New Release Spotlight – August 13, 2024

Phew! I’ve got a FANTASTIC Spotlight for you this week! It was a rough one for me because I was super-distracted with The Olympics last week. I didn’t realize this one was going to be so long until Monday morning, so I did most of this Spotlight in one day.

Anyway, there are lots of really great titles this week that you’ll definitely want to have a look at! We have new books from popular authors like Jen Wang, Cynthia Voigt, Jeff Strand, Remy Lai, Deborah Hopkinson, and Sally Nicholls, plus a few debuts!

Oh! And a few scary books ahead of Halloween!

My top picks:

• Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang (YA)
• Read at Your Own Risk by Remy Lai (MG)
• We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang (picture book)

PRESENTATION LINKS:

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 August 2024. By the end of August, 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 #4232 – #4247 on The Ginormous Booklist.

 

Even without all those starred reviews, this is a very popular graphic novel author/illustrator that belongs in every library serving teens.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ash has always felt alone.

Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash’s age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash’s family seems to be sleepwalking through life.

The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it’s still there, waiting for him to come back…or for Ash to find it?

To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life.

But making the wilds your home isn’t easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone…can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Growing up in Slater, Isadora Chang never felt at ease in the repressive small town, even before she realized she was bisexual.

But after the deaths of two childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. So, Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too. Even though it meant leaving everything she knew behind, including her last surviving friend, Mason.

When Isa’s abusive father dies, however, she agrees to come back from art school just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by an evil that haunts the town, and he needs Isa to help stop it―before it takes anyone else.

When Isa begins to hear strange songs on the wind, and eerie artwork fills her sketchbook that she can’t recall drawing, she’s forced to stop running and confront her past.

Because something is waiting in the shadows of Slater’s valleys, something that feeds on the pain and heartbreak of its children. Whatever it is, it knows Isa’s back… and it won’t let her escape again.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.

Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their senior class trip, and he’ll wait however long until she’s ready to take things further.

But when Ruby’s best friend sneaks out the first night to meet a mysterious French boy, Ruby goes after her with two classmates, but caves to another temptation: attending mystery boy’s exclusive party in the Paris catacombs, the intricate web of tunnels beneath the city, home to six million long-dead Parisians. Only they never reach the party.

Underground, as something sinister chases them, they get lost in the endless maze of bones, uncovering dark secrets about the catacombs…..and each other. And if they can’t find a way out, they’ll die in the dark beneath the City of Light.

Aboveground, Sean races to find the girl he loves as a media frenzy over the four missing teens begins.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Helga is not the obedient science experiment her father intended. And though she has only just awoken, he leaves her in the care of his lab assistant Penny to go on a business trip.

Bursting with curiosity, Helga quickly escapes from the well-meaning Penny and heads into Amaris City. There Helga finds she is as untamable as the invasive blackberry vines overtaking the island.

And because of the misdeeds of her father’s scientific community, the natural world grows more volatile.

Helga soon discovers the night market, rowdy clubs, delicious food, and cute boys.

Enamored with city life, she’ll do anything to find love―but she has only two weeks until her father gets back, and besides there are ominous rumblings from the volcanic island that could put her dating schemes, and even her own life, in grave peril.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Chloe, Avery, and Madison can’t wait to spend the night camping in the backyard. Smores! Spooky stories! Trading secrets! It’s going to be awesome.

Sure, Elijah the kid next door keeps trying to prank them, but it’s all in good fun. Who doesn’t like a little scare after the sun has set and the moonlight casts creepy shadows everywhere?

Then the scratching starts on the tent fabric. The girls think it must be Elijah again, but there’s no one outside.

As the scratching gets more insistent, the girls may need to start asking WHAT is making that noise rather than WHO.

Can they make it through the night?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Charles’ life is split between two worlds: one real and one fantasy.

In the real world, he is a lonely, bullied kid who can’t keep up with school when the letters refuse to stay still on the page, and is constantly in trouble for getting distracted. He lives with his mom in an apartment building, where Glory, the grumpy old superintendent, fills his head with stories about the Dream Folk.

In his fantasy world, the Sanctuary, Charles adventures with faeries and sprites and his two imaginary best friends.

There, Charles’s bullies become ogres, and Glory opens his arms wide to transform into a dragon.

But when trolls move into Charles’ apartment building and bring with them a terrible secret, the stories he has been told and the ones he brings to life grow more complicated.

To protect everyone he cares about, Charles must harness his imagination in ways he never dreamed.

Author Cynthia Voigt is a Newbery Medal winner (Dicey’s Song, 1983). The Booklist review mentions that this title would make a good classroom read-aloud with discussion.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

How do such things happen? Something appears, sudden as disaster. It wasn’t there and now it is.

An envelope arrives, in your mailbox, on your dinner table, your dresser, your computer keyboard. It’s in your hand. You are alone when it finds you. No one else sees it, to ask about it or take it from you.

There is only your name on the envelope. Inside, two pieces of pale gray tissue paper, each the size of a playing card, and simple instructions:

ONE WISH AT A TIME

WHISPER IT TO ME

BE WISE

Magic? Impossible. But what if . . . ?

Casey, Zoe, Billy, and Bug live in the same town. They don’t know one another . . . yet. But mysteriously, they are connected by magic.

Specifically, they’ve each been given two wishes. What would you wish for? Casey yearns for a dog. Zoe wants her parents to stop fighting. Billy has always wanted a unicorn. Bug would love a Lego kit, a really complicated one.

And do their wishes come true? The answer may surprise you.

This book meets my criteria anyway, but honestly, it would have made the Spotlight anyway based on that eye-catching front cover alone! That it’s a scary middle grade story, set on Halloween night, and features a Stranger Things-esque “underPearl” world makes this a sure hit with upper-elementary readers. No need to booktalk it – just show the cover and compare it to Stranger Things, and it will fly off the shelves!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Welcome to Pearl, a town obsessed with Halloween: the spooky decorations, the costumes, the candy.

No one seems to notice that every October 31st, a kid goes missing. Mason Miller does, though. Somehow he’s the only one who has any memory the person existed at all.

When Mason’s sister, Meg, vanishes while they’re trick-or-treating, Mason and his friends are pulled into an underworld where monsters roam the streets.

They need to fight the evil taking over Pearl, but none of them know the true danger they’re facing.

Meg has been stolen by a witch who has no plans to let her go. Shadows of death curl around trees and behind doorways as Mason must use every ounce of bravery he has… or be haunted forever with the memory of a sister that only he remembers.

This is another one that meets my criteria anyway, but it’s the cover and summary that really grabbed my attention. Middle grade scary stories for the win!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Hannah and her friends were just having a bit of fun when they decided to play a game to communicate with spirits of the dead.

Little did they know something would answer their call and crawl its way into the pages of Hannah’s journal.

What started out as a game has turned into something much more evil. With dire, horrifying consequences.

Is there any way to escape the curse?

I’m always on the lookout for sports fiction featuring female protagonists, and this one fits the bill perfectly! This has no starred reviews, but Titlewave lists four professional reviews that are (mostly) really positive. Kirkus is the only sourface – of course they are – but even that one isn’t that bad. Plus, it’s set in Iowa! How many books are set in Iowa?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

On the soccer field, Magic Mel is in her element. She’s ready to lead her team to victory at the city championship in her new role as captain.

Off the field, however, is a totally different story. Mel can’t get a handle on her class presentation, her friend group has completely dissolved, and her ex-friend-current-teammate, Tory, is being the worst. The only place she feels like herself is in her text conversations where she shares her secret poetry with BTtoYouPlease.

Tory McNally, on the other hand, is keeping everything together, thank you very much. So what if her mom is more preoccupied with her craft projects and new husband than her, or that she’s down to one IRL friend because of annoying, overly peppy “Magic” Mel? She’s perfectly fine, and even when she maybe isn’t, she’s got NotEmilyD to text with.

As the championships loom closer, everything around Mel and Tory starts to get more and more complicated: the dynamics on the field, the rift between their friend group, and, as they connect anonymously online, maybe even their feelings for each other…

That cover, the description, the Greek mythology tie-ins, the fact that it’s manga AND a cute baby unicorn…this will be so easy to booktalk with elementary readers!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

UNICO tells the incredible story of a young unicorn who, after enraging the evil goddess Venus, is banished from the heavens and forgets all he once was.

Saved from oblivion by the kindhearted West Wind, Unico continues to help others, before having to escape Venus again and begin a new adventure.

In this first manga, Unico awakes in a mysterious land and is befriended by a resourceful watch cat, Chloe, who feels protective of the young unicorn. When they find themselves near a small village in the forest, they take refuge with a kindly, but helpless, old woman.

To take care of her, Chloe begs Unico to turn her into a human girl, but that act of kindness has unforeseen consequences: Unico’s love has awakened Venus and her minion, Byron, who want to destroy them both!

A gem for the first days of school! I love the humor in this colorful picture book. The aliens, who claim to be from Europe, “are definitely human” even if few in the community believe them. Lots of tongue-in-cheek humor in the illustrations – young readers will love this tale of kindness and helping others in need.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

When three mysterious visitors from “Europe” crash-land in Mr. Li’s field, he does what any good host would: he invites them back to his farmhouse and offers to help fix up their “car”.

No, there’s nothing strange about these guests at all. Just like other humans, they “make business”, “play sportsball” and “wear hat”.

As the townsfolk also come to the aid of the visitors and the gathering turns into a little party, interplanetary relations reach an all-time high.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Dr. John Snow is one of the most influential doctors and researchers in Western medicine, but before he rose to fame, he was just a simple community doctor who wanted to solve a mystery.

In 19th century London, the spread of cholera was as unstoppable as it was deadly. Dr. Snow was determined to stop it, but he had a problem: His best theory of how the disease was spread flew in the face of popular opinion. He needed evidence, and he needed to find it fast, before more lives were lost.

Taking on the role of detective as well as doctor, Dr. Snow knocked on doors, asked questions and mapped out the data he’d collected. What he discovered would come to define the way we think about public health to this day.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

When a poor fisherman chooses Death to be godfather to his son, he’s sure he’s made a good choice – for surely there’s no man more honest than Death?

At the christening, Death gives the fisherman a gift that seems at first to be the key to the family’s fortune, but when greed overcomes the fisherman, he learns that nobody can truly cheat Death.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

​Life is all around us—in millions of different forms! In this spectacular book, Carly Allen-Fletcher invites children on an amazing tour of scientific classification’s six kingdoms of life.

Every page will spark new questions: what makes each kingdom unique? Where do scientists place camels, baobabs, seaweed, and bread molds?

How about the tiny things wriggling under our microscopes? What weird and wonderful life-forms have been discovered in the geysers of Yellowstone and on the seafloors off the coast of Namibia?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Tiger is a bit grumpy. Why won’t the other forest animals give him food…even when he yells at them? Why doesn’t anyone want to be his friend?

Then a talking Dandelion shoots down from space and attaches permanently to his tail. (Don’t ask how). *shake shake shake* Why won’t Tail-Flower come off?! Why does everyone in the forest seem to like her better?

Stuck with each other, and against all odds, Tiger and Tail-Flower become fast friends and set off on a series of adventures. Rescuing Mother Hen and her lost egg from a cliff. Fording a river for Rabbit, Hedgehog, and Raccoon. Throwing a big party with everyone in the forest!

Tiger and Tail-Flower even grow old together. And though they don’t realize it, one day their last adventure arrives. When they decide to travel through the forest and climb the big mountain in the sky, a hunter’s net snares them deep in the forest. But Tail-Flower gets an idea, and with a twinkle in her eye, she asks:

“Tiger, we’ll always be best friends, right?”

PREVIOUS NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHTS

       

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?