Huge apologies for not posting a Spotlight last week! I have had an insane couple of weeks, and just when I think it’s dying down, we have another unexpected surprise. All is well, it’s just a lot to take in at one time. I definitely didn’t want to pass up this week’s incredible new books, but please bear with me in case I happen to post a shorter Spotlight or skip a week or two altogether. Hopefully, we are through the mess and things will start to calm down for my family.
As I mentioned, this week’s Spotlight is FANTASTIC! Of the 18 titles featured this week, SEVEN received at least three starred reviews. Major authors include: Alice Oseman, S.K. Ali, Randi Pink, Ellen Potter, Alicia D. Williams, and Mac Barnett.
Middle grades and picture books look best to me this week. It’s a tall order for me to choose just three favorites, but here goes…
This week’s top picks:
- Road of the Lost by Nafiza Azad (YA)
- Frizzy by Claribel Ortega (middle grades)
- The Talk by Alicia D. Williams (picture books)
- Favorite cover: Frizzy by Claribel Ortega (middle grades)
This week’s Spotlight titles are #2835-#2852 on The Ginormous book list.
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I Was Born for This by Alice Oseman
Jimmy Kaga-Ricci owes everything to The Ark. He’s their frontman–and playing in a band with his mates is all he ever dreamed of doing, even it only amplifies his anxiety. The fans are very accepting that he’s trans–but they also keep shipping with him with his longtime friend and bandmate, Rowan. But Jimmy and Rowan are just friend–and Rowan has a secret girlfriend the fans can never know about. Dreams don’t always turn out the way you think and when Jimmy and Angel are unexpectedly thrust together, they find out how strange and surprising facing up to reality can be.
Kirkus starred.
- Genre(s): realistic fiction, romance
- Setting: London, England
- Recommended for: Grades 9-12
- Themes: boy bands, celebrity, fame, musicians, LGBTQIA+, mental health, difficulty in keeping private life private, sexual identity
- Protagonist description: female, age 18, Persian British hijabi; and transgender boy, age 19, Christian, Indian and Italian descent
*Love from Mecca to Medina by S. K. Ali
Adam and Zayneb. Perfectly matched. Painfully apart.
Adam is in Doha, Qatar, making a map of the Hijra, a historic migration from Mecca to Medina, and worried about where his next paycheck will come from. Zayneb is in Chicago, where school and extracurricular stresses are piling on top of a terrible frenemy situation, making her miserable.
Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. Adam is thrilled; it’s the reboot he needs and an opportunity to pray for a hijra in real life: to migrate to Zayneb in Chicago. Zayneb balks at the trip at first, having envisioned another kind of vacation, but then decides a spiritual reset is calling her name too. And they can’t wait to see each other–surely, this is just what they both need.
But the trip is nothing like what they expect, from the appearance of Adam’s former love interest in their traveling group to the anxiety gripping Zayneb when she’s supposed to be “spiritual.” As one wedge after another drives them apart while they make their way through rites in the holy city, Adam and Zayneb start to wonder: was their meeting just an oddity after all? Or can their love transcend everything else like the greatest marvels of the world?
Kirkus and Booklist starred.
- Genre(s): realistic fiction
- Setting: Thanksgiving; Doha, Qatar; Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia; and Chicago, USA
- Recommended for: Grades 9-12
- Themes: Hijra, poverty, anxiety, school stress, friend drama, frenemies, Thanksgiving, pilgrimages, housing insecurity, law school, Muslims, Islamic history, multiple sclerosis
- Protagonist description: male and female Muslim couple are Islamically married but living apart; both are young adults; female is in law school; male has multiple sclerosis (in remission)
*When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb
Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.
Kirkus and Booklist starred. This sounds unique and interesting, but I’m not sure how many high school students will pick this up on their own (without booktalking).
- Genre(s): supernatural
- Setting: Poland and USA
- Recommended for: Grades 8-12
- Themes: angels, demons, Talmud, sweatshops, Ashkenazi folklore, gender fluidity, immigration, Ellis Island
- Protagonist description: an angel, a demon, and a 16-year old American female
Road of the Lost by Nafiza Azad
Forced to leave her home, Croi begins a journey full of surprises…and dangers. For Croi is not a brownie at all but another creature entirely, enchanted to forget her true heritage. As Croi ventures beyond the forest, her brownie glamour begins to shift and change. Who is she really, who is summoning her, and what do they want? Croi will need every ounce of her newfound magic and her courage as she travels a treacherous path to find her true self and the place in the Otherworld where she belongs.
Kirkus starred. I can name exactly the students I would recommend this to, and I bet you can, too! Give this to fans of Holly Black or Sarah Maas.
- Genre(s): fantasy
- Setting: magical forest
- Recommended for: Grades 8-12
- Themes: fae, power, magic, glamours, spells, journeys, identity, hags
- Protagonist description: female, magical creature who believes she is a brownie but is something else (revealed in story)
We Are the Scribes by Randi Pink
When her family is rocked by tragedy, Ruth stops writing. As life goes on, Ruth’s mother is presented with a political opportunity she can’t refuse. Just as Senator Fitz is more absent, Ruth begins receiving parchment letters with a seal reading WE ARE THE SCRIBES, sent by Harriet Jacobs, the author of the autobiography and 1861 American classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Is Ruth dreaming? How has she been chosen as a “scribe” when she can barely put a sentence together? In a narrative that blends present with past, Randi Pink explores two extraordinary characters who channel their hopelessness and find their voices to make history.
I recently read Randi Pink’s Girls Like Us, and I loved the quiet power in Pink’s prose. Give this to fans of Angie Thomas and Jason Reynolds.
- Genre(s): historical fiction, supernatural, magical realism
- Recommended for: Grades 8-12
- Themes: activism v. staying quiet, political family, civil rights, social change, Black Lives Matter, sisters, death, grief, murder, writing, ghosts, slavery, American history, racism, power of words
- Protagonist description: female, age 16, African American
*Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega (Author) and Rose Bousamra (Illustrator)
But Marlene hates being in the salon and doesn’t understand why her curls are not considered pretty by those around her. With a few hiccups, a dash of embarrassment, and the much-needed help of Camila and Tia Ruby–she slowly starts a journey to learn to appreciate and proudly wear her curly hair.
FOUR starred reviews!
- Genre(s): graphic novel, realistic fiction
- Setting: salon, middle school
- Recommended for: Grades 3-8
- Themes: curly hair, bookish, harmful beauty standards, aunts, family, self-love, cousins, quinceañeras, colorism, generational trauma
- Protagonist description: female, Dominican American, middle schooler
Honey and Me by Meira Drazin
Milla envies Honey’s confidence, her charisma, and her big, chaotic family–especially when they provide a welcome escape from Milla’s own small family and quiet house. In their close-knit Jewish community, the two girls do everything together, from delivering meals to an ill-tempered elderly neighbor, to shopping at a local thrift store, celebrating the holidays, and going to their first bat mitzvahs while studying for their own.
So when Honey joins Milla’s school for sixth grade, why is it not as great as Milla expected? Can their friendship survive all the ups and downs the year has in store for them? And will Milla ever find the courage to step out of Honey’s shadow and into her own spotlight?
Kirkus starred.
- Genre(s): realistic fiction
- Setting: middle school
- Recommended for: Grades 4-8
- Themes: best friends, jealousy, Jewish families, Jewish holidays and festivals, Jewish calendar, one friend overshadowing the other, bat mitzvah, choices, need for approval from others, autistic sibling
- Protagonist description: two female friends, both 6th graders, both white, one is Modern Orthodox Jewish
Outside Nowhere by Adam Borba
Once Parker’s father catches wind of his latest scheme, he decides enough is enough, and Parker is sent halfway across the country to work on a farm alongside five other kids who aren’t his biggest fans. As Parker learns to roll up his sleeves and keep his head down, strange things start happening. And after he awakens one morning to find a seventeen-hundred-pound dairy cow on the roof of a barn, he suspects that something magical and mysterious is growing in the farm’s fields.
Adam Borba presents a whimsical new story about a boy’s discovery that mistakes and miracles can have serious consequences.
Kirkus starred. Includes full-page and spot illustrations.
- Genre(s): fantasy, mystery, supernatural
- Setting: Midwestern farm, summer
- Recommended for: Grades 5-8
- Themes: kids with jobs, trying to get fired, working on a farm, hard work, magic
- Protagonist description: male, white
*Unlawful Orders A Portrait of Dr. James B. Williams, Tuskegee Airman, Surgeon, and Activist by Barbara Binns
The Freeman Field Mutiny, as it became known, would eventually lead to the desegregation of the US armed forces, forever changing the course of American history and race relations.
One Black officer who refused to give in to the bigotry at Freeman Field was James Buchanan “JB” Williams. JB grew up the son of sharecroppers, but his loving family and insuppressible intellect drove him to push boundaries placed on Black Americans in the early twentieth century.
JB’s devotion to the betterment of others took him from the classroom where he learned to be a doctor, to serving as a medic in the US military and eventually joining the elite Tuskegee Airmen, where he fought to change the minds of all who believed Black men couldn’t make good soldiers. But JB’s greatest contribution came in his role as doctor and Civil Rights activist after the war, where he continued to push past injustices placed on Black Americans.
Kirkus and Publishers Weekly starred.
- Genre(s): biography, narrative nonfiction
- Setting: Indiana, 1907 through 1960s
- Recommended for: Grades 5-8
- Themes: Tuskegee Airmen, US history, WWII, world history, racism, military, desegregation of US armed forces, The Freeman Field Mutiny, bigotry, doctors, civil rights, activism, nonviolent resistance, social justice
- Protagonist description: African American man
*Freestyle by Gale Galligan
The group starts to have problems as their crew captain gets increasingly intense about nailing the routine, and things go from bad to worse when Cory’s parents ground him for not taking his grades seriously.
He gets stuck with a new tutor, Sunna, who he dismisses as a boring nerd…until he catches her secretly practicing cool yo-yo tricks. Cory wants to learn the art of yo-yo, and as his friendship with Sunna grows, he ends up missing practice and bailing on his crew–and they are not happy about it. With mounting pressure coming from all sides, how is Cory supposed to balance the expectations of his parents, school, dance, and his new friend?
FOUR starred reviews!
- Genre(s): graphic novel, realistic fiction
- Setting: New York City
- Recommended for: Grades 3-8
- Themes: dance competitions, tutors, yo-yo tricks, friendship, balancing social expectations and obligations, hijabis
- Protagonist description: male, 8th grader, Filipino; female, 8th grader, hijabi; secondary cast is diverse
*My Nest of Silence by Matt Faulkner
Still, Mari has no trouble expressing herself through her drawings. Mak, too, expresses himself in his letters home, first from training camp and later from the front lines of World War II, where he is fighting with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. But while his letters are reassuring, reality is not: Mak is facing danger at every turn, from racism within the army to violence on the battlefield.
THREE starred reviews! Dual voices alternate between graphic novel and prose formats. Grade level recommendations are all over the place for this title, ranging from Grades 4-10. Middle school and high school readers are a sure bet; I’m not sure about elementary.
- Genre(s): historical fiction, graphic novel
- Setting: 1944, split between WWII battlefront in Europe and Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp in California
- Recommended for: Grades 4-10
- Themes: Japanese internment camps, US history, WWII, prejudice, racism, Manzanar, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, war
- Protagonist description: Japanese siblings, one male and one female, male is 18, female is younger
*Hazel Hill Is Gonna Win This One by Maggie Horne
But when Hazel discovers Ella is being harassed by golden boy Tyler Harris, she has to choose between winning and doing the right thing. No one would believe that a nice boy like Tyler would harass and intimidate a nice girl like Ella, but Hazel knows the truth–and she’s determined to prove it, even if it means risking everything.
THREE starred reviews!
- Genre(s): realistic fiction
- Setting: middle school
- Recommended for: Grades 4-8
- Themes: determination, middle school, speech competitions, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, speaking up, defending what’s right, LGBT+, not being believed
- Protagonist description: female, 7th grader, white
Hither & Nigh by Ellen Potter
The kids in the club are an odd group, but when their teacher starts giving lessons in magic, things quickly go completely off the weird scale. Nell doesn’t believe in it at first; after all, she’s a smart city kid, and there has been nothing magical in her life since her brother, River, disappeared three years ago.
But this magic is real–and powerful. As their skills grow, Nell and her new friends discover a parallel New York City called the Nigh. It’s a place as delightful as it is scary, sizzling with magical energy, where statues can talk, magicians ride on giant dogs, and monsters roam Central Park. And it is all controlled by the terrifying Minister, who might hold the key to finding Nell’s missing brother. Just how far will Nell go to find him, and who can she trust in a world topsy turvy with enchantment?
Booklist starred.
- Genre(s): fantasy, adventure
- Setting: Nigh, a parallel New York City
- Recommended for: Grades 4-8
- Themes: school, magic, getting into trouble at school, siblings, disappearance of brother, monsters, magical creatures
- Protagonist description: three middle schoolers; 2 in 8th grade, 1 in 7th grade; 2 female, one male; all three read as white
*The Talk by Alicia D. Williams (Author) and Briana Mukodiri Uchendu (Illustrator)
And Jay just wants to be a kid.
All Black and Brown kids get The Talk–the talk that could mean the difference between life and death in a racist world. Told in an age-appropriate fashion, with a perfect pause for parents to insert their own discussions with their children to accompany prompting illustrations, The Talk is a gently honest and sensitive starting point for this far-too-necessary conversation, for Black children, Brown children, and for ALL children. Because you can’t make change without knowing what needs changing.
FOUR starred reviews!
- Genre(s): picture book
- Recommended for: K-Grade 5
- Themes: racism, police violence, prejudice, family, warnings, African Americans, fear, compassion, social change, safety
- Protagonist description: young boy, African American
*The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mac Barnett (Author) and Jon Klassen (Illustrator)
But the troll underestimates those seemingly sweet but oh-so-savvy goats! This is the first in a groundbreaking new collection of fractured fairy tales crafted by two major names in children’s literature: Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.
Booklist and Publishers Weekly starred.
- Genre(s): picture book, humor
- Setting: bridge with a troll living under it
- Recommended for: PreS-Grade 3
- Themes: goats, trolls, fractured fairy tales, folklore, rhyming books
- Protagonist description: three goats of varying sizes; a rat-like troll
*Twelve Dinging Doorbells by Tameka Fryer Brown (Author) and Ebony Glenn (Illustrator)
As tables fill with baked macaroni and cheese, chitlins, and other sides a-steaming, she and Granny move the pie to keep it intact. The task becomes tricker as the room grows with dancing and card games and pie cravings. Just when all seems lost and there’s no more pie, Granny pulls out a sweet surprise.
THREE starred reviews! Written to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
- Genre(s): picture book, holidays
- Setting: Christmas holiday dinner, a home filled with family and food
- Recommended for: PreS-Grade 3
- Themes: families, holidays, pie, food traditions, Christmas, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” cumulative stories, songs
- Protagonist description: large African American family
Me and Muhammad Ali by Jabari Asim (Author) and AG Ford (Illustrator)
When Langston hears the champ is coming to the local high school, he’s ecstatic–this will be a day that will go down in history for him. When the big day arrives, Langston gets a special haircut, and floats like a butterfly to meet his hero–so imagine his disappointment when a guard tries to stop him at the door, saying the event is just for students.
Fortunately, Langston has learned a thing or two about fearlessness from the champ and is quick about not taking “no” for an answer. And just like that, a dream comes true for Langston that leaves him feeling wrapped in a warm glow and chanting I’m quick and I’m strong. I’m Black and I’m free. I’m brave and I’m bold, like Muhammad Ali!
- Genre(s): picture book, historical fiction
- Setting: African American community, 1975
- Recommended for: Grades K-4
- Themes: boxing, Muhammad Ali, poetry, writing, fearlessness, not taking no for an answer, access denied, Black History
- Protagonist description: young African American boy, his mother, and Muhammad Ali
*Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner (Author), Margaret E. Powell (Author), and Erin Robinson (Illustrator)
At a time when the world around her thought African Americans deserved no more than second-class treatment, Ann expected no less than very best for herself.
Although she faced many hardships, Ann’s spirit, talent, and belief in herself always shone through. This story provides an empowering, real-life role model for young girls–and especially Black girls–to relate to and see themselves in, at an age when building self-confidence is more important than ever.
THREE starred reviews!
- Genre(s): picture book biography
- Setting: various US states, starting in Alabama; early 20th Century
- Recommended for: Grades K-5
- Themes: fashion designers, Black history, trailblazers of industry, creativity, discrimination, racism, prejudice, perseverance, resilience, self-confidence
- Protagonist description: young African American female
THIS WEEK’S SEQUELS (YA):
THIS WEEK’S SEQUELS (MIDDLE GRADES):
THIS WEEK’S SEQUELS & FAVORITE CHARACTERS (ELEMENTARY):
ABOUT THE SPOTLIGHT
The New Release Spotlight began in May 2016 as a way to help librarians keep up with the many new children’s and YA books that are released each week. Every Tuesday, school librarian Leigh Collazo compiles the New Release Spotlight using a combination of Follett’s Titlewave, Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Titles with a * by them received two or more starred professional reviews. Recommended grade levels represent the range of grade levels recommended by professional book reviewers.