink sarsaparilla. His visage graces the cover of every magazine because stories of his adventures make the big bucks. Everything is going according to plan until outlaw Snake-Eye Sam escapes from Arkansas State Penitentiary and vows to kill the Kid to prove that he’s the “fastest gun in the West.” Debut author Schill employs the high-octane setting of the Wild West to levy harsh depictions of the realities of Henry’s everyday caring for his brothers. The Kid’s adventures are woven throughout alongside Henry, Herbert, and Snake-Eye Sam’s atmospheric third-person perspectives. Major characters cue as white. Ages 10–up. (May)

Correction: This review has been updated to reflect that this work is the creator's debut.

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Opening in Kabul with young Zia eagerly anticipating a kite competition between himself, his friends, and a group of unbeatable kite runners, Qayumi’s debut descends quickly into tragedy, one heartbreaking incident at a time. First, Zia’s father is inexplicably taken by soldiers, leaving Zia to become “the man” for his mother and all the neighborhood widows. Soon after, an explosion leaves the village without electricity. His mother no longer allows Zia to attend school, and when the Taliban forbids women and girls to be seen outdoors, she opens her own underground school. Told in Zia’s matter-of-fact voice, the story traces the dangers he and his mother endure as life in Kabul becomes unsustainable. They eventually flee Kabul and take refuge in Pakistan, where Zia unknowingly finds himself being groomed by the Taliban. A lack of historical and political context throughout raises many questions; information provided via back matter, rendered in sophisticated language, could result in further perplexity. Still, this plainspoken tale, based on the author’s experiences with her son, is an important one for readers of all ages. Shaded b&w art by Kazemi (Love Is in the Bear) accentuates the narrative’s bleak and threatening ambiance. Ages 9–12. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

According to 10-year-old Ellie, “Down Syndrome is my Superpower!” She even sports the slogan in glittery letters across her lucky T-shirt, which she pairs with an extra sparkly ring to help remind her “how extra cool she is.” Assistance from her speech and physical therapists as well as encouragement from her older brother, Ben, help Ellie navigate difficulties pronouncing certain words and physical challenges relating to climbing. But when Ben befriends new neighbor Sara, Ellie worries that she’s losing him. Her concerns are exacerbated by her best friend Ling, who claims that Sara wants to marry Ben and move to Hawaii, leaving Ellie behind for good. While Ellie’s attempts to sabotage Sara and Ben’s friendship lead to heartache on her end, support from her loving community bolsters Ellie as she works to unravel her complicated feelings and repair her sibling bond. Characters with varying disabilities—such as a tween who “was like most kids, just with less words mixed in”—are sensitively and organically portrayed by educator Seabolt in this wholesome slice-of-life debut, a series launch. Facts about Down syndrome conclude. Character interactions are rendered via grayscale illustrations by Rogers (Mara Hears in Style). Ages 7–11. (May)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

A grandchild, Kamau, and grandmother, ZuZu, find themselves suddenly on the moon with no means of returning home in this mysterious intergenerational tale from Girmay (What Do You Know?) and Ejaita (A Day in the Sun). While Kamau doesn’t miss a place he can’t remember, ZuZu does, and she begins planting in the moon’s crust in order to create a new home from what she has. A kernel of corn and a clothespin, a photograph of her mother, and a square of cloth turn into flora and fauna, a starry quilt, and “a wide and silent kite.” As Kamau grows older, ZuZu’s tears seed a well for drinking water, and the duo’s family continues to search frantically for them. The relations eventually find a way to communicate, but it’s still difficult for Kamau to envision where he’s from, and ZuZu does the work of both offering their previous home’s history and marveling at Kamau’s moon life. Saturated hues and printmaking textures create shape-based images of both realms in this diasporic look at honoring legacy while finding “a way to live, as people do.” Kamau and ZuZu’s skin reflects some pages’ black background; other characters are portrayed with various fantastical skin tones. Ages 6–9. (May)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ponti (Blaze and the Castle Cake for Bertha Daye) creates in pale-skinned Meeselphe an intrepid hero with mustard-hued garb, a button nose, and hair that sticks straight up. When she leaves her house-tree one day to explore a phantasmagorical landscape portrayed in sprightly, clear lines, she befriends a “sadbandoned” baby bird and coolly answers riddles posed by a series of blobby monsters. As she strolls along, bizarre creatures and plants portrayed with strange colors and startling forms provide a constant stream of diversion. Blaze, a masked chicklet, offers wisdom at the outset: “Here, on the land upon the ground, what looks real isn’t always, and what looks mean or kind isn’t always either.” Saccharose, who grins like the Cheshire Cat, poses the first riddle: “If you say my name, I disappear. What am I?” Meeselphe isn’t stymied (“It’s silence, the answer is silence!”), nor is she worried about the monsters who warn that they will all meet again “on pages 38 and 39!” Waters and Kerlidou deal creatively with puns and invented words (“confusifying”) in this surrealist excursion that builds, video game–like, to a final triumphant showdown. Ages 5–9. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Agard and Kitamura (The Rainmaker Danced) reteam to explore the role of language in experience—a heady-sounding theme conveyed in deeply affecting words and images. Creature-Of-No-Words, drawn with scribbly orange lines, perceives life as waves of emotion: when delighted, “He’d simply flap his arms/ like the wings of the birds/ and carry on gazing at the sea.” On a freezing night in front of a cozy cave fire, “It was enough just to feel snug./ O to feel that warming glow.” And when he’s distressed, “from his lips would come/ a deep-down belly groan.” Creature-Of-Words, smaller and scrawled red, communicates via formalized language (in the sea, she shouts “HAPPY! HAPPY!”; “AH! FIRE!” she says on a snowy day). When she happens upon Creature-Of-No-Words and hears him groan, she offers “HUG! HUG!” In a tender moment, Creature-Of-No-Words experiences spoken comfort and utters his first word. From then on, the two live together “in a house where words also lived,” and sometimes enjoy silence, too, “stroking each other’s fur” beside an outdoor fire. Conveying two modes of communication, the creators portray how sensation and language dovetail, and how two beings can complement each other nearly perfectly. Ages 4–9. (May)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

“I see patterns everywhere,/ patterns BIG and SMALL,” begins artist and designer Menendez, making her picture book debut with this rhyming work focused on repetition. Patterns appear visually in the natural world (“I see patterns/ in the forest,/ flowers, leaves, and birds”), where they can be heard, too (“I hear patterns/ in the jungle’s cries/ and the tiger’s roar”). A soft-hued spread shows wild animals with dappled coats—a leopard, a baby tapir—surrounded by lush foliage. The human world, subsequent pages show, features just as many patterns: in music and movement, the windows of city buildings, “a painting and in ancient artifacts,” and even, in one cozy spread, the decorated spines of books. The book’s driving concept isn’t defined until readers arrive at its back matter: “A pattern is something (anything!) that repeats.” Rendered in loose spreads that feel like a personal sketchbook, though, it’s a fast-moving survey that opens a conversation about the conceit that ranges beyond its usual visual understanding. Human characters are portrayed with various abilities, body types, and skin tones. Ages 4–8. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Young Robert and his band of “brave young explorers”—five children, portrayed with various skin tones, plus a terrier-like pooch—are entrusted one morning with delivering a “valuable” ribbon-tied parcel to an unidentified recipient. “They were a ramshackle bunch,” writes Carnavas (My Brother Ben) about the trek-costumed crew, “but each member had a duty essential to the journey.” As they make their way across “rugged terrain” that’s easily identifiable as a playground, the band dwindles due to an insect incident, adult intervention, and downright desertion, leaving only Robert and Will. Braving hunger and thirst, they are at long last greeted with open arms by the parcel’s recipient: a grandmotherly figure revealed to live just on the other side of the playground. Even readers too young to be acquainted with the tropes of documentary-style narration should sense there is good-natured spoofing underway. But this work also understands that the responsibility of an errand is a big deal for little kids, and the largely single-plane drawings, rendered in watercolor and ink, strike a fine balance between mock-seriousness and earnest adventure. Ages 4–7. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Newbery Medalist Park and two-time Caldecott Medalist Raschka celebrate the ways children shower their books with love—and what they get in return—in a picture book that catalogs reading’s pleasures. In each spread, a child, painted in lush, loose, rounded strokes, describes the way volumes teach, feed, and free them. “This is my book,” announces a young person who strides along beneath an umbrella, a book under a slicker-clad arm: “I carry it with me/ wherever I go.” A page turn later, another describes a book with “jam on the cover/ from yesterday’s toast/ and crayon inside/ from when I was little.” Other spreads note the way books let readers create alternate selves (“I move like the characters”), recall language (“I know every word”), and offer escape (“I don’t hear you call./ I can’t come right now”). While the artwork expresses the children’s passion in all its messy liveliness, the chorus of autonomous voices both persuades and invites: “Do you have a book?/ A favorite book?/ A book that you love/ the way I love mine?” Characters are portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 3–6. Author’s agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. Illustrator’s agent: Brenda Bowen, Book Group. (June)

Reviewed on 04/19/2024 | Details & Permalink