may25-upload

Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Words with Wings and Magic Things

Review by Callie Ann Starkey

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.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

When the Harvest Comes

Review by Laura Sackton

In her debut novel, Denne Michele Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, explores the limits—and radical healing possibilities—of queer love. The book opens on the eve of a wedding: Davis, a Black violist, is about to marry his boyfriend, Everett, the son of a close-knit white family whose exuberance and easy camaraderie permeate the air they breathe. Davis has been estranged from his father, a reverend, since he fled his Ohio hometown for New York and has since mostly fallen out with his sister as well. He’s focused on his career in classical music and his relationship with Everett. He has no plans to revisit his traumatic past or his fraught family relationships, until his father’s death forces him to confront everything he’s left behind.

At times, When the Harvest Comes can feel clunky, moving from revelation to revelation without lingering in the characters’ emotional interiority. Occasional short sections from the perspectives of minor characters, including Davis’ sister and Everett’s father, are somewhat jarring and distracting. It’s the steady love between Davis and Everett that carries the book: Their relationship, though not perfect, is the engine at the center of not only their lives, but the novel itself. Norris infuses these characters with so much warmth and tenderness for each other. Every time they interact—whether they’re at a family dinner, at home, having sex or even avoiding conversations they need to have—the depth of Davis and Everett’s love is the loudest thing on the page. It creates a kind of protective spell, and it is within this net of safety and acceptance that Davis begins to unravel not only the wounds of his past, but his dreams and desire for the future.

Though it deals with familial rejection, religious homophobia, grief and the impact that shame and secrets can have on a queer life, When the Harvest Comes is ultimately a triumphant book—an earnest, tender story about the courage it takes to let yourself be seen and loved for exactly who you are.

Every time Denne Michele Norris’ characters Davis and Everett interact—whether they’re at a family dinner, at home, or even avoiding conversations they need to have—the depth of their love is the loudest thing on the page.
NonfictionCookbooks

There’s Always Room at the Table

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Although the concept of “farm to table” has been hugely promoted and popularized in recent years, the professions of farmer and cookbook writer don’t often go hand in hand. But this pairing is a perfect fit in Kaleb Wyse’s new cookbook, There’s Always Room at the Table: Farmhouse Recipes From My Family to Yours. Crafted with insight, care and thoughtfulness, Wyse’s book offers a huge collection of “farmhouse recipes from my family to yours.” Easy-to-follow recipes resurrect old comfort-food favorites, such as chili mac, lasagna, pot roast, three-bean salad and butterscotch pudding.

Recipe headers and sidebars highlight anecdotes and history from the Wyse family farm in Iowa, which has been around for four generations. Wyse’s popular lifestyles blog, Wyse Guide, embraces rural life, and many of the recipes collected in his book reflect the farm-fresh ingredients he grows, such as rhubarb, peaches, blackberries, pork and potatoes. As a result, the cookbook balances Wyse’s friendly and entertaining writing style with an informative and realistic narrative.“The recipes aren’t set in stone,” Wyse writes, “they live and breathe just like us. Ingredients change, tastes evolve, but the base flavors stay true.”

Chapters are organized into breakfast, main dishes, side dishes, snacks, salads, desserts and breads. Homestyle offerings such as chicken and biscuits are simple enough for a weeknight, yet indulgingly perfect for Sunday dinner. Sauteed garlicky zucchini is a fitting complement for the rich chicken and savory biscuits, layered spaghetti pie, “State Fair” pork tenderloin or any of the other main dishes featured. Desserts range from old favorites such as brownies and raspberry oat crumb bars to more sophisticated recipes like “Grandma’s Special Occasion” cream puffs. Breakfast recipes take cues from hearty farm fare, with stick-to-your-ribs options like cornmeal pancakes with blackberry sauce and peach cobbler baked oatmeal.

There’s no shortage of cookbooks by bloggers, TikTokers and YouTube sensations. But with its focus on beloved farmhouse recipes updated for modern tastes, There’s Always Room at the Table will stand out in any cookbook collection.

Fourth-generation farmer Kaleb Wyse’s debut cookbook gets back to basics by resurrecting old comfort-food favorites that reflect his rural Midwestern roots.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Pretender

Review by Thane Tierney

If you’re the sort of person who hangs on to every morsel of palace drama between Princes Harry and William, if you binge-watched every episode of The Crown twice, if your copy of Burke’s Peerage is dog-eared from overuse, then Jo Harkin’s sophomore novel, The Pretender, should be right up your alley. On the other hand, if you can’t tell a Tudor from a Stuart, if your grasp of British history is limited to 1066, the Magna Carta and James Bond, The Pretender might still be right up your alley. Here’s why.

As we’ve learned from the massive success of Game of Thrones, the public has a virtually unquenchable thirst for watching royal dynasties die nastily. And things aren’t looking good for King Henry VII in 1485, despite his army having slain Richard III; forces are at play both abroad and at home to have his throne usurped by any of a number of pretenders.

The Pretender’s protagonist, introduced to us as John Collan, is one of them. Young John is spirited off from his father’s farm in the company of a mysterious nobleman and a priest, rechristened as Lambert Simons, and told he is the rightful heir to the British throne. What could possibly go wrong? When Lambert inquires whether he will have to take the crown from Henry by violent means, his tutor-priest replies, “Oh no, I’m sure he’ll hand it over full apologetic. . . . Don’t be an ass.”

After his initial schooling in Oxford, Lambert continues on to Burgundy and Ireland, where he is steeped in the intricacies of etiquette and politics in a manner befitting a future monarch. It’s in the latter that he meets—and falls in love with—Joan, the proto-feminist daughter of the Lord Deputy of Ireland. He realizes, to his dismay, that such a match is out of the question, as he could marry her in neither of his two likely futures: king of England or disgraced (and possibly dead) peasant pretender. 

But which of these two fates will befall him? What will become of his beloved? And there’s also the slight matter of England, whose fortune hangs in the balance. Harkin skillfully evokes the foreboding and intrigue that surrounds the throne with rough-hewn language and fistfuls of bawdy humor. Her rollicking saga of royalty, loyalty, lechery and treachery is fit for a king . . . or a man who was merely told he would be one. 

Jo Harkin’s rollicking saga of royalty, loyalty, lechery and treachery, The Pretender, is fit for a king . . . or a man who was merely told he would be one.
NonfictionLiteratureArts & Culture

Prose to the People

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

In her foreword to Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores, the late poet Nikki Giovanni praises a life spent in pursuit of stories—from listening to her mother’s songs while in the womb to getting her first library card to driving straight to a bookstore after passing her driver’s exam. “Nothing was more important than the bookstores,” she writes, “except perhaps the churches.” It’s fitting, then, that Giovanni’s foreword acts as a kind of benediction to Katie Mitchell’s book, which is overflowing with photographs, oral histories, essays and interviews. Each of the shops profiled fit criteria laid out by bibliographer Rosemary M. Stevenson: They all specialize in Black publications, as opposed to being merely Black-owned. But far from narrowing the book’s scope, those parameters give Mitchell freedom to deeply explore an array of bookstores that are much more than storefronts. Organized by U.S. region, Prose to the People contains an expansive amount of scholarship and history. There’s a moving chapter about America’s first Black bookstore, D. Ruggles Books, which was opened by David Ruggles in 1830s New York. Along with a history of the shop, there is an 1883 lithograph of the bespectacled Ruggles, quotes from Frederick Douglass about his upstanding character (he called him a “whole-souled man”), and a copy of a newspaper advertisement that called the shop “Anti-Slavery Book Store.” Perhaps taking a cue from the Toni Morrison-edited The Black Book, this is as much a collage of information as it is a book. Prose to the People is an important addition to any library, but especially for book collectors interested in Black culture and the power and influence of independent bookstores.

Prose to the People overflows with photographs, oral histories, essays and interviews that document and celebrate Black bookstores.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Please Pay Attention

Review by Norah Piehl

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.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Pencil

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Midnight Motorbike

Review by Alice Cary

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.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Interiors of a Storyteller

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Stephanie Sabbe’s Interiors of a Storyteller is as much a memoir as it is a book about design. Sabbe is from West Virginia, but she built her career as an interior designer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her affinity for Southern storytelling is clear: Woven throughout the photographs of beautiful homes are personal stories about an absentee dad, a dying mother, even an FBI raid of an uncle’s marijuana crop. “The world around me was literally going up in smoke,” she writes, “and I lay in the treehouse with a smile on my face, staring up at the sky, dreaming of my next construction project.” The home that immediately follows the story of the burning crops reminds Sabbe of her West Virginia treehouse. The Writer’s Cottage, as Sabbe describes it, is an elegant place that Sabbe designed while envisioning former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama staying there one day, perhaps on a writers’ retreat together. The book’s final chapter details where Sabbe sourced materials for each project, so inspired readers might be able to replicate some of her designs. Each home is different, but one cohesive element is the presence of books. “Books, books, and more books,” Sabbe writes. “My clients as a whole are a pretty literate group.” Interiors of a Storyteller will delight Southerners, designers and fans of storytelling of all stripes.

Stephanie Sabbe’s Interiors of a Storyteller weaves memoir with interior design and is recommended for Southerners, designers and fans of storytelling of all stripes.
Children's & YAChildren's

Home is a Wish

Review by Alice Cary

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.
FictionPopular Fiction

Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn

Review by Chika Gujarathi

Francine Stevenson: a smart but lonesome 25-year-old, a Black lesbian and a UC Berkeley graduate. A product of her parents’ abundant love, which counteracted the bullying she endured in her crappy childhood, Francine is supremely cultured and cool, yet lacks the confidence to believe it about herself. She is an aspiring photographer with talent; however, said talent is currently being wasted in her work as a full-time assistant to a tech executive, and a part-time videographer for her mother Corrina’s astrological YouTube channel. 

When Corrina dies suddenly from heart failure, Francine falls into deep, unshakable sadness. But just when she’s unable to carry on, a commotion outside her window causes her to pause. She sees a boy being picked on by some bullies. Having been through enough of that in her formative years, Francine rushes to help the boy, who turns out to be Davie—10 years old, exceptionally smart and possibly autistic, a boy who habitually blurts slavery factoids whenever distressed.

After that first encounter, Davie starts showing up unannounced at her house, and Francine decides it’s time to meet his foster parents, Jeannette and Tucker, and to be a bigger part of Davie’s life. But when Francine starts falling for the married Jeannette, things take a very interesting turn. The making of the crash and burn, perhaps?

Renee Swindle’s novel Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn indeed does a spectacular and heartwarming job of showcasing how life is full of contradictions, and how unexpected connections can be a salve for seemingly boundless grief.

Swindle’s first win is her mastery of characters, who are genuine and multifaceted, carrying the same burdens, judgments and limitations that we might expect in our own life. Her second win is the accomplishment of addressing some heavy subjects like depression, racism and bullying in what still feels like a very tender, light and often humorous read. Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn is sure to deliver the excitement of overcoming adversity and new beginnings. 

Renee Swindle’s novel Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn indeed does a spectacular and heartwarming job of showcasing how unexpected connections can be a salve for grief.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Gabriele

Review by Eric A. Ponce

Looking at our own family histories, we tend to imagine the roles our ancestors played in the events which shaped their times. How did they survive the Great Depression? If they immigrated, did they come through Ellis Island? Were they listening to the songs or reading the books from their time that are now classics? In Gabriele, sisters Anne and Claire Berest uncover their real-life family history and find a cavalcade of romance and drama at the heart of the European art world. Gabriele Buffet, the authors’ great-grandmother, was a bold and brilliant woman caught in a fiery love triangle: She married the Spanish artist Francis Picabia and also became the lover of the French artist and sculptor Marcel Duchamp (infamous for his sculpture “Fountain,” a signed urinal). The Berest sisters trace their great-grandmother’s life, limning her personal history with their family lore while simultaneously giving readers an intimate portrait of a transformative time in world history. 

The Belle Epoque, the peaceful period right before World War I, was a progressive and hopeful time in Europe and around the world, which would prove the naivete of humankind. Though she certainly wasn’t naive, Gabriele Buffet was an idealist and artist. In 1908, at the pinnacle of the Belle Epoque, Gabriele is 27 and has moved to Berlin from France to complete her musical studies. She has already had several fateful encounters with history, including meeting Vladimir Lenin in Switzerland and hearing Claude Debussy play. Her brother, a painter, introduces her to Francis, who has been obsessing over Gabriele before even meeting her, spinning a life for her out of the stories told by her brother. Gabriele dazzles him even more in real life and, after hearing his exciting ideas about art, the two start a romance based on the life of the mind. In community with other artists, however, the couple starts to face problems, not the least of which being Gabriele’s obvious attraction to a rebellious younger artist, Duchamp. As each artist strives to create their masterpieces, and as the world grows increasingly unstable, this love triangle simmers and catastrophically erupts.

The most engaging part of Gabriele is the Berests’ prose: Early on, the authors note that they will be telling the story in the present tense, to capture the feeling and energy of their great-grandmother. The result is a historical novel unlike any other. 

In Gabriele, Anne and Claire Berest limn the life of their great-grandmother, finding a cavalcade of romance and drama at the heart of the European art world. The result is a historical novel unlike any other.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Don’t Trust Fish

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

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.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features