Children's

Andrea L. Rogers and illustrator Rebecca Lee Kunz have created something rare in Chooch Helped: a picture book that feels both deeply specific and instantly familiar. Set within a Cherokee family, the story follows Sissy as she navigates the delightful, exasperating reality of having a toddler brother who wants to do everything she does. Chooch,…

Floyd Cooper’s Juneteenth for Mazie is a warm and beautifully illustrated picture book that introduces young readers to one of American history’s most important — and until recently most underrecognized — holidays. Cooper, whose distinctive oil-erasure illustration technique has won him multiple Coretta Scott King honors, brings both visual richness and genuine emotional depth to…

Remarkable Minds: 17 More Women Who Changed Science and the World by Stephanie Sammartino McPherson is a compelling and inspiring collection of profiles that restores seventeen brilliant women scientists to their rightful place in the history of discovery. About the Book Stephanie Sammartino McPherson’s follow-up to her earlier collection of women in science profiles brings…

Summary Yoon Ha Lee’s Dragon Pearl is a middle-grade space opera grounded in Korean mythology, published in 2019 as the launch title of Rick Riordan Presents, the Disney-Hyperion imprint designed to bring mythology-based adventure fiction from a range of cultural traditions to young readers. The book follows Min, a thirteen-year-old fox spirit living on a…

Linda Sue Park’s Prairie Lotus, published by Clarion Books in 2019, is a historical novel for middle-grade readers that does something genuinely difficult: it tells a story of systematic exclusion from inside the perspective of a child who experiences it not as history but as daily life. Set in the Dakota Territory in the 1880s,…

Jen Wang’s 2020 Meridian Award-winning middle-grade graphic novel follows Christine and Moon, two Chinese-American girls in a Southern California suburb whose unlikely friendship navigates class difference, faith, and adolescent belonging. Warm, precise, and quietly profound, Stargazing is one of the standout graphic novels for young readers of its era.

Susan Hood’s Friends in the Dark is a picture book about an unlikely friendship, told in spare, musical language and brought to life through illustrations that understand something essential: sometimes the most important things happen in the quiet between words. The book follows a child who is afraid of the dark and a firefly who…

Some books for children carry a weight far beyond their page count. Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept, written by Jayneen Sanders and illustrated by Craig Smith, is a picture book that tackles one of the most difficult conversations a parent or caregiver can have with a young child: the difference between a safe secret…

A Wild Ride by Niki Danforth is an adventure story for young readers centered on a girl named Ronnie Lake and her passion for horses. Published in 2015, the book follows Ronnie through a summer of competition, friendship, and growing confidence as she trains and rides at a horse camp. Danforth, who brings a genuine…