Summer 2025 E-Book Sale for Libraries

From 7/31/2025 through 9/31/2025, over 350 Macmillan Children’s titles will be discounted across pay-per-use / cost-per-circ sales models – perfect for lucky day check outs and summer reading. Please reach out to your digital content distribution partners for more information!


SUMMER READING AND BACK TO SCHOOL ESSENTIALS

Pocket Bear by Katherine Applegate

Author Letter from Katherine Applegate

Dear Reader,
When I think about the books I've most loved writing, it always comes back to stories for middle-grade readers. I so love that audience. I love their unquenchable curiosity. Their fierce idealism. And their boundless imaginations.

For this wildly open-minded and open-hearted audience, I can create a possible invisible giant cat, or a miniature polar bear-hummingbird hybrid who builds nests out of glowing bubbles. I can write from the point of view of an orphaned otter with Olympian diving moves, or a wise, deeply kind, talking oak tree.

I can do these things because I know that my audience is uniquely able to embrace the unusual, the unexpected, even the unbelievable.

In my newest book, Pocket Bear, which debuts in September, 2025, I write about a wily, theft-prone cat named Zephyrina and her dear friend Pocket, a tiny stuffed bear who was originally created to provide comfort to a soldier during World War I.

Pocket, or mascot, bears were made to fit into the breast pocket of a uniform. Their eyes were positioned in such a way that, glancing down, a soldier would see a little bear looking up, a token of love and hope, always there in the darkest of moments. 

Not for a fleeting second, as I wrote this story of an unlikely friendship, did I wonder if a child would embrace the idea. Adults? You never know. We are, sadly, a weary and distracted lot, especially lately.

But a child? Absolutely.

The epigraph to Pocket Bear is from a Mary Oliver poem: Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

That's why writing for middle-grade readers is just a privilege and a joy.

They have so much room in those tender hearts of theirs.

Katherine Applegate


Thimble-born from tip to toe, meet Pocket Bear

Preorder Newbery Medalist Katherine Applegate’s next middle-grade novel Pocket Bear for your classroom or library to receive a gift for you and a gift for your students!

Upload your receipt from any retailer to receive an exclusive art print and 15 Pocket Bear patches.


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"Experience an unforgettable tale of bravery, kindness, and second chances, where every stitch tells a story."

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Small bear with a blue scarf curled up next to a large cat.
Pocket Bear | On sale September 9th

Meet Pocket, created as a good luck charm for soldiers going into battle, whose bravery and loyalty lives on long after the war.

From Katherine Applegate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Odder and The One and Only Ivan.

Thimble-born from tip to toe, Pocket Bear remembers every moment of his becoming: the glimmering needle, the silken thread, the tender hands as each careful stitch brought him closer to himself. Born during the throes of WWI, he was designed to fit into the pocket of a soldier’s jacket, eyes sewn a bit higher than normal so that he always gazed upward. That way, glancing at his pocket, a soldier would see an endearing token of love from someone back home, and, hopefully, a good luck charm.

Now, over a century later, Pocket serves as unofficial mayor of Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured, where stuffed toy animals are refurbished and given a fresh opportunity to be loved. He and his best feline friend Zephyrina, known far and wide as “The Cat Burglar,” have seen it all, and then some.

An unforgettable tale of bravery, loyalty, and kindness, Pocket reminds us all that love comes in many forms (sometimes filled with fluff), and that second chances are always possible.

Explore themes of community, empathy, resilience, and the environment through books by Katherine Applegate. Download a free discussion guide here!

A Teacher's Guide to the Middle-Grade Novels of Katherine Applegate

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Books for Jewish American Heritage Month

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In May, we celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month by reading and sharing stories by Jewish American authors and illustrators. Celebrate in your school or library by uplifting these voices all year round! Enter a sweepestakes below for the chance to win an advance reading copy of Caldecott Medalist Uri Shulevitz’s final work, The Sky Was My Blanket. Find more resources on the Jewish American Heritage Month website.

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Enter for a chance to win a galley of Caldecott Medalist Uri Shulevitz’s final work, The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe. From celebrated Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Uri Shulevitz comes the gripping and revealing true story of a young Polish exile fighting to survive in war-torn Europe. Inspired by the true story of Uri’s uncle and stunningly illustrated by the author, this is a unique and riveting account of one man’s courage and resilience amidst one of the darkest periods in global history.

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Black History Month Resource Center

Black History is American History. Download teacher’s guides and browse title lists to share during Black History Month and all year long with our Black History Month Resource Center.

Enter for a chance to win a galley of Dr. Ibram X Kendi’s next book, Malcolm Lives!: The Official Biography of Malcolm X for Young Readers. In collaboration with the Malcolm X Estate, this ground-breaking narrative biography contains short, evocative chapters, exclusive archival documents, photographs from the Malcolm X Collection at the NYPL Schomburg Center, and extensive backmatter.

Click the cover images below to download free teacher’s guides.

How This Book Was Made: Bye Land, Bye Sea by René Spencer and Rodolfo Montalvo

How This Book Was Made: Bye Land, Bye Sea

Go behind the scenes of Bye Land, Bye Sea by René Spencer and Rodolfo Montalvo. Two children from different backgrounds show that friendship has no language in this epic bilingual story about being lost and finding a friend who understands.

Read on for an interview with René Spencer, Rodolfo Montalvo, Emily Feinberg, Executive Editor at Roaring Brook Press, and Mina Chung, Associate Art Director at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group to learn more about how this book was made, preview interior art, and take a peek into the artist’s sketchbook.

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Teacher’s Guide: Saints of the Household by Ari Tison

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Winner of the Pura Belpré Award and Walter Dean Myers Award for Young Adult Literature!

Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town–beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer–that will take your breath away.

Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.

But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school’s star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers’ dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They’ll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.

Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing.

READ MORE ABOUT SAINTS OF THE HOUSEHOLD →