New Release Spotlight: March 31, 2026

It’s the last Tuesday of the month, so it’s Canva link day! Check your email Tuesday morning for the link, or if needed, join my email list here to have it sent to your inbox today.

Picture books look best this week!

My top picks:

• Where No Shadow Stays by Sara Hashem (YA supernatural thriller)
• InBetweens by Faith Erin Hicks (MG graphic fiction)
• Barbed Wire Between Us by Mia Wenjen (picture book for older readers)

You can see a list of all 56 Spotlight books for March here.

This week’s titles are #5131 – #5141 on The Ginormous Booklist.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Seventeen-year-old Mina is always focused on what comes next: exams, school dances, lakeside picnics with friends. Looking to the future keeps her from dwelling on her past and how little she knows about where she comes from. Anytime she asks her father questions about Egypt—or about her mother’s mysterious death—he closes up.

So, when Mina receives an invitation from an aunt she’s never met to visit the Haikal mansion, her mother’s childhood home in El Agamy, she decides it’s time to find her own answers. Mina travels to Egypt in secret, eager to learn more about her roots and what really happened to her mother.

But when Mina returns from El Agamy, she doesn’t come back alone.

A sinister entity follows Mina from the Haikal mansion to her tiny California town, leaving destruction in its wake as it violently possesses anyone who comes near her. Isolated and fighting for her life, Mina must seek help from an unlikely ally: Jesse Talbot, the town mortician’s hostile son and the only person who proves immune to possession. Brooding Jesse would rather floss with barbed wire than team up with social butterfly Mina, but he doesn’t exactly have a choice—after all, he’s running from family secrets of his own.

As Mina and Jesse dig deeper into Mina’s family lore, they uncover a bloody debt that must be satisfied if Mina wants to finish senior year alive.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Since 99.9 percent of all species that have lived are extinct, it’s bound to be our turn eventually, right? So what’s most likely to kill us? A well-timed asteroid? Some new robot overlords?

With wit and dry humor, debut graphic novelist Katy Doughty blends science and history to explore our chances of surviving disasters such as plagues, global warming, and alien invasion.

Drawing on interviews with experts in fields like infectious diseases, AI, and interplanetary exploration, she combines cutting-edge research with compelling visuals: mugshots of the deadliest microbes, graphs of the winners and losers of mass extinction events, and a whole lot of dinosaur drawings.

For apocalypse aficionados, the morbidly curious, and the just plain curious, this is your antidote to existential dread—a timely, imaginative, and ultimately hopeful take on humankind’s ability to survive the odds.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ishara Ming is the sole survivor of a spacefaring whaler destroyed by the Ballena, a legendary sentient spacecraft that haunts the darkness between stars. The fatal encounter left her with a metal-plated arm, a faulty memory chip, and a burning need for revenge.

To take on the Ballena, Ishara assembles a crew of capable misfits. Among them is Quinn—her trusted first mate, the girl with wildfire eyes, and the only person who always stands by her side, even when everyone else thinks Ishara is a delusional captain who hallucinated the Ballena.

That is, until Augustus, a ship mech armed with his own mysterious reasons for vengeance, convinces Ishara to let him join the crew. He brings the one thing Ishara’s never had before: a tracking method tailored for finding the Ballena. Pulled between Quinn’s and Augustus’s gravitational forces, the pressure to issue increasingly risky orders, and the feeling that her past is rapidly catching up with her future, Ishara has to decide what—or who—she is fighting for before she loses another ship.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

For twelve-year-old Chandni, 1999 is the year everything must be perfect. And why shouldn’t it be?

Her parents are well-respected doctors in the community, she’s the leader of her friend group, and her crush is even hinting at liking her back. She also has her sights set high on a spot at India’s most prestigious boarding school for girls. If she stays focused and works hard, the dream just may be within reach.

But as the boarding school selection deadline looms closer, Chandni is overwhelmed by a devastating secret that’s threatening to tear her family apart. With life and relationships spiraling around her, Chandni will have to decide between pursuing her ambitions and protecting her family.

Set against the vibrant turn of the millennium in India, this debut middle grade novel in verse is a beautiful and vulnerable story about the seismic events that life throws at us and the love that helps us brave it all.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Twin sisters Sloane and Ash are two peas in a pod, and they do everything together: watch movies, attend classes, and most importantly, draw! So when the summer animation classes of their dreams are about to start, they can barely contain their excitement!

Well…Ash is excited but Sloane is surprised to find she isn’t as jubilant about it, which makes no sense, since she loves art. Meanwhile, Ash discovers that just because you love something, doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be good at it, and she struggles under the weight of her own expectations and those of her teacher’s.

Soon, the trials of challenging classwork and new friendships drive a wedge between the twins. Can their bond survive the summer?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

A powerful reverso poem about two girls separated by barbed wire and 80 years of history Barbed Wire Between Us is a powerful reverso poem that tells two deeply resonant stories across time. It begins with a Japanese American girl sent to an internment camp in Oklahoma during World War II.

Read in reverse, it reveals the journey of a Latina girl detained in the very same camp decades later, during the U.S. policy of migrant family separation.

Harrowing and emotionally charged, this poetic narrative compels us to confront a haunting question: What have we truly learned in the past 80 years about how we treat the most vulnerable among us?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

When twilight comes, nature transitions: from night to day at dawn and from day to night at dusk. Inside our homes, we are getting ready to start our days or end them, but outside, crepuscular creatures―animals that are most active at dawn or dusk―are right in the middle of their days!

This engaging nonfiction picture book shows familiar animals and beautiful flowers―skunks, white-tailed deer, fireflies, morning glories, evening primroses, and more―in a whole new light, focusing on the behaviors, adaptations, and activities that define each as a crepuscular creature or plant.

The lushly illustrated pages demonstrate the interconnected interactions between critters and their environments, powerfully showing how each is essential to the ecosystem as a whole.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Thank you, sun. You give us light. You shine all day until the night. You warm our planet as you burn—and ask for nothing in return.

From lofty mountains that peak our interest, to wind that lends a breeze, to soil that’s truly down to earth, there are countless things to be thankful for on our planet.

Filled with fun facts about nature and clever poems perfect for reading aloud, young readers can learn about the natural wonders of planet Earth and thank them for making the world go round!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Violet knows what it’s like to be afraid: when you’re afraid, you feel helpless and small. But when Violet is afraid, she doesn’t just feel small―she actually shrinks!

It’s tough to stop feeling frightened when you’re only a few centimeters tall. But when Violet’s best friend is in danger, she’ll have to learn to deal with her fear in a new way―and save the day in the process.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Meet Serafina! If there’s one thing you should know about Serafina, it’s that she absolutely, positively HATES water. Running faucets, rain, or the sea? No thank you.

So even though she looks fantastic in goggles, Serafina is NOT happy to be forced into a swim class by the powers that be. NOTHING can convince her to get into that disgusting pit of seething water. Nothing, that is, except maybe a very beloved old friend who needs a hand.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Yuki is lost in a dark mood on her way home from school. In a flash of frustration, she tosses her house keys down an open manhole. When she climbs down to retrieve them, she discovers another world: Mudland.

The Mud Princess, an enormous dripping thing made of mud and sticks, greets Yuki and shows her the wonders of her kingdom. Yuki’s dark mood is at home here—her sadness and anger fit right in. As they journey together, the Mud Princess becomes larger, absorbing the anger around her.

Everything the princess touches becomes muddy, even Yuki. Yuki faces a choice—to become a Mud Princess herself or to return to the world above ground and its expectations.