This atmospheric, otherworldly fantasy by MacGregor (The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will) deploys Scottish mythology to touch on themes of grief and trauma brought about by past experiences with mass shootings and Covid-19. After bouncing between her two mothers in the Scottish Highlands and her father in Texas, 18-year-old Cam, who is autistic and agender, settles in small-town Ballinacollie following her best friend’s death. While roaming nearby woods, Cam encounters the immortal Sìthichean, supernatural beings who must either kill Cam to prevent her from exposing their existence or absorb her into their world. Reluctantly accepting their offer to become one of them, Cam—now an immortal with as-yet unknown powers—becomes embroiled in Sìthichean society, befriends gender-fluid Sìthichean prince Ezra, and attempts to balance these new experiences with her school and home life. Having always felt like an outsider, Cam feels as if she’s finally found a community that understands her. But that’s all forfeit if she doesn’t survive the Sìthichean’s deadly initiation trials. Cam’s gentle budding romance with Ezra as well as interactions with other Sìthichean and Ballinacollie locals offer moments of hope and healing across an empathic and accessible tale of belonging. Features liberal untranslated Gaelic dialogue. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sara Megibow, Megibow Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this intriguing epistolary novel, Walker (Baby Feminists) employs multimedia formatting to chronicle the anonymous, pen pal–adjacent friendship between two high school seniors in 2016 rural Green Bank, W.Va. When a cryptic letter left to her by her recently deceased mother, an astrophysicist raised in Green Bank, leads one of the teens to an 1888 astronomy textbook (the “oldest book in the Green Bank High School Library”), the high schooler—an artistic newcomer from San Francisco who takes the pseudonym Copernicus—begins crafting handwritten letters to her mom on the book’s pages. Copernicus’s writing is then found by a second teen called Kepler—a gifted student whose family runs “generations deep in Pocahontas County”—who replies via sticky note. Soon the two team up to unravel the puzzle of Copernicus’s mother’s history in Green Bank as well as her link to unexplained events in the late 1980s, along the way forming a close connection. The students’ alternating perspectives are occasionally indistinguishable, but sustained tension surrounding the central mystery and the duo’s anonymity, as well as their focus on astrology, anchor this conceptually innovative solo debut. Photo collages and Copernicus’s drawings feature throughout. The protagonists read as white. Ages 12–up. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

A private school student and an orphaned errand boy embark on a gripping adventure in Dodd’s confident and fiercely thought-provoking debut. Twelve-year-old science-obsessed Eva’s heretofore sheltered life is thrown into chaos after she’s unknowingly given a pilfered egg from a presumed-extinct, dragonlike race of creatures called aerimanders. Attracting the attention of Eoin Parnassus—a “simple man of pure evil,” who wants the unhatched aerimanders for destructive militaristic purposes—Eva hides the egg and decides to consult a scientist. Enter orphaned 13-year-old Dusty, a seasoned thief who attempts to swipe the egg from Eva’s boarding school dorm room only to end up absconding with both egg and girl. The unwilling duo bonds over their ill-gotten ovum, and races to uncover its secret before it falls into malevolent hands. Utilizing a dry-humored omniscient narrator, Dodd admirably balances expert worldbuilding with a rip-roaring plot and complicated character interactions that crackle with witty buoyancy. Themes of queer identity, wealth disparity, and moral philosophy are threaded throughout this incendiary fantasy adventure. Eva has “deep copper-brown skin”; Dusty is “fair skinned.” Ages 10–14. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Newbery Medalist Higuera recasts the Aztec myth of creation, situating Xolotl, the dog-headed god of lighting, death, and misfortune, as a celebrated hero. After Earth “stopped spinning. All life perished, including humans,” and the immortal gods must throw themselves into a volcano to make the planet spin anew. While Quetzalcoatl, Xolo’s feathered serpent god twin brother, is the first to leap, Xolo cannot summon the courage to follow. Shunned for his cowardice, Xolo is banished to the Underworld, ruled by the god Mictlantecuhtli, who hoards the bones needed to reanimate humankind. Yearning for the return of his beloved mortals, Xolo approaches his brother with a plan: steal the bones back from Mictlantecuhtli. Pulling inspiration from images in the Codex Borgia, as mentioned in an illustrator’s note, Johnson (Run, Little Chaski) utilizes bright, saturated color to depict expressive characters as they navigate a world full of richly textured flora and fauna. Across Xolo’s measured, perceptive first-person narration, Higuera explores themes of self-worth and bravery, culminating in a winning reflection on what it means to be an underdog. Human characters are depicted with brown skin. Ages 7–10. Author’s agent: Allison Remcheck, Stimola Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

A creature in search of “happy-alone” solitude—“that feeling which feels like hearing your own voice singing you back to yourself”—drives a perceptive, science-anchored story from Popova (The Snail with the Right Heart) and Jacoby (Everything Is Fine!). One midsummer day, a fuzzy blue hedgehog-like creature, Re, awakens “feeling like the loneliest creature on Earth” and travels via light beam to find “the coziest place on the moon, a perfect nook pitted deep into the Sea of Tranquility.” Upon reaching the location—where “it is always the temperature of a spring afternoon”—Re is gratified to find a cave in which to feel happy-alone. Soon, a kindred spirit, fuzzy yellow Mi, is revealed, and the two agree to each separately occupy the cave’s converging tunnels—occasionally calling to one another “across their two parallel tranquilities” and periodically harmonizing together. Alongside sometimes abstract text, inky, immersive scenes of the cuddly subjects have a velvety texture and an occasionally biolumi-nescent-esque glow. The creators’ meditative, capacious portrayal of solitude reassures that there are many ways to be alone. An author’s note concludes. Ages 5–8. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Combining step-by-step details with a tender look at an elder passing on generational information, this extended account by Nayeri (Drawn Onward) traces a child’s learning the art of Persian rug-making. The narrator and Grandma share breakfast on the fraying rug that she once made with her own grandmother: “And now it’s our turn.” First the two visit Grandpa in the field, where he gives them sheared wool that the two wash, card, spin, and dye. A plan is drawn on graph paper (“In our city of Isfahaan, the popular designs look like tiles or gardens in a palace”), and work on the loom commences. While the youth insists on perfection, Grandma pulls out a knot halfway through, calling it “the Persian flaw,” and adding , “Nothing in this world is perfect, and nothing should pretend to be. Our job is only to make knots out of the tangles.” Though told in present tense, the narration has the feel of family lore burnished by years of reflection. Greens, pinks, reds, and teals dominate intensely hued watercolors from Stamper (The Greatest), which place the family in a pastoral landscape. A concluding author’s note offers more about the 2,500-year-old art. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary & Media. Illustrator’s agent: Lori Kilkelly, LK Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

On a block of houses left by their people during hard times, then additionally abandoned by the sun, moon, and stars, the Andersons’ home still glows. In scraggly inkwork that meets soft wash, Graham (The Concrete Garden) portrays a boisterous moment: Dad, rendered with brown skin, crawls on all fours as “a beast of burden,” with three kids and a pup piled on his back. But the family’s enigmatic center is the children’s pale-skinned maternal grandfather, introduced sitting with one leg slung over an overstuffed chair and playing his guitar. Adored by his grandchildren, Grandad is laconic and mysterious—just what does he mean when he says he keeps all kinds of things in his battered fedora, including “stars just waiting to see the light of day”? But one night, he lifts his hat, and a galaxy’s worth of stars actually do pour out in an awesome spectacle that magically revitalizes the block. Though Grandad’s brand of magic, and the cosmic neighborhood transformation, feel conceptually murky (Could the man at any time have helped his neighbors?), the work conveys how one person’s creative spirit can breathe life into forgotten places. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Haraštová offers an overview of different personality traits in this extended social-emotional reference. An opening chapter offers key definitions (of characteristic, ability, emotion) while establishing the book’s live-and-let-live tone: “Everybody’s different!” The 10 chapters that follow each center on fictional children (“This is Fatimah”) and two characteristics (“Sometimes Fatimah is unruly”/ “Sometimes Fatimah is energetic”). Sidebars further clarify the nature of the traits while gently describing some of their positive and negative effects. Text boxes prompt reflection with the goal of self-awareness (“How do you know you’re being unruly?”). Contextualizing examples occasionally veer into stereotype (“Two chatty ladies were babbling”) and pearl-clutching (about a child desiring cake for dinner: “Just imagine what might have happened if she had succeeded!”). Elsewhere, though, there’s a subtlety to the pairings’ distinctions (shyness and thoughtfulness, stubbornness and perseverance), which are illustrated in painterly depictions by Kobern that include figures portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 6–9. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/22/2025 | Details & Permalink

After a boy greets the rising sun (“First light. First gift”), he sets about learning “the Diné way” in a picture book that underlines themes of connection, culture, and kinship in the everyday. Diné author Parker’s onomatopoeic text follows the figure from dusk to dawn as he helps his father work with turquoise and silver (“Tap, tap./ ...a symbol to wear with honor”), sits with his mother at her loom (“Swish, swish./ ...I am woven forever with my ancestors”), and more before donning regalia and dancing (“Thump, thump!”) “for healing./ ...for remembrance./ ...for freedom./ for the future./ for the Diné!” In saturated hues, Navajo artist Blacksheep renders patterned borders and thin-lined landscapes; an inset panel on most spreads positions the sun in the sky. And finally, watching the sun set from the tallest rock, the narrator observes “In me, the Sun will always rise....// Yes, I am the Sun” and determines to, in turn, show the way to others. Includes author’s notes and a glossary. Ages 6–9. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/22/2025 | Details & Permalink

A youth describes methods for handling sound-based sensory overload in a down-to-earth picture book that’s bookended by breathwork models. Plain-spoken narration readily acknowledges, “It can feel overwhelming when your day is filled with sounds of action,” before proposing a manageable-feeling solution: retreating to a “quiet place.” At home, that looks like “the tiny, tucked-away space behind the couch” or a cozy closet corner. During a day out, too, the protagonist finds ways to self-regulate (“Sometimes my quiet place isn’t a place at all,” the speaker suggests, encouraging a focus on sensations including a “steady hand to hold” or “something peaceful to watch”). Pattern-filled digital artwork aptly indicates stimuli with reverberating red lines, while the brown-skinned protagonist’s facial expressions and body language communicate moments of discomfort. By contrast, the subject’s mouth takes on a gentle upturn in the aftermath of soothing activities, which, the book’s end emphasizes, can be shared with others. At once logistical and sensitive, Mikai’s account empowers with emulatable tools. Ages 5–8. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/22/2025 | Details & Permalink