Book Reviews
Reasons to Hate Me by Susan Metallo High School Candlewick 400 pp. 9/25 9781536240351 $18.99 High school senior Jess finds herself a pariah when her best friend Chloe’s boyfriend, Noah, sends a school-wide text claiming that she tried “to have sex with me.” Now Jess and Chloe aren’t speaking, and...
Cat Nap by Brian Lies; illus. by the author Primary Greenwillow 48 pp. 9/25 9780062671288 $19.99 An unusual game of cat-and-mouse takes place in this visually stunning and highly creative picture book. Kitten snoozes on the back of a couch until “something scritches, waking Kitten. A mouse? A MOUSE!” The...
Defanged by H.E. Edgmon Middle School Feiwel 240 pp. 9/25 9781250874009 $17.99 Lux Priddy has always considered himself a good vampire who doesn’t make trouble for others, unlike those scary, violent vampires rumored to live in an underground society called Nox Urbus. In theory, he should be fine with being...
If We Were Dogs by Sophie Blackall; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Little, Brown 40 pp. 9/25 9780316581721 $18.99 In Blackall’s earlier picture book If I Was a Horse (rev. 9/23), a child imagines life as a spirited steed; activities include giving little sister a ride to school. In...
Outside In and the Inside Out: A Story About Arnold Lobel by Emmy Kastner; illus. by the author Primary Viking 40 pp. 9/25 9780593692509 $18.99 This picture-book biography of Arnold Lobel (1933–1987), which somewhat mimics the look of Lobel’s Frog and Toad series, explores his life through the lens of...
The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls by J. Anderson Coats Middle School Atheneum 272 pp. 9/25 9781665968614 $17.99 In 1910 small-town Colorado, Stanislava’s plan for getting out of her Slovene immigrant community—going by the “American name” of Sylvia, concealing her heritage to avoid discrimination, and one day going to college—comes...
A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out by Nicholas Day; illus. by Yas Imamura Intermediate, Middle School Random House Studio/Random 304 pp. 9/25 9780593643877 $19.99 On April 10, 1815, on the small Indonesian island of Sumbawa, the volcano Tambora erupted with such...
Melodies of the Weary Blues: Classic Poems Illustrated for Young People by Langston Hughes; compiled by Shamar Knight-Justice; illus. by various artists Primary, Intermediate Harper/HarperCollins 48 pp.1/26 9780063327054 $19.99A twenty-three-artist ensemble interprets poems from Hughes’s poetry collection The Weary Blues in an illustrated volume that emphasizes the poems’ musical motifs....
The Rose Field by Philip PullmanHigh School Knopf 672 pp.10/25 9780593306635 $29.99This final volume of the Book of Dust trilogy (La Belle Sauvage, rev. 1/18; The Secret Commonwealth, rev. 11/19) has the same expansive scope, capacious imagination, energetic thinking, and momentum as Pullman’s earlier trilogy set in this world, His...
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