Jingwen, his little brother Yanghao, and their mother are recent immigrants to Australia (probably from China, although it’s never specified). Their father was killed in a car accident two years earlier. Jingwen misses baking with his father, who dreamed of opening a bakery in Australia called Pie in the Sky.
Starred Review of the Week
The Home Builders
A cozy natural world book for young children shows a variety of animals moving through the seasons.
When the Ground Is Hard
In 1965, 16-year-old Adele attends a boarding school for mixed-race students in the British protectorate of Swaziland. Her white father lives with his white wife and children, but calls and visits and pays for Adele’s schooling. Her mother, like Adele herself, is biracial (Black/white). At Adele’s school class matters most; students whose parents are able to pay tuition enjoy better treatment from staff and teachers, and are the most popular.
The Line Tender
When a dead great white shark is brought to the dock of their small Cape Cod town, Lucy, 12, and her best friend, Fred, are inspired to find out more about the work of Lucy’s late mom, a shark researcher who died five years before.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
Imagine that everything we know about U.S. history has been filtered through a kaleidoscope stuck on the lens of American exceptionalism. Now imagine the kaleidoscope comes unstuck, or breaks altogether. This history of the place, people, and politics of this land from an Indigenous perspective will offer a provocative shift for the majority of readers.
B Is for Baby
B is for baby. It’s also for beads, basket, banana, brother, bicycle and more in this un-alphabet book that features the letter B with bountiful delight.
Dig
In this taut, mesmerizing work, the Shoveler’s mom is adept at survival but has never told him anything about his dad, and their recent move to Pennsylvania has him wondering yet again.
The Little Red Stroller
When Luna is a baby, her mommy gives her a red stroller. When Luna is bigger, she and her mommy encounter baby Ernie and his mommy and daddy. “We wish we had a little red stroller like yours,” they tell her. Luna, declaring herself too big for her stroller, gives it to them.
This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality
A compelling, present-tense narrative combines poems in teenage Jo Ann Allen’s voice with clippings from news stories and other contemporaneous documents from the 1956-57 school year, when she was one of the Clinton 12 who integrated the high school in Clinton, Tennessee.
Heroine
Mickey, a talented catcher, finds her softball dreams derailed after a car accident puts her and her best friend, pitcher Carolina, in the hospital months before their senior season. When the OxyContin Mickey is prescribed runs out sooner than it should, she stumbles upon another source: Edith, who snags Oxy from the senior citizens she drives to doctors’ appointments.