A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi Intermediate    Quill Tree/HarperCollins    320 pp.    g 10/20    978-0-06-294320-0    $16.99 e-book ed.  978-0-06-294322-4    $8.99 Issues of home and belonging form the cornerstones of Faruqi’s (author of the Yasmin early chapter books) first solo middle-grade novel. Mimi and her mother (her father left the family when...

Desert Girl, Monsoon Boy by Tara Dairman; illus. by Archana Sreenivasan Preschool, Primary    Putnam    32 pp.    g 5/20    978-0-525-51806-8    $17.99 e-book ed.  978-0-525-51807-5    $10.99 In this beautifully rendered study of contrasts and commonalities, Dairman imagines a girl and boy from two different biomes in India. Split pages portray the girl...

In recent years, we have seen a welcome increase in books that center diversity in race, class, ability, sexuality, and more. As members of religious minority groups (Sadaf is Muslim, Heidi is Jewish) — and at a time when both Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise (deeply troubling and...