“It’s the kind of night when you just can’t fall asleep. You feel as though everyone in the world is asleep but you.” A small child dressed in bunny pajamas is wide awake in the peaceful calm of a deep-blue-hued bedroom, longing to play.
Starred Review of the Week
I Must Betray You
When 17-year-old Cristian Florescu is called to his school office and confronted by a member of the Romanian secret police, the Securitate officer tells Cristian that he and his family won’t be punished for the illegal American dollar Cristian possesses if he’s willing to become an informer.
Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen travels from Los Angeles with her single mom to spend the summer in Last Chance, Minnesota. They are there to help with the family’s Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace, because her grandfather is ill.
Love, Violet
There’s only one classmate who makes “Violet’s heart skip,” and that’s brown-skinned Mira. In Violet’s imagination, she “astound[s] Mira with heroic feats” and embarks on adventures with her.
Garlic & the Vampire
Brought to life with a number of other vegetables by kind Witch Agnes, Garlic (a personified garlic head on a human-like body) is most comfortable in the security of her garden plot, growing garlic for the humans in the village.
On the Trapline
“Kiskisiw means ‘he remembers.’” A young Cree boy leaves the city and travels north by plane with his grandfather to see the trapline where Moshom spent the early years of his life.
The Woman All Spies Fear
Elizebeth Smith’s introduction to codes and ciphers came while working for wealthy eccentric George Fabyan on a project involving a Shakespeare folio.
Bright Star
A fawn opens its newborn eyes to its mother. “You are alive! You are a bright star inside our hearts.”
Freedom Swimmer
In Guangzhou province, China, 1968, teenage Ming lives with other older orphans and works in the fields like everyone else in his village. Six years before, Ming’s mother, like many in the village, died during the great famine that the government attributes to natural disasters when in fact it was the result of poor policy.
Mighty Inside
African American Melvin is about to start high school in Spokane, Washington, in the 1950s, following in the footsteps of his high-achieving older brother, Chuck, and older sister, Marian. It would be a daunting prospect even if he didn’t have a stutter.