With a Little Luck by Marissa Meyer By Marissa MeyerFeiwel & Friends / Macmillan, 2024 360 pages 978-1-250-61893-1 Age 12 and older High school junior Jude has a big, loving family; a supportive, insightful best friend in talented songwriter Ari; a love of drawing and creating D&D adventures for his friends; and a fear of asking out Maya, whom he’s had a crush on since 7th grade. Why set himself up for rejection? Maya (Black) is smart and popular; Jude (white) likes flying under the radar. But when Jude starts having a run of extraordinary luck after finding a ruby-red 20-sided die, it ..read more

Ferris by Kate DiCamillo By Kate DiCamilloCandlewick, 2024 226 pages 978-1-5362-3105-2 Ages 8-12 Emma Phineas Wilkey, 11, born beneath a Ferris wheel on the county fairgrounds, has been “Ferris” ever since. “Every good story is a love story,” says Ferris’s grandmother, Charisse, who delivered her. But Charisse has heart problems and is spending more and more time resting, which worries Ferris. Charisse is also communicating with a ghost. Ferris’s Uncle Ted has moved in to work on a masterpiece, although he spends more time asking Ferris (white) to find out if his estranged beautician wife, Aun ..read more

The Blue Pickup by Natasha Tripplett By Natasha TripplettIllustrated by Monica MikaiHarper/HarperCollins, 2024 40 pages 978-0-06-315987-7 Ages 4-8 Ju-Girl (Black) loves spending time with her granddad, who runs a garage. “I help him fix radiators, switch out batteries, and even change a car’s oil.” Her favorite thing is organizing Granddad’s socket wrench set. When they take a break, they sit on the gate of his old Blue Pickup, where she drinks Ting and listens to Granddad’s stories of when he—and the truck–were both younger, and he drove to jobs around the island. The truck no longer runs, an ..read more

The Bard and the Book by Ann Bausum By Ann BausumIllustrated by Marta SevillaPeachtree, 2024 103 pages 978-1-68263-495-0 Age 12 and older “Act I: William Shakespeare Becomes Brilliant, Then Dies.” A captivating account details how the works of Williams Shakespeare were saved from obscurity thanks to the First Folio, printed seven years after his death. The creation of this first compilation of Shakespeare’s plays was far from an easy feat, this history makes clear. The idea of printing a play as a literary work was relatively new. Quarto editions of some of the Bard’s plays existed (not all of ..read more

Out of Body by Nia Davenport By Nia DavenportBalzer + Bray / HarperCollins, 2024 265 pages 978-0-06-325571-5 Age 13 and older A former sci-fi nerd becomes the latest test subject of a terrifying technology she thought existed only on television. When Megan meets LC at a coffee shop, the girls (both Black) develop a friendship almost instantly. Fast forward a few weeks, to LC persuading Megan to take molly at a party. Megan wakes up on the lawn a few hours later—in LC’s body. Naturally, Megan’s parents are alarmed when she shows up on their doorstep, looking like LC but claiming to be Megan. Wo ..read more

Drawing Deena by Hena Khan By Hena KhanSalaam Reads / Simon & Schuster, 2024 232 pages 978-1-5344-5991-5 Ages 8-12 An emotionally resonant novel explores anxiety, social media, and finding one’s voice as a young artist. As much as Pakistani American Deena enjoys her seventh grade art class, she’s eager to improve her creative skills with additional training. Classes are expensive, though, and Deena has overheard her parents arguing about finances. Her mom designs and sells desi clothing out of their home; to help grow her customer base, Deena designs a logo and starts a website for Z’s Thr ..read more

When Rosie Walks George by Amy Hest. Illustrated by Taeeun Yoo By Amy HestIllustrated by Taeeun YooTwo Lions / Amazon, 2024 32 pages 978-154201-855-5 Ages 3-7 “George is old and deaf in one ear, and he doesn’t run fast anymore.” The brown-spotted white dog, clearly beloved, still needs to go for walks, however. Rosie is too little to walk George alone but sometimes the whole family walks him along the beach near their home. Rosie, the youngest, “lags behind, rolling her ball near the sea.” George is slow too. “He steps. And stops. And looks around.” He notices birds and shells and waves. And R ..read more

The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming By Candace FlemingScholastic Focus / Scholastic, 2024 325 pages 978-1-338-74957-1 Age 10 and older Imagine accepting a job knowing nothing about the work, only to arrive by train at a nondescript location where the first order of business is to sign the Official Secrets Act. In the early days of World War II, many young British women found themselves arriving at Bletchley Park in the English countryside, the desire to serve their nation guiding their decisions to accept work so secre ..read more

By Sherri WinstonBloomsbury, 2024 292 pages 978-1-5476-0850-8 Ages 9-12 Recently back home after a stint in foster care, twelve-year-old Sharkita (Black) lives in fear of again being separated from her precocious sister, Lilli, and developmentally disabled brother, Lamar. While Mama goes out—sometimes for days at a time—Kita cooks dinner, pays the bills, cleans the house, and cares for her younger siblings. Kita’s head swirls with adult worries and complicated emotions: She longs to be loved and cherished by her mother even as she sometimes hates her. She is both her mom’s “ride-or-die” and t ..read more

By Yi Shun LaiAtheneum / Simon & Schuster, 2024 326 pages A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai 978-1-6659-3776-4 Age 13 and older In 1914, 18-year-old Clara Ketterling-Dunbar (white) is the only female (and American) member of a crew of 28 on board the British ship Resolute when it sinks in Antarctic waters, leaving everyone alive but stranded on ice floes. A staunch women’s suffragist, Clara was involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union in London before she grew frustrated with their decision to halt their suffrage efforts to focus on wartime contributions. Clar ..read more