Candace Fleming fills her nonfiction account, Death in the Jungle, with mesmerizing yet respectful insights on the Jonestown suicides, while staying true to the horrific details.
Candace Fleming fills her nonfiction account, Death in the Jungle, with mesmerizing yet respectful insights on the Jonestown suicides, while staying true to the horrific details.
After the hilarious and expressive Spider in the Well, we couldn’t wait to see what Jess Hannigan was going to do next. Luckily, she hasn’t made us wait too long! Yet another delightfully dramatic protagonist greets us in The Bear Out There, this time warning us of a scary bear—but of course, things aren’t that straightforward.
After the hilarious and expressive Spider in the Well, we couldn’t wait to see what Jess Hannigan was going to do next. Luckily, she hasn’t made us wait too long! Yet another delightfully dramatic protagonist greets us in The Bear Out There, this time warning us of a scary bear—but of course, things aren’t that straightforward.
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To hear young adult novelist K. Ancrum speak about her work is like stumbling upon a rare illuminated manuscript. The text itself stands alone as a beautiful and precious thing—but its marginalia reveal secret paths to new lenses through which to view the world. It’s like swimming after Ariel into her grotto of treasures, spinning in wonder as the shelves of fascinating whosits and whatsits extend beyond your line of sight.

Though Ancrum claims to be “a little bit precious when it comes to over-analyzation of what [she’s] doing” as an author, she is also visibly excited to delve into the intricate web of what makes an Ancrum book tick. She is an academic and a Tumblr kid, as giddy discussing Sherlock Holmes analysis as she is Marvel fanfiction.

Ancrum mainly writes contemporary stories, but there is a sense of something timeless underlying her writing. “I consider everything that I write to be a parable,” she says. “My dogma as a writer is that I’m very focused on ‘the idea of,’ as opposed to ‘the story of.’ ”

However lofty this approach may sound, it does not detract from the potency—nor the sense of humor—of her stories. Ancrum does not wield the lessons she hopes to convey like a cudgel, nor does she expect adherence to one way of thinking. Rather, she offers stories of real people with real feelings, creating a treasure map to truth.

Like Ancrum’s other novels, such as Icarus, The Corruption of Hollis Brown, features characters that feel familiar and real before you even get to know them. On its surface, it’s a queer love story between 17-year-old Hollis and Walt, a long dead ghost who’s taken possession of Hollis’ body. Her inspiration? The Tom Hardy superhero movie Venom. Ancrum says, “I saw it in the theater, and people did not like it. I thought it was delightful.”

Based on the Marvel comic of the same name, Venom follows an investigative journalist who becomes symbiotically bonded with an alien life form that takes over his body. Though initially at odds, the pair decide to remain together and spend their shared life fighting crime. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna write about that.’ Like, a divinity in the very act of being known,” says Ancrum.

“The ultimate declaration of love would be if somebody is able to see all of the parts of you, and you are unable to hide anything—not stuff that you think is embarrassing, not your dark, sticky secrets, not your weaknesses—and they’re like, ‘Ehh, this is fine. Don’t worry about it,’ ” she says, laughing. “It’s what I imagine—as a Catholic—it would feel like to be face-to-face with God.”

On her website, Ancrum says her novels are a way for her to focus“ on the preservation of the queer experience,” and are “designed to showcase important lessons about queer community, the resolution of generational trauma, and queer resilience.”

Ancrum worked on her first published novel—the critically acclaimed The Wicker King—in her early 20s. Now 33 and publishing her sixth book, she says, “I’ve been out for a very long time, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the history of LGBTQ+ acceptance here in this country. I noticed that it very much does a crest and valley sort of thing.”

She continues, “When I decided to start actually taking [writing] seriously and going into publishing, I was like, if I’m given the rare opportunity to write mass media for my marginalized group, I want it to be able to take care of us during those valleys. So when I’m writing for the children of today, I’m also writing for the children of a future that may be worse than the present.”

Ancrum came of age in the early 2000s, an era that she describes as a “very isolated” one for queer people. This is reflected in her work, which Ancrum says is coming “from the perspective of somebody who was forced to . . . understand their own desire and understand what love means for them by themselves.” Even today, she says, “we live in a world of a thousand legends to teach us what heterosexuality is. . . . With queer content, there isn’t much of it. So it forces introspection.”

At one of the book’s pivotal turning points, Walt expresses fear at how the world at large will perceive him and Hollis—“We’ll be a monster,” he says. And without missing a beat, Hollis replies: “We’ll be something new.” With Hollis and Walt, Ancrum invokes “the grotesque,” the longstanding artistic descriptor for subjects that evoke wonder, fear, fascination, revulsion and awe all at once, often involving hybrid creatures or metamorphosis. “The grotesquerie can exist in an environment that is designed with love to support that difference—the grand queer metaphor,” Ancrum says, almost cheekily.

But Ancrum’s stories are never about just one thing. “The Corruption of Hollis Brown is ultimately about American resilience,” Ancrum says. “And it is about this very specific kind of small American town where everyone is equally socially impacted by economic devastation, where there’s only one place to work and that place no longer existing is so devastating that it almost feels biblical.” This is the case for the unnamed Michigan lake town where Hollis lives, which, like many Rust Belt cities, has existed in a liminal space between survival and success for generations, an all too familiar situation that Ancrum says is “one of the ultimate heartbreaks of the American dream.” A place of “powdered eggs, canned chicken, penny-pinching, crust-saving,” its insular and close-knit families are figuratively haunted by the specters of crumbling, abandoned neighborhoods and factories, as well as literally haunted by the ghosts from the nearby settlement of Rose Town, which was abandoned in the 1940s. Yet many people still decide to stay and fight for their friends and future. That faith in your community being able to find its way is what Ancrum hopes to underline.

While this is a ghost story, it’s also about a “love that is foundational and has allowed for these communities to exist for years and years.” Ancrum explores not only the love between Hollis and Walt, but also the different types of love that exist among the characters surrounding them, such as Hollis’ relationships with his best friends, Yulia and Annie. In her books, Ancrum presents an aspirational vision of platonic intimacy that shows characters aside from the romantic leads frequently touching, entirely comfortable with physical closeness. Hollis and his friends hold hands and play with each other’s hair for the sole purpose of expressing affection, because Ancrum believes “that’s the way people want to feel with their friends,” even if this kind of physicality in non-romantic relationships is rare in reality.

Often, this level of touch is used by other authors to build romantic or sexual tension, so Ancrum needed to “create a new language of intimacy” when differentiating the relationships in her novels that do escalate into romance. Often, she’ll focus on specific gestures, such as locking pinkies or holding a cigarette to someone else’s mouth, and amplify their descriptions to build “an expression of . . . true love” that distinguishes the bond between her romantic leads.

According to Ancrum, fully understanding intimacy requires one to realize it’s about more than just sex. One way to think of it is the common experience of being drunk in college, throwing up violently and having someone to take care of you: “It’s like, yes, I feel horrible, but also there’s somebody here to hold my hair back.” She considers this level of human connection to be “the primordial intimacy,” stemming from “the way that we probably were during the proto-hominid era, with the fear of the dark, the intimacy of a shared space and silence” It’s the juxtaposition of loneliness and interrelatedness that the first humans to watch the stars must have experienced.

Ancrum’s novels achieve their distinct atmosphere because they take that prehistoric sense of isolation, and mix in platonic connection, “the gut viscerality of intimacy” and the “language of romance.”

“This is all that we are,” Ancrum says, describing not only her book and its combined layers of queerness, love and community; but also the universe. “The only thing we have is each other.”

For Ancrum, building connections with others is “our birthright.” She feels “that we were designed for pleasure and love, and the ability to create it in a communal way—safety and love and all of the stuff that allows us to be human—is something that was inherent for us and is a gift.”

In The Corruption of Hollis Brown, the author crafts an intimacy between her characters that expands beyond romance.

Have you met an alligator on a train?  Glimpsed fairies out of the corner of your eye? Do you feel the roar of a tiger inside you? Open this book and dare to pass through a portal leading to a dream world where pinatas breathe fire, where sneakers have jetpacks, and where you might just travel through time on a wave of slime.

In this delightful collection of poems, Words with Wings and Magic Things, Matthew Burgess takes us on a wild adventure, with poems ranging from silly to sensitive, nonsensical to insightful. Float away in a hammock, blast into space with one leap in special sneakers, make a list of all the things you can do, feel each color, dream of ice cream, live with lions!

Caldecott Medalist Doug Salati’s bright and lively illustrations add movement and personality to each poem. With careful pencil drawings and digital color, Salati creates a fantastical dreamscape of full moons and flying whales. Utilizing both limited color palettes and full-color spreads, these illustrations take the reader on a visual adventure alongside the lyrical experience of the text.

Words with Wings and Magic Things will captivate all ages and is a perfect introduction for young readers to the whimsy and wonder of poetry. Parents who grew up with Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends will love reading this collection to their children, and readers will pick this book up again and again and find something new each time they do.

Words with Wings and Magic Things is sure to inspire readers to seek bold and courageous adventures. Many will likely even pick up a pen and create their own poetry.

Words with Wings and Magic Things is sure to inspire readers to seek bold and courageous adventures. Many will likely even pick up a pen and create their own poetry.
Review by

The small town where 17-year-old Hollis Brown has spent his life is “a forgotten American dreamscape”—the type of marginal Midwestern community that survived a mass exodus of industry, but no longer has the means to start over somewhere new.

Hollis has loving parents and fiercely protective best friends, but there is a gnawing emptiness inside him that eats away at any light that tries to get in. Sometimes the only way he knows to fight that feeling is to say something he shouldn’t to someone he shouldn’t, and accept the confrontations that result.

When Hollis finds himself falsely accused of a violent assault after the annual all-nighter in the town’s abandoned, supposedly haunted factory, the feelings he’s never known how to handle overflow. It’s here, in his most vulnerable state, that Walt finds him.

Walt, a gaunt and disheveled teen, appears in the woods where Hollis is hiding and licking his wounds. The boy piques Hollis’ sense of generosity, and after Hollis offers Walt his coat and some food, Walt reciprocates with an offer to help Hollis repair the mess of his life. It’s only under the cold light of a streetlamp, standing at the crossroads of an empty intersection, that Hollis realizes he’s getting much, much more than he bargained for.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown is another stunning addition to novelist K. Ancrum’s extraordinary catalog. Like many of Ancrum’s other works, it’s a complex story that’s difficult to categorize by genre. It’s not quite horror, though it contains an eerie atmosphere. It’s a love story, but not just between two people, and not only romantic. Ancrum’s brilliance lives in the margins of these things, where reality, belief and truth spiral around each other like so many diverging—and converging—paths.

Like most of Ancrum’s books, The Corruption of Hollis Brown is written entirely in sharply vivid vignettes, like the literary equivalent of macrophotography, containing intimacy on a grand scale that makes the reader want to both back away and lean closer.

In Hollis and Walt’s story, Ancrum allows for the inherent weirdness of being queer: the grotesque, the joyful and the beautiful. She conveys the intensity of feeling that exists in adolescence: the agony of depression, of loving someone, of hating yourself, of wanting to love yourself. But Ancrum is kind to her characters. Even when she sets a trap, she pulls out a net to catch them.

This kindness rings through to the end of The Corruption of Hollis Brown. It’s a graceful reminder that our ghosts don’t all need to be exorcised. Sometimes they just need to be seen.

The Corruption of Hollis Brown is written in sharply vivid vignettes, like the literary equivalent of macrophotography: intimacy on a grand scale that makes the reader want to both back away and lean closer.
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The woods can be a dangerous place, especially when there are bears around. But luckily, a young host is here to invite scared wanderers into a cottage. They warn you about the signs of a bear: “The hair on your arms stands straight up. You feel a pair of great big eyes watching the back of your head. Your feet get suuuuper itchy.” But when a bear shows up at the door, it throws everything the host says into question. Who really owns this house . . . and who really knows the truth of what’s in the woods?

Spider in the Well author-illustrator Jess Hannigan returns with The Bear Out There, an eccentric  riff on the Goldilocks fairy tale. Filled with snarky commentary, witty imagery and slapstick comedy, this picture book will keep readers giggling.

Hannigan’s characters talk directly to the reader, sharing their thoughts, which often contradict  what is actually happening in the surrounding illustrations. Her iconic paper-cut artwork is bubbly, colorful and expressive—perfect for this back-and-forth pull between text and image. 

The Bear Out There will delight any reader looking for retellings that challenge traditional perspectives, and anyone who enjoys subversive picture books like I Want My Hat Back and The Monster at the End of This Book.

After the hilarious and expressive Spider in the Well, we couldn’t wait to see what Jess Hannigan was going to do next. Luckily, she hasn’t made us wait too long! Yet another delightfully dramatic protagonist greets us in The Bear Out There, this time warning us of a scary bear—but of course, things aren’t that straightforward.
Review by

Sixth grader Beatrix (Bea) is thriving. She and her adoptive mom Maxine (Max) have a strong bond, which they cement by repeating the mantra “Xs to Xs,” which means “‘Beatrix to Maxine,’ two Xs who found each other.” They find support in their neighbors Lucius and Aaron, who are both great cooks and built a ramp for Bea, since she has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get in and out of the duplex they share. And Bea loves the tight-knit community at Cedar Crest Presbyterian school, especially her firm but kind teacher, Mrs. Canelli, and Josie, her “Little,” the shy and anxious kindergartner she is mentoring for the year.

But all this is shattered in a matter of minutes after a school shooting at Cedar Crest. While Bea survives, not everyone is so lucky. In the aftermath, Bea is devastated by the damage done to her community and traumatized by the things she’s seen. She also blames herself for being unable to follow her teacher’s lockdown directions due to her disability: “I am not a person / who can be trusted / to escape the bad things.” Friends and family around her respond by speaking out against gun violence, but Bea retreats into herself. Perhaps a visit to a nearby horse farm specializing in accommodations for disabled riders could allow her to regain her self-confidence and her love for the world.

Inspired by the death of a friend in the 2023 Nashville, Tennessee, school shooting, Jamie Sumner’s Please Pay Attention is written in free verse in Bea’s first-person voice. The poetic language makes the horror of school violence clear without depicting it in a graphic way. In the end, Bea’s courageous recovery will prompt readers of all ages to examine whether school lockdown policies truly accommodate all students—and consider the possibility of a more peaceful world where such policies can be a relic of the past.

The poetic language in Jamie Sumner’s Please Pay Attention makes the horror of school violence clear without depicting it in a graphic way.

What is a colored pencil? Is it just an artist’s tool? In Pencil, debut author-illustrator Hye-Eun Kim wordlessly—and beautifully—conveys to readers all the possibilities that a pencil can signify.

As Pencil begins, curly green shavings tumble down a stark white backdrop, transforming into leaves on a tree that is eventually joined by more trees of different colors, textures, shapes and sizes. Together, they form a forest rife with intricate details: tall spiky green trees, smaller rounded red ones, trunks of purple, leaves of blue. A gray pig, blue and pink bunnies, a yellow bear and more revel in their wonderful woodland home. 

When the trees are chopped down, a host of exquisitely rendered winged creatures sallies forth: Sparrows curve here, mallards soar there, crows swoop by, and an owl flaps along, too. This multifaceted flock follows along as the logs are transported to a factory that Kim depicts with a grayscale palette and angled edges that stand in sharp contrast to the curvy organic shapes of flora and fauna. 

At the factory, hard-hatted workers run machinery to remake the logs into pile after pile of colored pencils that eventually take up residence at an art supply store, which is patronized by an expressive little girl who uses her new pencils to decorate tree stumps. Thus rejuvenated, the stumps magically transform into a forest—and a home for the animals—once again.

In Pencil, Kim artfully blends the fanciful and the practical as she invites readers to ponder cycles of destruction and renewal, creativity and inspiration. Her focus on a pencil’s life cycle—its origins, transformation and return to something akin to its original form—casts an everyday object in an interesting new light while prompting reflection on what can happen when nature is not nurtured. 

 A list of helpful tips at book’s end titled “How to read a silent book” offers strategies for helping readers approach and immerse themselves in a wordless tale like this one. “When you close the book, have a moment of silence to give everyone the space to reflect on the experience,” Kim suggests, offering the perfect segue to further contemplation and creation.

In Pencil, Hye-Eun Kim artfully blends the fanciful and the practical as she invites readers to ponder cycles of destruction and renewal, creativity and inspiration.
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On a blistering hot moonlit night in South India, a girl and her mother ride together on a motorbike to beat the heat and take in the sights in Maureen Shay Tajsar’s lush, atmospheric Midnight Motorbike. “On a night like tonight,” the girl’s Amma tells her, “we are in the belly of the Indian moon.” Their ride is a luxuriant lullaby, a time of togetherness as well as a feast for the eyes and the senses.

Young readers will be transported by “flashes of snake eyes and bougainvillea in our motorbike headlight.” The pair pass silk shops, temples and an elephant who gives the narrator a kiss—which her mother tells her is good luck. Tajsar’s prose provides a sensory travelogue as the young rider smells “steaming silver-cupped chai, spicy potato-stuffed masala dosas, and the warm hay of an elephant’s bed.”

Ishita Jain’s art vividly evokes the night sky with a deep blue background, against which big splashes of vivid color pop. Amma’s bright orange sari swirls into the air, framing the sunset over the Bay, while the huge white moon looms like a giant in the sky. Throughout, Amma’s orange sari and the motorbike’s orange headlights help light the way, providing a line of focus on this fascinating tour of a South Indian night.

While this mother-daughter adventure ignites the senses, as the narrator is finally lulled to sleep by the end, it also becomes a poignant salute to the love between parent and child. Midnight Motorbike is an exciting and ultimately comforting ode to adventure, observation and love. 

Maureen Shay Tajsar and Ishita Jain’s Midnight Motorbike is an exciting and ultimately comforting ode to adventure, observation and love.
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Stories about moving from one home to another are a staple of children’s picture books, but many just skim the surface, showing a flurry of moving boxes and an eventual settling in. In contrast, Home Is a Wish is a deeply felt story told from a child’s point of view. It’s one of the best this reviewer has seen. 

Readers don’t learn any specifics about the relocation of the narrator’s family, though the plane depicted suggests that the narrator has moved to a different country. This accentuates the sense of dislocation that young children are apt to feel, while adding to the universality of the reading experience. Julia Kuo’s sparse narration and engaging illustrations get right to the heart of the matter: those topsy-turvy feelings erupting from the move.

Fans of Kuo’s Let’s Do Everything and Nothing and When Love Is More Than Words know how well she conveys meaningful sentiments without resorting to schmaltz. In Home Is a Wish, shades of purple, peach and orange lend a dreamy, bright feel to the narrator’s apartment as they pack up and leave, “not knowing if we will ever be back.” Kuo’s graphic style and use of color are particularly engaging, and the book is anchored by dark, deep blues depicting the night and the ocean. The new apartment is in the midst of a bright, bustling city surrounded by snow-capped mountains. “I see and feel every little thing in this strange, new place,” the narrator says, while standing on a balcony and peering out at this intriguing new home, which is filled with an array of pastel colors and billboards showing cheery fish. Scenes from outside the new apartment let readers peer through its windows at the grandmother and the mother unpacking, while the lonely child sits outside, wondering, “How can this be our home?”

One yearning, dreamlike spread sees the narrator paddling a canoe from the family’s old apartment building to their new one. But as the weather warms and flowers bloom, Kuo depicts fun family outings, including a new best friend, Carmen, and the narrator realizes, “Now I see there are different homes for different times: a home from before, a home for now, even a home for later. Home is a wish that comes true when I can say, I’m from here now.”

Home Is a Wish is a gorgeous book that allows readers to feel both theemotions of displacement and the comforts of home. It’s an ultimately reassuring story that encourages empathy and invites discussion from young readers. 

Home Is a Wish is a gorgeous book that allows readers to feel both the emotions of displacement and the comforts of home.

Fish are super cool, right? For starters, they can breathe underwater; they come in a glorious array of sizes, shapes and colors; and they’ve starred in beloved animated films, too. But the narrator of the wonderfully hilarious Don’t Trust Fish thinks we shouldn’t be so quick to praise our fishy so-called friends, instead warning in big bold letters, “DON’T TRUST FISH!”

It’s not easy to craft a laugh-out-loud story, but Irish playwright and novelist (When the Sparrow Falls) Neil Sharpson gets it just right in his picture book debut. As does National Book Award-winner (A First Time for Everything) and Caldecott Medalist (The Adventures of Beekle) Dan Santat, with witty illustrations sure to inspire even more giggling as readers eagerly discover why the highly aggrieved narrator insists we should not trust fish.

As the book opens, the narrator calmly shares interesting details about mammals, reptiles and birds accompanied by photorealistic illustrations, as one might expect in an animal guide. But it soon becomes clear they just can’t get over the otherworldly mystique and unpredictability of fish. As the illustrations grow more colorful and their lines more relaxed, sedately scientific language is peppered with warnings like, “Fish don’t follow any rules” and “Some fish eat poor, innocent crabs who are just trying to have a nice time in the sea.”

Then things escalate: “Fish spend all their time in the water. Where we can’t see them. . . . Are they plotting our doom?” Even worse, a whale shark is “the largest fish in the world. It’s the size of a bus. That’s not okay.” And the angler fish? Well, it lives in the dark ocean depths and employs bioluminescence to “[attract] poor defenseless crabs by glowing.”

By the time readers realize the narrator is (surprise!) an indignant crab with an unshakable anti-fish fixation, they’ll have learned and laughed many times over. Don’t Trust Fish is an educational and highly entertaining delight sure to inspire interest in oceanography and ichthyology—and lots of rereads. (Just don’t tell any crabs you may know!)

Don’t Trust Fish is an educational and highly entertaining delight, sure to inspire interest in oceanography and ichthyology—and lots of rereads.
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In November 1978, the world was shocked to learn that over 900 Americans had been discovered dead in Guyana—members of a cult who had poisoned themselves by participating in what their leader, Jim Jones, referred to as “revolutionary suicide.” How could such a tragedy happen? In reality, this was murder, the culmination of the physical and mental control that Jones exerted over his followers in a community he called Jonestown. This story, which is likely unfamiliar to younger generations, is explained in riveting detail in Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown. Award-winning author Candace Fleming is more than up to the task as a prolific chronicler of a wide variety of subjects, ranging from Amelia Earhart (Amelia Lost), to the Loch Ness Monster (Is It Real?), to a 1924 child murder committed by teenagers (Murder Among Friends). 

In addition to drawing upon what she terms “an avalanche of primary source material,” Fleming gathered a trove of personal details by interviewing nine survivors of the tragedy, as well as three additional family members of victims. “Their hope is that stories from their youth will resonate with today’s young audience—readers who might be particularly susceptible to peer pressure, charismatic leaders, and undue influence,” she writes. Fleming encourages readers to “recognize destructive groups in their own midst,” and begins her narrative with a discussion of cults, listing characteristic elements to watch out for. 

Fleming skillfully chronicles numerous victims who succumbed to Jones’ spell, explaining how they were lured in and continued to believe his outrageous fabrications. Jones, born in 1931, was charismatic despite his chaotic, forsaken childhood and, as a boy, studied the oratory techniques of Adolf Hitler. As an adult, Jones, who was white, perfected an appropriation of the religious and civil rights ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and posed as a “black messiah advancing black liberation.” In Indianapolis, and later in San Francisco, he eventually isolated hundreds of followers and sent them to Guyana, leading them to falsely believe that their integrated, socialist community would be a tropical paradise. While heavily medicating himself with illicit drugs, he used violence, sex, drugs and misinformation as a means of radical control. Warning that the CIA was launching guerrilla warfare to wipe out their community, Jones claimed that only he, their “Father,” could save them. 

Fleming spares few of the horrific details, while filling her account with mesmerizing yet respectful insights. Photographs are included (although not of the bodies). In Death in the Jungle, Fleming helps readers understand how hundreds of victims could be so fatally brainwashed by a lying, egotistical cult leader. Contemporary readers might be certain that such a thing could never happen to them, but lessons about the dangers of groupthink, mind control and misinformation remain all too relevant.

Candace Fleming fills her nonfiction account, Death in the Jungle, with mesmerizing yet respectful insights on the Jonestown suicides, while staying true to the horrific details.
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The protagonist of Another Word for Neighbor, Han, only likes his tea, the newspaper and his plants—the latter because they can’t talk. So it’s not exactly a match made in heaven when young Kate and Olly, who happen to be especially chatty, move in next door. No matter how much Han ignores or chastises the pair, they persist in knocking on Han’s door, climbing up his peach tree, committing federal offenses by opening up his mailbox and asking lots of questions. These questions are mostly silly ones about Han’s hair, until one day Kate asks about the portrait of a woman prominently hanging on Han’s wall. Han stares ahead in grief as he tells the children that the woman was his late wife, Lan.

Later, the children bring an orchid to Han in an effort to cheer him up, prompting Han to remember how Lan valued hospitality. Han invites the children in and begins to open up to them, sharing snacks, stories about Lan and even a recipe for his favorite food, pho, which he hasn’t made since her death.

Angela Pham Krans, whose picture book Finding Papa was an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature honoree, depicts the growth of this intergenerational relationship with charming, witty prose that young readers will find both educational and humorous. Han is described as “old and mostly ornery,” which the narration clarifies as meaning “grumpy.” On the other hand, “Kate and Olly were inquisitive adventurers. Those are words for never giving up!” The sweet, cheerful atmosphere is complemented well by Thai My Phuong’s soft color palette and expressive characters, which inhabit a detailed, lively world of lush greenery and friendly cats, dogs and birds—animals just as curious as Kate and Olly. Another Word for Neighbor balances its heartfelt depiction of grief and isolation with all the warmth of a steaming bowl of pho.

Another Word for Neighbor’s heartfelt depiction of grief and isolation has all the warmth of a steaming bowl of pho.
STARRED REVIEW
March 23, 2025

20 gripping reads to celebrate Trans Day of Visibility

These excellent books by transgender or nonbinary writers are perfect picks for March 31—or any day of the year.
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Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on.

Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on.

We would kill for another novel from Torrey Peters, author of the simultaneously heart-wrenching and deeply entertaining Detransition, Baby—but we’ll settle for a novella and three stories. Each of these pulls Peters’ style in a new direction, with the titular novella featuring a “stag dance” among isolated overwintering lumberjacks.

We would kill for another novel from Torrey Peters, author of the simultaneously heart-wrenching and deeply entertaining Detransition, Baby—but we’ll settle for a novella and three stories. Each of these pulls Peters’ style in a new direction, with the titular novella featuring a “stag…

Jennifer Finney Boylan’s latest memoir-in-essays, Cleavage, is a sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac, meditation on gender, parenthood and coming to terms with herself.

Jennifer Finney Boylan’s latest memoir-in-essays, Cleavage, is a sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac, meditation on gender, parenthood and coming to terms with herself.

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson tells the story of a Harlem Renaissance in which queerness is as integral and influential to the culture as Blackness.

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson tells the story of a Harlem Renaissance in which queerness is as integral and influential to the culture as Blackness.

Oliver Radclyffe’s Frighten the Horses is a powerful standout among the burgeoning subgenre of gender transition memoirs.

Oliver Radclyffe’s Frighten the Horses is a powerful standout among the burgeoning subgenre of gender transition memoirs.

P.H. Low’s intriguing debut fantasy, These Deathless Shores, is a haunting modern spin on Peter Pan.

P.H. Low’s intriguing debut fantasy, These Deathless Shores, is a haunting modern spin on Peter Pan.

Based on Jewish mythology concerning the dybbuk, a disembodied spirit that inhabits the body of a living person, The Forbidden Book is a fantastic coming-of-age tale with resonant political themes.

Based on Jewish mythology concerning the dybbuk, a disembodied spirit that inhabits the body of a living person, The Forbidden Book is a fantastic coming-of-age tale with resonant political themes.

As Texas threatens LGBTQ+ people with draconian laws, KB Brookins’ memoir, Pretty, is an act of resistance against those who would silence trans writers.

As Texas threatens LGBTQ+ people with draconian laws, KB Brookins’ memoir, Pretty, is an act of resistance against those who would silence trans writers.

KT Hoffman’s The Prospects is a perfect baseball romance that overflows with love for the sport and its main characters.

KT Hoffman’s The Prospects is a perfect baseball romance that overflows with love for the sport and its main characters.

Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.

Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.

The Deep Dark is a moving and eerie graphic novel exploring identity, generational trauma and queer love.

The Deep Dark is a moving and eerie graphic novel exploring identity, generational trauma and queer love.

Provocative, disruptive and very funny, Authority collects the work of Pulitzer Prize winning-critic Andrea Long Chu.

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Through sentences of remarkable elegance, humor and complexity of phrase, former Slate advice columnist and cofounder of The Toast Daniel M. Lavery vividly imagines a 1960s women’s hotel in his debut novel.

Through sentences of remarkable elegance, humor and complexity of phrase, former Slate advice columnist and cofounder of The Toast Daniel M. Lavery vividly imagines a 1960s women’s hotel in his debut novel.

Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.

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Beautiful, complex and affirming, Ash’s Cabin will prompt deep conversations about how best to support one another and our environment, at a time when the future is uncertain and peace can be hard to find.

Beautiful, complex and affirming, Ash’s Cabin will prompt deep conversations about how best to support one another and our environment, at a time when the future is uncertain and peace can be hard to find.

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A bacchanalian romp from Monaco to Pisa to Paris, The Pairing is a testament to Casey McQuiston’s talent.

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The first book in this planned trilogy, The Door of No Return, was set in 1860, ending with the main character, Kofi, facing an unknown fate. Black Star jumps forward in time to the 1920’s segregation era, to when Kofi is a Nana himself, with the gaps in his story slowly being revealed as he shares them with his granddaughter, Charley. What inspired you to structure the trilogy with a multi-generational jump in between books? 

I thought about a couple things. For one, I did not want to write about slavery. Writing The Door of No Return was tough enough, and I found myself often being sad or feeling in a dark mood. I knew if I delved deeper into what happened at the end of book one, I would be back in those blues. And I’m generally, you know, a happy person. I try to stay in that space. 

So, I thought: well, why don’t I do this? I’ve been watching a lot of sci-fi, and I love books that play with time. While Black Star isn’t sci-fi, I did play with time in the sense of doing a time jump and giving myself a story set 60 years in the future. I asked myself, what would that look like for Kofi? Of course, for us, it’s historical fiction, but for Kofi, it’s 60 years later. This was a cool thing for me to do as a writer: to be able to do that and then also still reveal what happened at the end of The Door of No Return, to bring some closure to that narrative while not delving deeper into it. 

The last thing is that I really wanted was to write some new characters and tell the same story. All these things came together and contributed to my decision. 

A theme throughout both books is the power of storytelling, as Kofi used to revere his nana for his storytelling abilities and has now stepped into the role of the storyteller for his family. Why was it so important for you to show readers this way Black history is passed down?

I thought, he’s going to become his grandfather now, and I felt like that was a really cool thing to do in the story. I felt like it came kept it fresh, definitely for me and hopefully for the reader. 

Read our starred review of Black Star. 

Stories have always been a way that lessons are passed down generation to generation. In West Africa, there are these men and women who are called griots, and they are responsible for keeping the history of the community, the village, the family, intact, generation by generation. So, they passed down these stories, and they share them. My mother was also a storyteller. She told African folk tales. And so, storytelling as a way to teach, a way to learn, as a way to ensure that your history is remembered – I knew that this was going to play a huge role in continuing what I had started in The Door of No Return.

I read that you chose to make Kofi’s granddaughter the protagonist of Black Star because a fan wrote in saying she enjoyed your books but wished one would feature a girl main character. How did you approach writing your first female protagonist to create Charley’s authentic voice?

I have two sisters, a mother, a bunch of aunts. I have two daughters, and I’ve been married. So, when I decided to tackle this book with the girl as the main character, I was like, oh, I got this. It’s gonna be easy. I know women. I’ve grown up around them. I love them. They love me. I mean, this is easy. And so, I wrote the first draft, and I let four of my writer friends read it, who are all women. They all came back to me very politely, and they were like, Kwame, this is a beautiful story. But you haven’t given any agency to the main character. You’ve given it all to her best friend, Willie Green. In the earlier drafts, Willie Green was basically telling the story. Charley was almost a side character. I was straddling the fence, not really delving into Charley’s personality or giving her agency. Instead, I was basically having her follow along with Willie Green. 

I’ll give you an example from the first draft of the book. Willie Green loves baseball. It was his thing, and he was convincing Charley to play with him. My friends were like, “well, Kwame, wouldn’t it make sense if she’s the main character, and this is her story, that she loves baseball? He can love it too, but perhaps it emanates from her, her desire, her obsession with the sport.” I was like, oh yeah, duh, and I began to give her more agency and delve deeper into who she is, what she wants by the end of the novel and by the end of her life. I explored the things that are important to her, the things she doesn’t care about. I asked myself, how are her relationships with her friends, with her rivals, with her family? How do we see these people through her eyes? Once I figured all of this out, which took some work, I arrived at a fully fleshed out, whole, three-dimensional human being. 

All your middle grade fiction books feature a main character that is completely devoted to a sport. As you say in your author’s note, “I love writing about America through the lens of sports.” What is it about sports that draws you to incorporate them into your verse novels?

I love sports. I’ve played a lot of sports. Sports are a great metaphor, and they’re almost like a hook. We can all connect or relate to a sport. We can relate to the different concepts in sports: teamwork, winning, losing, perseverance, grit, being motivated, dreaming. Sports are a great way for us to talk about the things that are happening in our lives vis-à-vis what’s happening on the field or the court or in the pool or on the track.

What’s interesting to me is, I heard this commentator talk about how Usain Bolt, who was the fastest man in the world, ran the 100-meter dash in 9.58 seconds, which is insane and incredible, but that was just 10 seconds of his life. That’s it. And like he’d been practicing and training for 10 years. He trained 10 years of his life for 10 seconds. Like that’s incredible. And so, I think sports are a way for us to acknowledge the 9.58 seconds, but to really try to get behind those 10 years. What made that person? How did they become this dedicated, this committed? So, I like talking about someone’s backstory and using the sport as both the hook and the framework. 

You also say in your author’s note that Black history, while about historical timestamps, is “also about the regular families that lived, laughed, loved, danced, worked, failed, hoped, cried, and died just like everybody else.” Your dedication to portraying this is most evident in the Sunday dinner poems. Are there any moments in your own family’s story that inspired those scenes?

Yes, every moment, literally. I mean, people often think, Black people sit around and talk about racism over at the dinner table. No, we talk about the Olympics, and we crack jokes just like everybody else. That’s always my goal with writing. It’s just to remind Black people that we are human beings and to not allow ourselves to be othered, and to remind non-Black people that y’all need to remember that we are all human beings. And it sounds cliché, but we don’t hear it enough, and we need to know it. 

Charley uses a lot of creative hyperboles throughout this book, my favorite being “It’s so quiet / I can hear the moon.” How do you come up with such impactful figures of speech?

Other than being brilliant? I mean, I’m a poet. This is what I do. I traffic in words, in images and similes and metaphors and showing rather than telling. That’s my goal. I think that’s probably one of the big differences between writing a novel and prose versus a novel in verse. You don’t have a whole lot of words with a novel in verse. You’ve got to make sure that every word counts, and every word has to be the right word in the right order. We want to show you something. We want you to feel something. You know, my chapters are maybe 30 lines, if you viewed each poem as a chapter. A prose writer would have three to 30 pages to write one chapter. So, it’s an economy of words, and that makes me focus on the rhythm, the figurative language, the conciseness, the feeling. 

In both this and The Door of No Return, there is sparing use of typographical manipulation, which adds impact to the moments you do things like change the font or spacing on a page. How do you go about choosing which moments need the emphasis?

I read each poem out loud, and when I’m writing it, I’m reading it out loud, I’m saying it out loud, and how it sounds to me is how I want it to look on the page, so that when you read it, it will sound as close to how I intended as possible. 

Both of these books, as well as several of your others, feature a major climatic moment toward the very end of the book. Why do you like throwing readers those curve balls (pardon the pun)? What do you think it adds to their reading experience, especially with this series?

So that’s really that’s a really cool pun. I’m so gonna steal that when I go on book tour. It’s so good. Love it. 

It’s a trilogy, and I need you to finish reading one book and say, oh snap, I can’t wait for the next one. That’s one reason. The second reason is, I’m a big fan of imagination and allowing readers to wonder and sort of figure out what’s going to happen next on their own, figure out what’s possible. I don’t like to tell everything. I like to keep some things for myself and for the character, and I think at the end of Black Star, that’s the situation that Charley finds herself in. It could go a number of different ways, and I like that. But ultimately, everyone knows that if you’ve read any of my books, I am quite hopeful about life, and I sort of envision a world where eventually things are going to work out. So, if Kofi is in book two, then you know, it’s some in some capacity, his story worked out. But there are still things to deal with. There’s still drama, and in some instances, there’s still trauma. I like playing around with that when I end.

Can you tell us anything about where the next book in this trilogy will take us? 

Oh my gosh, I so want to tell you. And I’m trying to think, can I give you a hint? Well, I will say this. The Door of No Return was set in 1860. Black Star was set in 1921. So, stay tuned, people. 

The author dives into the role of storytelling and history in Black Star, his hotly anticipated follow-up to The Door of No Return.

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