New Release Spotlight – Week of March 19, 2024

Another week of great book releases! The past two weeks have been massive for middle grades. This week, YA and picture books both look strongest, with lots of new and diverse titles.

My top picks:

• The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le (YA)
• Louder Than Hunger by John Schu (MG)
• The House Before Falling Into the Sea by Ann Suk Wang (PB) – Possible Caldecott contender for 2025?

This week’s Spotlight titles are #3927 – #3942 on The Ginormous Booklist.

 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In the industrial city of Theumas, Nhika is seen not as a healer, but a monster that kills for pleasure. And in the city’s criminal underbelly, the rarest of monsters are traded for gold. When Nhika is finally caught by the infamous Butchers, she’s forced to heal the last witness to a high-profile murder.

As Nhika delves into the investigation, all signs point to Ven Kochin, an alluring yet entitled physician’s aide. Despite his relentless attempts to push her out of his opulent world, something inexplicable draws Nhika to him. But when she discovers Kochin is not who he claims to be, Nhika will be faced with a greater, more terrifying evil lurking in the city’s center…

Her only chance to survive lies in a terrible choice―become the dreaded monster the city fears, or risk jeopardizing the future of her kind.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

It’s like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again…

Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school, this time at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school after being home-schooled all her life.

Misfortune has been a constant companion all her life, but even Sade doesn’t expect her new roommate, Elizabeth, to disappear after Sade’s first night. Or for people to think she had something to do with it.

With rumors swirling around her, Sade catches the attention of the girls collectively known as the ‘Unholy Trinity’ and they bring her into their fold. Between learning more about them–especially Persephone, who Sade is inexplicably drawn to–and playing catchup in class, Sade already has so much on her plate. But when it seems people don’t care enough about what happened to Elizabeth to really investigate, it’s up to she and Elizabeth’s best friend to solve it.

And then a student is found dead.

As they keep trying to figure out what’s going on, Sade realizes there’s more to Alfred Nobel Academy and its students than she thought. Secrets lurk around every corner and beneath every surface…secrets that rival even her own.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Neely’s monsters don’t always follow her rules, so when the little girl under her bed, the man in her closet, and the disembodied voice that shadows her every move become louder, she knows she’s in trouble.

With a history of mental illness in her family and the suicide of her older brother heavy on her mind, Neely takes a job as a tour guide in the one place her monsters can’t follow—the caverns.

There…she meets Mila. Mila is everything Neely isn’t—beautiful, strong, and confident. As the two become closer, Neely’s innocent crush grows into something more. When a midnight staff party exposes Neely to drugs, she follows Mila’s lead…only to have her hallucinations escalate.

When Mila is found brutally murdered in the caverns, Neely has to admit that her memories of that night are vague at best. With her monsters now out in the open and her grip on reality slipping, Neely must figure out who killed Mila . . . and face the possibility that it might have been her.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

It’s been years since Nova Evans last saw Sam. She was too young then to understand why he had to move away―and what it had to do with the cuts and bruises he got from home and never wanted to talk about. All she knew is that they promised to find each other when they were older, something she thought was impossible thanks to her and her mom moving around constantly.

Until she bumps into Sam in her new school, and realizes he has clearly forgotten their childhood promise.

Sam Jordan has a plan for his life: accept his college football scholarship, date his girlfriend Abigail, and―most importantly―hide how much he wants to do something, anything other than The Plan™ his parents and coaches have set before him. It doesn’t matter if sometimes he finds himself thinking about the new girl he met in the cafeteria, a girl who reminds him of a past that hurts to remember.

When a school-wide personality test reveals Nova and Sam to be each others’ top matches―not only that, but a match of 99%, the highest in the school―they begin to remember why they were such close friends, all those years ago. As well as the myriad of reasons this new-yet-familiar, magnetic, sparkling thing between them will never, ever work out.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Human history has always been shaped by technology, but AI is like no technology that has come before it.

Unlike the wheel, combustion engines, or electricity, AI does the thing that humans do best: think. While AI hasn’t reproduced the marvelously complex human brain, it has been able to accomplish astonishing things.

AI has defeated our players at games like chess, Go, and Jeopardy!. It’s learned to recognize objects and speech. It can create art and music. It’s even allowed grieving people to feel as though they were talking with their dead loved ones.

On the flip side, it’s put innocent people in jail, manipulated the emotions of social media users, and tricked people into believing untrue things.

In this nonfiction book for teens, acclaimed author and teacher Martha Brockenbrough guides readers through the development of this world-changing technology, exploring how AI has touched every corner of our world, including education, healthcare, work, politics, war, international relations, and even romance.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

1971. Brooklyn, New York. Undercover cop Frank Serpico is knocking on a drug dealer’s door. His partners are there to back him up, but when the door opens, he’s staring down the barrel of a gun—and his partners are nowhere to be found.

For more than a century, the New York Police Department had been plagued by corruption, with cops openly taking bribes from gamblers and drug dealers. Not Serpico. He refused to take dirty money and fought to shed light on the dark underbelly of the NYPD. But instead of being hailed as a hero, he became a target for every crooked cop on the force.

In Marked Man, John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro bring this true story of police corruption to life. Join Frank Serpico on his one-man crusade to clean up the largest police force in the United States. And discover the price he had to pay for being an honest cop.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II.

Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps. Asawa’s family had to abandon their farm, her father was incarcerated, and she and the rest of her family were sent to a detention center in California, and later to a concentration camp in Arkansas.

Asawa nurtured her dreams of becoming an artist while imprisoned and eventually made her way to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

This graphic biography by Sam Nakahira, developed in consultation with Asawa’s younger daughter, Addie Lanier, chronicles the genesis of Asawa as an artist—from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking sculpture.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Wildfires have been part of the American landscape for thousands of years. Forests need fire–it’s as necessary to their well-being as soil and sunlight.  But some fires burn out of control, destroying everything and everyone in their path.

In this book, you’ll find out about:

• how and why wildfires happen
• how different groups, from Native Americans to colonists, from conservationists to modern industrialists, have managed forests and fire
• the biggest wildfires in American history–how they began and dramatic stories of both rescue and tragedy
• what we’re doing today to fight forest fires

Chock full of dramatic stories, fascinating facts, and compelling photos, When Forests Burn teaches us about the past–and shows a better way forward in the future.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers.

He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food.

Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing.

But the less he eats, the bigger he feels.

How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?

A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Pia is a soft-spoken middle schooler whose life is turned upside down after the loss of her younger brother, followed by her parents’ decision to move to a new town.

In an effort to get her mind off of the troubles at home, Pia goes on a bus tour with a family friend, stopping at weird and wacky roadside attractions.

The final destination: a mysterious underground lake. The locals say it has magical powers; Pia won’t admit she believes in it, but she’s holding on to hope that the waters may hold the answer to mending her broken family.

The trip is much more than the final stop. The friendships that Pia makes along the way are just as valuable as the destination itself.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

On the first day of spring, when the city is quiet and still, little Yaya takes the A train down to New York City’s southern shores with her mama and aunties to greet Mama Ocean and celebrate the arrival of a new season through a ritual of letting go of the past and embracing the new.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

The lightest birds in the sky, hummingbirds are capable of incredible feats, such as flying backwards, diving at speeds of sixty-one miles per hour, and beating their wings more than sixty times a second.

The miraculous creatures are also incredibly vulnerable when they first emerge from their eggs. This book tells the story of a hummingbird’s early life and how they make their way into the world.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Most of us have heard the name Georgia O’Keeffe— she’s one of the most famous women in art history. But did you know that for most of her life, she lived on her own land in New Mexico, grew her own food, bought locally, and even made her own clothing?

Georgia’s garden and her art fed and enriched one another, just as her bean plants enriched the soil and her home-grown feasts fed her friends. In spite of the era’s prejudice against female artists, Georgia lived and thrived in her verdant sanctuary well into old age.

Soothing and inspiring, Gifts from Georgia’s Garden illuminates the life and philosophy of a figure every child should know. Backmatter adds context to O’Keeffe’s story and invites families to try out her sustainable gardening techniques— and her pecan butterball cookies.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Breaking News: Wishing Well Broken!

The townspeople of Bad Göodsburg are up in arms. With their beloved well busted, none of their important, generous, kindhearted wishes are coming true!

Time to send that good-for-nothing Newsboy to investigate…

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ever since mysterious bones were found in 1822, scientists and artists have tried to figure out what the creature they came from looked like. But it seems that every time they’ve made up their minds, someone makes a new discovery, and they have to start all over. That’s only fair, though—after all, it’s how knowledge advances!

With an inviting tone and detail-filled art, Sean Rubin traces the process of defining—and redefining—the dinosaur called Iguanodon. Entertaining, accessible, and beautiful, his tale will delight dinosaur fans, budding artists, and anyone curious about how science really works.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Every day, more and more people fleeing war in the north show up at Kyung Tak and her family’s house on the southeastern shore of Korea.

With nowhere else to go, the Taks’ home is these migrants’ last chance of refuge “before falling into the sea,” and the household quickly becomes crowded, hot, and noisy.

Then war sirens cry out over Kyung’s city too, and her family and their guests take shelter underground.

When the sirens stop, Kyung is upset—she wishes everything could go back to the way it was before: before the sirens, before strangers started coming into their home.

But after an important talk with her parents, her new friend Sunhee, and Sunhee’s father, Kyung realizes something important: We’re stronger when we have each other, and the kindness we show one another in the darkest of times is a gift we’ll never regret.

THIS WEEK’S SEQUELS

  

LAST WEEK’S NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHT

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.

Each week, school librarian Leigh Collazo compiles the New Release Spotlight using a combination of Follett’s Titlewave, Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Recommended grade levels represent the range of grade levels recommended by professional book reviewers. See the full selection criteria here.

Inevitably, there are far more books that meet my criteria than can make it on the Spotlight. When I have to make the tough decisions on what to include, I just use my “librarian judgment.” Would I buy this book for my own library? Would my students want to read this book? Is the cover appealing? Does it fill a need?