This month’s Author Spotlight highlights Yukie Kimura and Kōdo Kimura, co-authors with Steve Sheinkin of Yukie’s Island: My Family’s World War II Story, a moving picture book autobiography about a family’s resilience and path to healing after the devastation of war.
Discover More about Yukie’s IslandIn July we celebrate Disability Pride Month by reading and sharing stories about the disabled community. Celebrate in your school or library by sharing the history of Disability Pride Month and by introducing readers to disabled fiction and memoir writers sharing their stories.
Browse a catalog of our state award winners and nominees for 2023-2024 and add these books to your TBR! Highlights include:
Click the image below to browse!
We’re so excited to see our librarian friends on June 22 to 27 in Chicago!
Don’t Look Back: A Memoir of War, Survival, and My Journey from Sudan to America
By Achut Deng and Keely Hutton
Ages 12-18
On Sale Now!
In this propulsive memoir from Achut Deng and Keely Hutton, inspired by a harrowing New York Times article, Don’t Look Back tells a powerful story showing both the ugliness and the beauty of humanity, and the power of not giving up.
I want life.
After a deadly attack in South Sudan left six-year-old Achut Deng without a family, she lived in refugee camps for ten years, until a refugee relocation program gave her the opportunity to move to the United States. When asked why she should be given a chance to leave the camp, Achut simply told the interviewer: I want life.
But the chance at starting a new life in a new country came with a different set of challenges. Some of them equally deadly. Taught by the strong women in her life not to look back, Achut kept moving forward, overcoming one obstacle after another, facing each day with hope and faith in her future. Yet, just as Achut began to think of the US as her home, a tie to her old life resurfaced, and for the first time, she had no choice but to remember her past.
Click below to watch a video of Achut and Keely talking about the message behind Don’t Look Back.
Find out more about THE LOST YEAR HERE→
Meet Willie Mae Brown, author of My Selma: True Stories of a Southern Childhood at the Height of the Civil Rights Movement. Combining family stories of the everyday and the extraordinary as seen through the eyes of her twelve-year-old self, Willie Mae Brown gives readers an unforgettable portrayal of her coming of age in a town at the crossroads of history.
Read our Q&A with willie mae brown here →
The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine
By Katherine Marsh
Ages 10-14
On Sale January 17
From the author of Nowhere Boy – called “a resistance novel for our times” by The New York Times – comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.
But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.
An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh’s own family history, The Lost Year is perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray and Alan Gratz’s Refugee.
Find out more about THE LOST YEAR HERE→
Meet Nick Brooks, author of the breakout YA thriller of 2023, Promise Boys. This is a vital read for educators that shines a glaring light on how the system too often condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success. Request Promise Boys on NetGalley here!
Read our Q&A with nick brooks here →
Our Graphic Novel Preview series invites readers to look inside graphic novels. This month, we’re highlighting the highly anticipated graphic novel adaptation of of Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, illustrated by Nick Bertozzi.
Look inside BOMB →
We’re so excited to see our educator friends November 17-20 in Anaheim, CA!
