New Release Spotlight: February 10, 2026

Last week, I chose self-care over finishing the Spotlight. This week, I am refreshed and reenergized, so I’ve added many of the titles I wanted to feature last week.

Do not miss middle grades and picture books this week – WOW!

My Top Picks for February 10th (so many!):

• Call of the Dragon by Natasha Bowen (YA fantasy)
• The Lions’ Run by Sarah Pennypacker (MG historical fiction)
• The Big Book of Pi by Anita Lehmann and Jean-Baptiste Aubin (MG nonfiction)
• Rumpelstiltskin by Mac Barnett (picture book)
• Marie’s Magic Eggs by Sandra Neil Wallace (picture book)
• The Vanishing Sea by Dinara Mirtalipova (informational picture book)

If you want to see all the titles I wanted to feature this week, you can see the full list on my February 2026 New Release Spotlight Amazon list.

This week’s titles are #5044 – #5059 on The Ginormous Booklist.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

The performers of the Playhouse are as worshipped as they are feared, their enchanting shows bending hearts, minds, and even reality itself. Vicious, godlike, lethal. Eighteen-year-old Riven Hesper knows the dangers better than anyone, after her own encounter with a Player resulted in a curse that is slowly killing her.

When the Playhouse announces the spectacle of a lifetime―a chance for one mortal to steal a Player’s immortality―Riven sees her last chance to live. Desperate for answers, she infiltrates the competition. There, she finds Jude, the Playhouse’s brilliant, merciless Lead Player, whose charm is as dangerous as his Craft, and strikes a deadly bargain to save her life.

But with time running out and the Playhouse’s secrets unraveling into a disturbing picture, Riven faces a grim possibility: she might not be the hero of her story after all. In fact, she may be the villain.

Because the Playhouse doesn’t just tell stories. It rewrites them.

And Riven’s might end in blood.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Moremi has only ever known peace in the Kingdom of Kwa, thanks to the two dragon gods keeping an unspeakable evil at bay. But when the king tries to claim the gods’ power for himself, it all goes dreadfully wrong. The great dragons are injured and flee . . . and the world’s darkest shadows are released.

Suddenly, Kwa’s ancient tales of monsters become all too real. Yet as death comes for those around her, Moremi somehow finds herself magically connected to both dragon gods—a feat that should be impossible.

Now, Moremi is Kwa’s only hope for restoring the gods to full strength. But will Jagun, the mysterious prince, let her anywhere near the dragons? And how does her childhood friend, Nox, feel about it all? It may not matter in the end, because if Moremi fails her quest, then she risks the earth caving in and the sky crumbling down.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Nigel Binty has spent sixth grade trying to stick to a plan. His problem is the plan keeps changing in unexpected ways. His only friend has dropped him. His dad moved out two months ago. His anxiety isn’t getting any better. None of that is part of the plan.

When Glory Bea Medford (yes, that’s her real name) turns up at school in March, she plans to keep the reason for her mid-year transfer a secret. Glory Bea prizes being truthful but having everyone find out her father embezzled money from his church was bad enough the first time around. She doesn’t plan to go through that again.

Told in two perspectives, with Glory Bea’s chapters presented as unmailed letters to her incarcerated father, Shawn K. Stout uses warmth and humor to explore what happens when two sixth graders overwhelmed by major life changes cross paths.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Petit éclair. That’s what the other boys at the orphanage call Lucas DuBois. Lucas is tired of his cowardly reputation, just as he’s tired of the war and the Nazi occupation of his French village. He longs to show how brave he can be.

He gets the chance when he saves a litter of kittens from cruel boys and brings them to an abandoned stable to care for them. There he comes upon a stranger who is none too happy to see him: Alice, the daughter of a horse trainer, who is hiding her filly from German soldiers.

Soon Lucas begins to realize they are not the only ones in the village with secrets. The housekeeper at the German maternity home and a priest at the orphanage pass coded messages; a young mother at the home makes dangerous plans to keep her baby from forced adoption; and a neighbor in town may be harboring a Jewish family.

Emboldened by the unlikely heroes all around him, Lucas is forced to decide how much he is willing to risk to make the most courageous rescue of all.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

We all know Henry VIII had six wives. But these ladies are FAR too interesting to only be known as wives. Did you know that Catherine of Aragon rallied her troops in full armour while heavily pregnant? Or that Anne of Cleves met Henry VIII BEFORE they married – only she didn’t realise, because he was in disguise! Or that it was Catherine Parr who persuaded the king to return his daughters Mary and Elizabeth – two of British history’s most famous monarchs – to the line of succession?

Get ready to lose your head as the six wonderful women behind the man take centre stage to overthrow her-story. From rumours of scandals and LOTS of lying, to political plays and fabulous frocks, The Six is a story filled with ambition, treason and strong women.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ethan doesn’t want to stand out, he just wants to fit in. But fitting in is tough when your peers call out your ancient cell phone, busted backpack, and discount clothing.

To make matters worse, his best friend, Ricky, insists on hanging out with a group of guys who just don’t get him . . . they’re more interested in playing pranks than playing his favorite card game Bio Battle. Things start looking up, though, when Ethan befriends Aiden, a new kid in school, but it’s only matter of time before even that goes sideways.

Can Ethan figure out where he belongs without forgetting who he is and who he wants to be?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

For millennia, humans have been obsessed with the number Pi. We needed it for architecture, geometry and astronomy, and so it was sought by the ancient Egyptians, the Mayans and the ancient Chinese. But no one has ever found it—and no one ever will because Pi is infinite and irrational.

Its decimals contain the birthdates of all the children who have ever lived, every piece of music, the complete works of Shakespeare. Pi never ends and can’t be learned, but humans keep on trying. Today, we know trillions of decimals of Pi, even if the first fifteen are more than enough to send a rocket to Mars! 

Telling the story of Archimedes the Greek to Srinivasa Ramanujan the Indian (who saw in his dreams a formula for calculating Pi still used by computers today), via Arabs and mathematics enthusiasts from all over the world and all eras, The Big Book of Pi is an extraordinary adventure (almost) to infinity. 

Written by a mathe-magician with a Pi-passion, in these pages you’ll meet a man who memorized ten thousand digits—and get a chance to try yourself. You’ll read about a Pi paradox and a Pi magic trick and laugh at more Pi jokes than you ever thought you’d hear. We can’t ever know Pi, but there sure is a lot to learn!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

As a new immigrant to America, Marie Procai felt homesick and alone—she missed her homeland, Ukraine. She took comfort in the ancient Ukrainian art of making pysanky, intricately decorated eggs for Easter, an art she learned from her grandmother and brought with her to America. Cradling the pysanka in her hands felt like holding a piece of her homeland and giving her Baba a hug.

Making pysanky made Marie feel a little more hopeful when the Russia’s Red Army invaded Ukraine and forbade anyone from speaking Ukrainian or practicing their traditions, pysanky included. It sustained her spirit when her son was off fighting in World War II, and again when she welcomed Ukrainian refugees into her home after the war. A hardworking entrepreneur, Marie founded the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Minneapolis to keep Ukrainian culture alive in America and share it with everyone.

The legend goes that as long as pysanky are decorated, there will be good in the world. Ukrainian-heritage author Sandra Neil Wallace and award-winning illustrator Evan Turk share this hopeful story of the woman who fought to preserve an essential part of Ukrainian culture.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In February, some twenty thousand gray whales set off from Baja California on a long, hard journey north, toward food and survival. Hungry and thin, they push on week after week, past California, Oregon, and Washington to the tip of that state, where twelve of them peel off and make an eastward turn into the Salish Sea.

There they will wait in the deep for the tide to rise, only to swim into the dangerously shallow waters of a mudflat, hurriedly plowing the bottom for food before the water recedes once more. Will their daring be rewarded? Will they survive to join their fellow whales in the Bering and Chukchi Seas?

Elly MacKay’s fluid, saturated artwork sets the stage for the whales’ exciting journey, complementing Nora Nickum’s lyrical, factual narrative. Back matter takes a deeper dive into the intriguing habits of gray whales and offers resources for curious readers.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Meteoric collisions, volcanic eruptions, lightning strikes. Three catastrophes, all capable of producing glass—the stuff we use to protect us from the elements, send images, store energy, aid with everyday tasks, and make medical and scientific progress possible.

With the help of human ingenuity, glass has evolved from its lumpy natural origins to a refined wonder that helps humankind see into the farthest reaches of outer space or the smallest particles of life on Earth.

Glass is all around us and is one of the most versatile—and sparkling—wonders of the material world, still changing the way we build, the way we think, the way we see.

Enlivened with speech bubbles and full of memorable facts, this thoroughly engaging intro to the history and STEAM applications of glass is fortified with a bibliography in the back matter.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Once upon a time there was a clever girl with a not-so-clever father. When her father claims she can spin straw into gold, the king forces the girl to perform this impossible task.

She has no other choice than to accept a strange deal from a mysterious little man. But when he arrives and attempts to collect the debt, the fiendish trickster Rumpelstiltskin discovers that he is the one who has been tricked!

This is the second in the groundbreaking new collection of masterfully retold fairy tales crafted by one of today’s most celebrated and esteemed authors, Mac Barnett, paired with the stunning illustrations of the acclaimed and award-winning creator, Carson Ellis.

With Barnett’s signature pacing and wit, his subversive storytelling style and narrative voice, and Ellis’s stunning folk-art style, this retelling of Rumpelstiltskin will introduce this classic story to a new generation of readers!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In April of 1976, Dick Gregory sets off on a Herculean and grueling two-and-a-half month run. His goal: to raise awareness about the epidemic of poverty and food insecurity in America.

Sleeping in motels and consuming nothing but fruit juices, vitamins and water, he runs from Los Angeles to New York City. And in each city, he stops to speak the truth about injustice. About the plight of the penniless. About the hopeless.

Lyrical text, stunning art, and compelling backmatter come together to ask you—yes you—what would you do if you had a wild idea to stand up for something you believe in? Find out how far Dick Gregory’s belief in feeding the hungry took him in this unforgettable story of an incredible journey that still reverberates today.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

The Aral Sea once stretched across modern-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. A large saltwater lake of Central Asia (called “sea” because of its vastness), the Aral Sea’s 26 square miles (67 square kilometers) sustained its surrounding communities for generations. Beginning in the 1960s, aggressive Soviet industrialization diverted water for agricultural production and caused the lake to shrink.

Today, the waters that had thrived for centuries have almost entirely disappeared—and along with them, the biodiversity of the lake, its thriving fishing industry, and the many homes along its shores.

Told in a folkloric style with stunning illustrations, this true tale chronicles what happens when nature’s generosity is exploited. It gently invites readers to consider the reality of irreversible environmental harm, its global impact, and what it means to be compassionate to the land we live on.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Little Yuna can’t wait for her great-grandmother’s cherry tree to bloom. She and her hībāchan spend each day outside, watching the tree’s flowers unfurl. But once the tree blooms, the moment is so brief before it loses its petals again—this is what her hībāchan calls mono no aware. It isn’t until her great grandmother—and the petals she loves—are gone that Yuna finally understands what the phrase really means: an awareness of something’s impermanence. 

Critically acclaimed illustrator Yas Imamura of Love in the Library has created stunning artwork to accompany this profound text. Readers will love pouring over these pages again and again!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Yulu has all the makings of a great artist, her teachers and parents agree. But can she paint a self-portrait? Yulu isn’t sure, even when she finds the perfect canvas made of special linen. She summons her courage and paints. But the next day, the paint has run and oozed and dripped—the painting is ruined!

Yulu picks her brush back up, but day after day, the linen of her canvas itself seems to be rebuffing her attempts. Yulu, undeterred, works on and on. More than a battle with the opinionated linen, this artistic battle is one Yulu wages with herself. Through determination and hard work, can she grow past her natural talent and prove herself worthy of the task before her?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

As Holly takes her morning stroll in the thicket, she comes across a small bird. It was plain to see he’d been through some things. The bird is alone and trying to find shelter for the winter. And Holly knows exactly what to do to help.

Illustrating the transformative role a community can play in caring for its members, The Sweater is a powerful and poignant tale of compassion and acceptance.