A smallish Spotlight this week, likely due to the July 4th holiday on Thursday. Holiday weeks do tend to have fewer new releases.
YA and Middle Grade titles both have some great selections! Picture books have been fab the past 2-3 weeks, but only two titles made the Spotlight this week.
My top picks this week:
All three presentations are in Canva and editable! Just click below, then go to File-Make a Copy in your Canva account. If you do not have a Canva account, you can get a free educator account here (must be verified).
I will add titles to the Canva presentations throughout July 2024. By the end of July, each presentation will have around 20 titles on it. So great to play on a loop in the library!
YA Presentation Link – Grades 7+
Middle Grades Presentation Link – Grades 3-8
Picture Book Presentation Link – PreS-Grade 5+
This week’s Spotlight titles are #4164 – #4174 on The Ginormous Booklist.
This will appeal to pet lovers! Linney was the author's real-life housecat. Author Lucy Knisley wrote humorous webcomics about her kitty's thoughts and feeling about his everyday life.
I love that Linney was a shelter cat, something near and dear to my heart.
What if our cats could talk? Would they ask endless questions about why we haven’t given them wet food…again? Would they scream greetings at the first sign of life before the sun even rises? Linney certainly will.
Have you met Linney yet? If not, prepared to be blessed! Lucy Knisley’s online Linney comics are collected for the very first time in this gifty hardcover featuring the internet sensation, Linney. With all-new comics, this collection shows us just how amazing, and what a true gift, all cats are.
This realistic fiction graphic novel focuses on four friends who have just graduated high school. Before all four go their separate ways in September, they will have one last summer together in New York City. And it's a summer of dares.
I chose this book for the Spotlight because it's a graphic novel, and I love that front cover! But beyond that, it reminds me of Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Levithan and Cohn, 2010), which has both a YA book and a Netflix series.
With senior year finally behind them, Cassie and her three best friends are on their way to what’s next.
Like their parents, the crew has always been inseparable: there’s Marcy, the artist, for whom style is self-expression and sarcasm is a love language; Aaron, the future lawyer, whose good humor balances out his competitive streak; Nico, the musician, whose flirtatiousness, obliviousness, and recent interest in a rising senior are becoming increasingly unbearable to Cassie; and of course, Cassie herself, the only one who doesn’t have her future all figured out.
This summer is their last chance to make memories together in New York City before everyone but Cassie scatters across the globe for college—and she’s determined to make the most of it. Her plan? They’ll spend August playing the game of dares and risks they invented as kids!
From adventurous to outrageous, these dares will definitely make for an unforgettable summer.
Even better, Cassie is hopeful they’ll help the group stay friends no matter what…because she is not ready for a future without them.
This is a realistic fiction story of grief, foster care, and reunited twin sisters. It sounds quite sad, TBH, but there is definitely a market for very serious YA books like this one. It does at least sound hopeful.
This title from debut author Myah Hollis earned two starred professional reviews. I love that cover, too!
Amélie Cœur has never known what it truly means to be happy.
She thought she’d found happiness once, in a love that ended in tragedy and nearly sent her over the edge.
Now, at seventeen, Mel is beginning to piece her life back together. Under the supervision of Laurelle Child Services, the exclusive foster care agency that raised her, Mel is sober and living with a new family among Manhattan’s elite. It’s her last chance at adoption before she ages out of the system, and she promised, this time, she’ll try.
But a casual relationship with a boy is turning into something she never intended for it to be, causing small cracks in her carefully constructed walls.
Then the sister she has no memory of contacts Mel, unearthing complicated feelings about the past and what could have been.
As the anniversary of the worst day of her life approaches, Mel must weather the rising tides of grief and depression before she loses herself, and those close to her, all over again.
Neal Shusterman is one of my favorite YA writers, and I love how he writes across multiple genres. This one is realistic fiction and about two incarcerated teens - a boy and a girl - in the same juvenile detention center.
The girl leaves her journal behind in the library one day, and the boy finds it and writes in it. So begins a new relationship, based entirely on written letters in the journal. Perspectives alternate between the boy and the girl.
Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big.
Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings—and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.
Jon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away.
This fictionalized memoir tells the story of three women, all at age 16. The women are grandmother, mother, and daughter. All three have a different setting in history.
What's extra cool about this is that each character has her own color palette, with one purple, one orange, and one green. As the three women start to heal and come together, their color palettes blend.
Guangdong, 1954 – Sixteen-year-old Mei Laan longs for a future of freedom, and her beauty may be the key to getting it. Can an arranged marriage in Hong Kong be the answer to all her problems?
Hong Kong, 1972 – Sixteen-year-old Lydia wants nothing more than to dance and to gain approval from her mother, who is largely absent and sharply critical, especially about the way she looks. Maybe her way to happiness is starting over in Toronto?
Toronto, 2000 – Sixteen-year-old Roz is grappling with who she wants to be in the world. The only thing she is certain of is that if she were thinner, things would be better. How can she start living her life, instead of just photographing it?
When Roz’s estranged por por abruptly arrives for a seemingly indefinite visit, three generations are now under one roof. Delicate relationships are suddenly upended, and long-suppressed family secrets begin to surface.
This is the story of a young male werewolf who is bullied at school, until the day his bully also becomes a werewolf and needs his help.
I included this title only because it two starred professional reviews. I am not personally interested in reading it because of a comment in the Kirkus review.
The reviewer mentions "heavy-handed delivery" of some information. I read this comment as possibly didacticism or maybe a lot of information about the Jewish faith. I haven't read the book, but "heavy-handed delivery" is a massive turn-off for me. This may be one of those situations where the book gets tons of great reviews and even wins awards, but middle grade readers aren't interested.
Benji Zeb has a lot going on. He has a lot of studying to do, not only for school but also for his upcoming bar mitzvah.
He’s nervous about Mr. Rutherford, the aggressive local rancher who hates Benji’s family’s kibbutz and wolf sanctuary.
And he hasn’t figured out what to do about Caleb, Mr. Rutherford’s stepson, who has been bullying Benji pretty hard at school, despite Benji wanting to be friends (and maybe something more).
And all of this is made more complicated by the fact that, secretly, Benji and his entire family are werewolves who are using the wolf sanctuary as cover for their true identities!
Things come to a head when Caleb shows up at the kibbutz one night…in wolf form! He’s a werewolf too, unable to control his shifting, and he needs Benji’s help.
Can anxious Benji juggle all of these things along with his growing feelings toward Caleb?
This Jurassic Park-esque story is set in a resort amusement park. On display are magical creatures and plants, many of which are deadly to humans.
When a train gets stuck in the middle of the forest, the passengers are left scrambling to survive.
The protagonist here is a 13-year old maid-in-training who got stuck accompanying the owner of the park's spoiled daughter on a tour. She'll have to use her wits to survive and to save the animals from nefarious deeds happening all around them.
Hattie Swift is a maid-in-training at Majestica, a resort and nature preserve where visitors come face-to-face with rare magical flora and fauna.
She’s thrilled to be invited along on the park’s famous wilderness train excursion for the first time, but there’s a catch: She has to accompany Evelyn Ridgewell, the hotel owner’s haughty niece, who wants nothing to do with her.
Soon after embarking, Evelyn overhears a man who aims to hunt the park’s creatures for sport, and Hattie meets Jacob Threadborne, an apprentice magician sent by a foreign government on a top-secret mission.
Then the magical fences keeping guests safe stop working, and the train breaks down in the most treacherous part of the jungle.
Faced with poachers, man-eating trees, and a dragon on the loose, Hattie, Evelyn, and Jacob must stick together to figure out what’s gone wrong at Majestica…that is, if they want to make it out alive.
The son of a grifter is tired of lying to everyone. He wants to settle down in one place and make new friends. But his dad has other plans.
Here's how it works: Twelve-year old Trey enrolls in a new school. He makes new friends. His dad befriends their rich parents and swindles them into investing in his new scheme. By the time the investors catch on to the scheme, Trey, his dad, and his little sister are long gone.
That plot will be super-easy to booktalk!
Trey knows the drill: His dad gets him into a school full of kids with rich parents. Trey makes friends, and his dad makes connections.
Soon, there’s the con, where Trey’s dad suckers the other parents into investing in one of his schemes.
Once the money’s in the bank, Trey, his sister, and their dad are on the run…until they set up somewhere else and start again.
Trey believes his father when he says no one’s getting hurt. After all, these parents have money to spare.
But Trey’s starting to get tired of running… and lying… and never having a friend for longer than a few months.
But how do you get your family to stop lying when your lives depend on it?
Breaking Into Sunlight tackles a very difficult topic: parental drug abuse. The boy in the story, Reece, finds his father has overdosed...again.
Reece's father survives the overdose, thanks to a quick 911 call from his son. But for Reece's mother, it's the last straw. She takes Reece to live in a rundown trailer park. There, Reece deals with anger at his mother and worry about his father.
As noted below, the full reviews are not currently in Titlewave. I have linked two positive professional reviews (SLJ and Kirkus) below.
Reese is a seventh-grader in rural North Carolina who loves drawing, basketball, his hardworking mom, and his charming, charismatic dad.
But then one day, he comes home to his worst nightmare – his dad on the floor, lips turning blue, overdosed. Again.
Reese calls 911 and gets his dad out of danger, and he expects to go on as before.
But for his mom, this is the breaking point, and she declares that she and Reese are leaving until Reese’s dad gets real help with his addiction. They move to a rundown trailer outside of town, where Reese is furious with his mom, scared for his dad, and terrified his friends will find out.
Then he meets Meg and Charlie, who have likewise been stranded by circumstances beyond their control.
As the trio explores the blackwater river that runs nearby, Reese discovers new beauty and joy in nature and these fresh connections.
His dad is also doing better, holding things together, and talking to his mom again. But how long can the good times last? And what will Reese do if — when — they end?
Allan Ahlberg has been writing children's books since before I was born! He is the author of Each Peach Pear Plum, Previously, and The Pencil, among many others. With such a robust catalog, Ahlberg is an excellent author for elementary author studies.
You can see a good-sized part of this picture book in the Amazon sample. I love the colorful illustrations and the cute facial expressions!
What do you do when you’re having an ordinary day, only to discover there’s a big gray elephant (named Nathaniel) under the table?
Why, you get him to help you wash the car!
And the kangaroo (named Abigail) that appears under that same table can help bring in groceries.
But when there are penguins in the fridge, the forks and knives are running around, and the salt and ketchup are acting up, there is only one thing to do: pack everyone in the camper and go on vacation!
This is a humorous tale about a family that loves pasta...all different kinds of pasta!
It's a great choice for storytime because the text is rhythmic and rhymes. Be sure to check the pronunciations of the different pastas before reading (such as gnocchi, which I've heard pronounced in different ways).
Ring-a-ding, the doorbell rings, and oh! What did my Nonna bring?
Nonna Ana from Catania only likes to eat lasagna.
But Nonno Titi from Tahiti only eats his spaghettini!
Zio Tony wants ravioli, Zia Trini wants rotini, the cugini want tortellini…
Family dinners can be tricky when the guests are oh-so-picky! As the kitchen gets more and more chaotic, can family pasta night go off without a hitch?
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?
