Mean people are passing out unkind letters at night. They’re part of the Unkindness Club. But, in Jill Ammon Vanderwood’s The Unkindness Club, two friends, Persephone, a ten-year-old deaf girl, and Rowen, who moves around in a wheelchair, are set to make things right, to...

In Veronica Stanley-Hooper’s children's book The Meanies, a little boy insists that unseen “meanies” in his mouth and hands are causing him to speak harshly and act out at school and at home. After he pulls Riley’s hair, pushes Drew, and refuses to share, his...

This Case Stinks! by Janice Garden Macdonald introduces readers to Casey, a young detective determined to solve a very smelly mystery at home. The story begins with Casey introducing his family, including his parents, his big brother on Team Green, his baby sister, and his...

The Shadow of the Slave Ship by Wendy Leighton-Porter is a whimsical journey through time to eighteenth-century Bristol and London. Slavery is still legal in Britain, although the tide is beginning to turn on public acceptance, and there is a growing movement calling for its...

“What truly matters isn’t the outside, but what’s inside.” Sometimes life doesn’t make it easy to accept these simple words. In Kateryna Dronova’s The Ring of Beauty, both Tilda and her father, Tobin, have important lessons to learn. The two have been cursed, all because...

Cael's unintended role in the events leading to his mother's death hardens his father's heart toward the young mouse and creates a growing emotional rift in the family. Unable to win back his father's affections and determined to make a name for himself as a...

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, wondering what that noise was in your closet? In Laura Helland’s The Hellandback Kids, that’s exactly what happened to eleven-year-old Chris Hellandback. But when he got up and looked in the closet, there was...

In The Adventures of Syd: Lost in Bone Cave by Danielle Simone, it’s fall break, and Syd is ready to go spelunking on her dad’s work trip. For the last four weekends, they’ve been training on ropes and gathering supplies for their cave adventure. This...

In The Funniest Picture Book Ever: AKA Fartnado!, Derek Taylor Kent introduces young readers to a weird little town called Ha! Everything there is built around jokes, silliness, and honestly, some pretty bad manners. The town is full of strange characters, like Lonnie B. Lutz,...

H.S. Toshack’s The Smile of the Tiger is set during catastrophic flooding in Bangkok, where a house cat named Sheena becomes trapped alone in the Allen family apartment after the building is abandoned. With no access to food or water, she escapes through a garbage...