New Release Spotlight: April 21, 2026

Welcome to the third week of April! In my neck of the woods, we are looking at only 20 days left of school until summer break – whoohoo! Keep in mind that my district is on a 4-day week, so that’s why it’s only 20 student days left. The teachers and staff have one additional workday, after the last day.

This week’s first Spotlight title, The Fight of Our Lives, would be an excellent choice for our Genre Book Club this month. Our selected genre of the month is medical nonfiction, a pick that was a little controversial initially, but we went with it because we are there to expand our reading niches. I’ve actually found many interesting books for this genre and had a hard time deciding which one I wanted to read.

All three groups of books (YA, MG, and picture books) look equally delicious this week, but for me, YA looks best!

My top picks:

• The Fight of Our Lives by David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels (YA nonfiction)
• Found Sound by Meg Wolitzer and Charlie Panek (MG mystery)
• The Whale’s Tale and the Otter’s Side of the Story by Kate Messner (picture book)

You can see a cumulative list of all the Spotlight books for April here. I will add to it as the month continues.

The Canva links for April are coming next week! The links are free to my email list, which is here if you need to sign up.

This week’s titles are #5165 – #5177 on The Ginormous Booklist.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

The AIDS crisis in America is complex and composed of countless individual stories of grief, love, and advocacy. Its history shows the power of youth activism, how creativity and community can be vehicles for social change, and how bigotry and misinformation led to inequality in care.

The early days of the AIDS crisis saw LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities making strides in the fight for equality. As many people in positions of power were slow to act or actively didn’t pay attention until their own communities were affected, the fight for equality turned into a fight for their lives. Grassroots efforts filled in gaps where mainstream medicine and politics failed, and over time, a cultural shift of awareness emerged, which led to more research and more treatments.

And while the disease has transitioned from a death sentence to one that people can live full lives with, there are still people dying of HIV/AIDS today because they can’t access the care they need. The fight may have begun decades ago, but is not yet over.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

There’s nowhere Catie East would rather be than the redwood forest that surrounds her family’s unusual historic home, the Heights. 

She prefers being alone in the forest. People are … complicated. But when a scientist and his son move into the estate’s cottage, planning to study the woods around them, the boy catches Catie’s eye. And when a dead woodpecker miraculously comes back to life in his precious hands … he captures her heart.

Necromancy isn’t the only strange thing happening in the Heights.There’s an unfamiliar face in the mirror. Blood on the floors. Eyes in the wallpaper. And the men around her—including her once-sweet nature boy—are becoming something else. Something possessive and frightening. Something violent.

As the Heights’s dark history starts to come to light, Catie discovers that the home she loves is imbued with pain. And even though the pain isn’t her own, it will corrupt her and the people around her all the same—unless she can stop it.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

As a priestess paid to guide the deceased home, Kang Siying has never feared death. However, when her beloved father collapses, Siying realizes that even she is not free from the cruel grasp of mortality. Desperate to provide her father with the medical aid he needs, Siying accepts a dangerous job that promises a generous commission, and travels to a hostile state to retrieve the corpse of a missing prince.

But the moment Siying places her reanimation talisman on the dead prince’s head, rather than make the corpse obedient to Siying’s commands, the talisman brings the prince back to life. Worse, he won’t stay alive for long―not unless he absorbs enough qi, or life force, to keep his soul anchored to his body.

In return for a reward worth twice her original commission, Siying agrees to aid the frustratingly handsome prince in finding and purifying evil spirits for their qi. As they journey across the countryside, encountering vengeful ghosts and enemy spies alike, they gradually uncover dark secrets about the prince’s death―secrets that could endanger both Siying’s father and their entire kingdom.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Mercy has no place here.

On Trinity, where the privileged live in the skies and the rest fight for water below, you do what you can to survive.

18-year-old Val knows this better than anyone. They’ve sacrificed everything to provide for their younger sisters. Using their outlawed teleportation powers, they’ve become the most infamous assassin-for-hire on Trinity, known as the Butcher.

No one should be able to trace the Butcher to Val. But when a gang retaliates by kidnapping Val’s sisters and killing Dani, Val’s only friend, it means that someone has to know the truth.

Desperate and completely alone, Val has no one to turn to but their ex-best friend turned vigilante thief, Orion. He broke their heart, but he owes them.

But as Val fights for the return of their sisters, they start to realize there might be something much bigger at play… something that could upend everything they’ve ever known about Trinity.

Val’s journey will take them from a maximum security prison transport to the headquarters of the most powerful gang on Trinity, and all the way to the Gate of Heaven. Each more heavily guarded than the last.

Good thing the Butcher has never blinked at an extra casualty.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Felix used to love summer vacation, when his family would trade the bustling noise of New York City for the small-town quiet of Blissfield, Massachusetts.

But vacation hasn’t been the same since his big brother left home, and Felix is sure this summer is going to be the worst yet. Then he finds a mysterious box with the words OPEN ME written on the outside. Inside, there’s an audio recorder, headphones, and a list of timecodes. What does it mean?

Felix and his offbeat neighbor, Marigold, follow a string of clues through town. But as the hunt builds to a crescendo, Felix begins to wonder about the identity of the anony­mous puzzle-maker behind their adventure.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Every Anoran child dreams of the day they will enter the sacred bonding hut and match with a guardian—a spiritual guide who grants magically enhanced abilities. A lucky few will bond with Advocates, who promise greatness and glory. Others will be tempted by forbidden offers from the Accursed—dangerous spirits who bring nothing but destruction and a penalty of death to any Anoran who chooses them. But when Mako discovers that the worst of these agents of chaos has returned to spread an ancient evil through the empire, he faces an unthinkable choice: Will he bond with one of the Accursed to gain the power to stop another?

Halfway across the empire, Arden has no guardian and no prospects of adventure…until she infiltrates an underground criminal network to find her missing friend. Relying on her knack for sensing the truth through even the smoothest lies, Arden finds herself at the center of a sinister conspiracy that runs much deeper than she ever imagined.

Soon Mako’s and Arden’s fates collide, and together they must face bandit armies, dark secrets, and untold dangers to fight an enemy who could destroy all they’ve ever known.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

This beautiful biography in verse is about two French scientists who changed what we know about volcanoes. Katia, a curious girl who collected pebbles and dreamed of escaping her small town, grew up just a few miles away from Maurice, a boy who knew more about rocks and minerals than his own teachers…

When Katia and Maurice met as college students, they formed The Vulcan Team—named after the Roman god of fire—to observe, investigate, and document one of the most dangerous, natural phenomena on the planet: volcanoes!

With dynamic art from award-winning artist Katherine Roy, Chasing Eruptions traces the legacy of Katia and Maurice Kraffts’ volcanic photographs and films—and how their footage continues to inspire and educate today.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ruby Emmerson has always felt like the “dumb” twin. Struggling with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, she feels out of place at her competitive charter school, especially as her twin brother Bryce excels both academically and socially. When she fails a math test despite getting extra help, she fears she’ll flunk out of Benton Academy and drag her brother back to their old school.   

In a moment of frustration, Ruby vents anonymously online, describing herself as an imposter—a mango among lovebirds. But to her surprise, she’s far from alone.   

As her account gains a following, tensions rise with her brother and her posts draw the unwanted attention of the school administration. Now, Ruby must find the courage to challenge Benton’s high-pressure environment and advocate for herself and all the other “Mangoes” out there. 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Before he became a noted lyricist and composer, Stephen Sondheim was a boy filled with curiosity—a boy who loved figuring out how things worked. After his parents’ divorce scattered the pieces of his life, he found comfort in music.

Guided by his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim learned that the best way to get better was to practice: choosing notes, choosing words, and putting it all together, piece by piece. Writing musicals wasn’t easy, and not everyone loved Stephen’s new and unusual shows. But Sondheim loved figuring it out, and loved the way the people in every show became like a family.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

It’s time to leave the house, but…where are the keys?? As Daddy rummages through the mess, he hands a water bottle to his toddler and says, “Hold, please.” This accidental request turns into an adventure when the child decides holding is fun and wants to hold EVERYTHING!

Before long, the toddler has their arms full with their favorite stuffie, toy plane, even the family pet, and has set their sights on more ambitious items—the rain, a tree, and more—until it becomes too much to hold. Luckily, Daddy’s always there to hold them.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

This little elephant is going camping for the first time, and does not need to bring ANY STUFFIES. You don’t need stuffies in the wild, OK? Not when you’re FIVE! Not even when it’s dark (very dark) and the sky is endless black, and there are crunchy scrunchy noises all around.

Why didn’t the grown-up insist on packing stuffies? Enter Sockflea, who may look like a rolled-up ball of grown-up socks, but NO. Sockflea has been sent by the stuffies back home to look after their friend on vacation.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

A boastful whale and a showboating otter compete in a battle of words to prove that each is the greatest animal ever to swim the seas. Read one way, the first-person text brags about whales’ superiority; read the other way, it extols how much better otters are.

Using true information about the two marine species to make both arguments, Kate Messner’s adroit text and Brian Biggs’s giggle-worthy artwork brilliantly illustrate how the same words can be used to express contradictory opinions when speakers have a one-sided view of the world. Includes factual back matter about language usage and the actual similarities of whales and otters.