Tundra Telegram: Books That Have Books Inside of Them

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we thumb through readers’ minds and suggest some spine-tingling texts that might serve as an index for their interests.

Today – March 2 – is National Read Across America Day. Established by the National Education Association (NEA) in 1998 to help get kids excited about reading, the day happens each year on March 2, as it’s also the birthday of children’s book author Dr. Seuss (!). As children’s publishers, this is a day we can get behind, even if we happen to be located north of America.

To celebrate, we’re recommending some children’s books about books – the magic, the wonder, the (sometimes) danger (!). These are books that concern books, reading, writing, and libraries (where so much of that all happens). Wherever possible (or known), we’ve included where the book takes place, so you can think about reading across America geographically, if so inclined. Let’s get meta with some books about books!

PICTURE BOOKS

Who loves books more than librarians? And Library Girl by Karen Henry Clark and Sheryl Murray tells the story of one America’s most famous librarians: Nancy Pearl. Pearl, teased as “library girl” as a child by her classmates, believed in the power of the book and grew up to become the Executive Director of the Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library. She spoke (and still speaks) regularly about books on NPR’s Morning Edition and KWGS-FM in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not to mention her monthly television show on the Seattle Channel, Book Lust with Nancy Pearl. (You can put this one down as “Seattle, Washington” on your book map.)

Speaking of famous librarians, we need to mention Arturo Schomburg, an unheralded figure in American letters. You can read his story in Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez. Schomburg was a law clerk who, starting during the Harlem Renaissance, began to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora. When his collection started to overflow his living space, he turned to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection that is now known as Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. (This book takes place in New York, New York.)

And though The Boy Who Was Raised by Librarians by Carla Morris and Brad Sneed is not about any real librarians, it remains a tribute to the important work they do. The book follows a curious young boy, Melvin, who visits the library every day after school to visit his favorite people — Marge, Betty, and Leola — at the reference desk.

More generally about libraries (and the many forms they can take) is the nonfiction book My Librarian Is a Camel by Margriet Ruurs. In North America, many kids are able to visit a building in their city or town to get books, but in many remote areas of the world, librarians have to get creative. In this book, you can read about library books delivered by bus, boat, elephant, donkey, train, even by wheelbarrow. This book is a testament to the importance of access to books.

The Little Library by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas is a book in the Mr. Tiffin Classroom Series about the creative way that one librarian instills a love of reading. Everyone in Mr. Tiffin’s class loves books except Jake, a slow and careful reader who can take a long time to finish a book. When the librarian notices Jake running his fingers across a brand-new bookshelf she offers him Woodworking for Young Hands, which becomes his favorite book and inspires a project: making a little free library at the school!

You can find books at the library, but you can also find them at your local independent bookseller. And Good Night, Little Bookstore by Amy Cherrix and E. B. Goodale is a bedtime book that celebrates indie bookstores. What makes it especially fitting for the list is all the little books you can see illustrated on the shelves – you can spend hours looking at all the titles! ( The location is not noted, but author Cherrix works at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina.)

In the realm of writing books (after reading a lot of them), come two picture book biographies by Linda Bailey: Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein, illustrated by Júlia Sardà, and Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock, illustrated by Isabelle Follath. Both books look at the childhoods of great writers – Mary Shelley and Arthur Conan Doyle – and how the stories they read (or were told) informed their own writing of immensely influential books.

It doesn’t get much more metafiction than The Book in the Book in the Book by Julien Baer and Simon Bailly. Having wandered off from his vacationing family, young Thomas is a little bit lost and looking for something interesting when he finds an abandoned book on the beach. As Thomas opens up the little book, so does the reader! Through a feat of book engineering, a second booklet is bound into the first one, and then a third booklet into the second. Each successive volume is smaller than the previous one, while the closing pages return to the original book’s size as well as its setting. (My head just hurts thinking of the production costs.)

If you’re confused as to whether literature can be only spiritually or maybe literally nourishing, there are two similar books for you: Books Aren’t For Eating by Carlie Sorosiak and Manu Montoya, and Library Books Are NOT For Eating by Todd Tarpley and Tom Booth. Though one features a bookstore owner who happens to be a goat (and faces a crisis when he needs to recommend a book to a goat customer), and the other features a dinosaur who is a teacher with a book-eating problem, their message is the same: don’t eat books that don’t belong to you. (If you want to eat your own books, that’s your call. We just want you to buy them.)

For a fun book about the joys (and challenges) of reading, try Daisy Hirst’s I Do Not Like Books Anymore! Natalie and Alphonse, monster siblings (previously seen in Alphonse, There’s Mud on the Ceiling!) love books of all kinds – when their parents are reading them. But when Natalie tries to learn to read books on her own, she finds it incredibly frustrating. She decides she’s still going to write stories (with Alphonse’s help), just not read them. (Sounds like some authors we know.) Somehow, Natalie must find a way to turn her love of telling stories into a love of reading stories, too.

In the same genre of not wanting to read, author Max Greenfield (Schmidt from The New Girl) and illustrator Mike Lowery have you covered. With both I Don’t Want to Read This Book and the forthcoming I Don’t Want to Read This Book Aloud – not to mention This Book Is Not a Present – they talk to reluctant readers of all stripes and inspire a lot of laughs (and maybe some reading bravery?).

Only one other picture book speaks honestly to the dangers of reading: Get Me Out of This Book by Deborah Cholette and Kalli Dakos, illustrated by Sara Infante. Starring a bookmark named Max, it outlines all the scary things that might appear in a book (snakes, skeletons, who knows what else?), but also some rules and tools you can use to face those fears, whether they appear in writing or in real life!

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Evie and the Truth About Witches by John Martz is another book that doesn’t shy away from the risks involved in reading. Evie loves reading scary books, but her usual scary stories just aren’t doing it for her anymore. When she stumbles across a different book, The Truth about Witches, she hopes she’s found a new horrific fix, but she’s promptly forbidden by a kindly shopkeeper from reading the last page out loud! Obviously, no shopkeeper is going to stop her, and witchy dangers ensue!

An understated danger of reading is it might lead to detention. That’s what happens in The Losers Club by Andrew Clements – or at least detention is what sixth-grade book lover Alec is threatened with after repeated instances of him reading a book (instead of paying attention in class). So, Alec starts a school club just for reading of which he intends to be the sole member. But scads of kids soon find their way to Alec’s club – including his ex-friend turned bully and the girl Alec is maybe starting to like – and Alec realizes lots of people like books (and that certainly doesn’t make them losers).

Beloved animal friends Houndsley and Catina get their own book fix in James Howe and Marie-Louise Gay’s Houndsley and Catina at the Library. Or at least, that’s their plan until they find – horror of horrors – their library is closing! Trixie, the head librarian is retiring, and faced with certain closure, the animal friends try their own paw at library science.

A dog and cat saving the library is one thing, but what about an insect? The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library by Linda Bailey and Victoria Jamieson tells the tale of a shiny green bug named Eddie, who – inspired by the brave animals and insects he’s read about in books (Charlotte, Stuart Little, etc) – devises a plan to keep a struggling library open.

June Harper, the main character of Property of the Rebel Librarian by Allison Varnes, essentially sets up her own local chapter of Read Across America when she starts an underground reading movement in defiance of a massive book ban at her middle-school. It’s hard to read across America when you can’t access the books you might want to read – never forget that!

A lot of young readers find libraries fun, but there’s one book series that turns them into a combination of amusement park and world’s best escape room. The Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series by Chris Grabenstein follow Kyle Keeley and friends as they attempt to solve the increasingly elaborate library-based games and puzzles of Luigi Lemoncello, the world’s most famous game maker. The first book, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, begins with Kyle and friends as they attempt to escape from a new Lemoncello-designed library after its overnight opening party. The group continues to take on challenges from the enigmatic (and literary-minded) puzzle master in later editions. (The books take place in the fictional town of Alexandriaville in the very real state of Ohio.)

The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams by Mindy Thompson wears its faith in the (literal) magic of art and literature on its sleeve. Poppy’s family owns the magic bookshop Rhyme and Reason, which is situated in WWII New York, but caters to customers from around the world and from the past and future. When her older brother threatens to break the most important rule among magic Booksellers, Poppy is caught in an impossible situation and – like every other week it seems – the fate of the bookshops hangs in the balance.

We’ve talked a lot about reading books and curating books in a library or store, but what about writing one? That’s what happens in Susin Nielsen’s The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen – and, as you might expect from the title, it’s not voluntary. Thirteen-year-old Henry’s happy, ordinary life comes to an abrupt halt when his family is shattered by a devastating incident. In a new city, where no one knows his family’s past, Henry is encouraged to keep a journal by his new therapist. Writing helps him unlock past grief and anger, and he begins to open up again. And it’s much funnier than we’re making it sound here. (This one takes place in frequent Susin Nielsen setting, Vancouver, British Columbia.)

Though The Book That No One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade (yes, that Richard Ayoade) doesn’t come out until March 14, we had to include it for its look into the psyche of a book. The book is narrated by the book itself (following me?), and it has a lot of opinions about how it should be read. It gets irritated when readers bend its pages back, and it finds authors quite annoying. (Same.) And no one has deigned to read it until you, young reader, start to flip through its pages (but not too harshly, we hope).

What about an adventure set in a universe that was definitively within a book? That’s the concept behind Scott Reintgen’s Talespinners series, in which an ambitious side character, Indira Story, travels to the travel to the city of Fable and attend Protagonist Preparatory, a school where famous literary characters train kids to become successful characters in their own stories. The books, of which there are three – Saving Fable, Escaping Ordinary, and Breaking Badlands – are full of literary references and book jokes: there are anthropomorphic bookmarks and laborers who mine for story nuggets for meta-textual hilarity.

YOUNG ADULT

Though all of Ashley Poston’s Once Upon a Con books could qualify for this list, The Bookish and the Beast is the most book-related. (It’s even in the title!) A new take on Beauty and the Beast, it follows book lover Rosie Thorne, feeling stuck in life in her small town after her mother’s death – and especially after having to sell off her late mother’s library of rare Starfield novels. Hollywood star Vance Reigns, hiding out from a scandal, winds up in the same small town, but it seems unlikely romance will blossom, given Vance doesn’t read. (Remember what John Waters says, friends.)

We all love books, but we don’t endorse stealing them. That is, unless this is YA phenomenon The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, because in this perennial bestseller, Liesel, a foster girl / subsistence thief living in Nazi Germany, encounters hope in something new: books. With the help of her foster father, she learns to read and shares newly stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man they hide in her basement. (This book takes place just outside of Munich, Bavaria, in Germany.)

And if you want to talk about the power of books, how about a magical Library of All Things, where people can reverse their fates? That’s what Princess Amrita searches for in Aditi Khorana’s The Library of Fates, after her kingdom is besieged by the violent Emperor Sikander and she finds herself a fugitive in her own lands. We all know a library can be a sanctuary and change lives, but this is next-level!

Many of us have carried a bag that says something like “I Love Libraries,” but few of us have actually fallen in love with librarians. Okay, maybe all of us have, but few of those librarians turned out to be evil! Enter Michelle Knudsen’s darkly funny Evil Librarian, in which Cynthia’s best friend falls in love with a super-hot and young high school librarian who just happens to be a demon. The entire student body is threatened by this bibliophilic babe, and Cynthia has to become an expert demon hunter while also making sure the school musical goes off without a hitch.

For a more wholesome (or, at least, less demonic) love story set against a backdrop of books, there’s Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares. Not only does it begin in a bookstore, it also features a titular red notebook in which young Dash and Lily flirt and communicate with each other via a series of challenges before they ever meet in the flesh. Pitching woo through books – is there anything else that a book lover wants? (Like with Schomburg, this one takes place in New York City.)

But books aren’t just good for romancing. They are also good for solving crimes. Case in point: The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson. Unlikely duo Alice Ogilve and her tutor Iris Adams use the complete works of mystery writer Agatha Christie to help them find out what happened to missing classmate (and Alice’s ex-best friend) Brooke Donovan, and uncover dark secrets in their fictional town of Castle Cove. (Stay tuned, as there are more Agathas mysteries coming.)

And our final YA book about books is the anthology The Book That Made Me, edited by Judith Ridge. In 32 personal essays, authors like Shaun Tan and Markus Zusak and Randa Abdel-Fattah write about the books that affected and inspired them most as young readers. Who knows? Maybe one is even a book about books. Which would make this a book about a books about books …

Happy Read Across America Day. Wherever you may be, make sure to spend some time reading across it!

Tundra Telegram: Books for Your To-Be-Dread Pile

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we look at the things currently haunting readers, and recommend some petrifying publications in which to bury themselves (figuratively speaking, of course).

My fellow creatures of the night know that Halloween is just around the corner: the time to embrace all things spooky and eerie. In many parts of the world, this is the first year in a while that the young and ghoulish are able to gather at costume parties or take in a scary movie at the theatre or even trick-or-treat door-to-door. So, we’re a little more hyped for Halloween than usual.

Luckily, we’ve been able to scare up scads of scary, blood-curdling books, from those from the youngest readers to YA that might make Stephen King blanche. Read on – if you dare!

PICTURE BOOKS

Ghosts – they’re a classic Halloween costume. All you need is a sheet and two eyeholes. They’re also a classic element of many a Halloween book, and that includes some picture books featuring entirely friendly ghosts. There are few friendlier ghosts than Cale Atkinson’s Simon, who first rose to prominence with the picture book Sir Simon: Super Scarer. Simon is given his first house-haunting assignment, but it doesn’t go well because the kid who lives in the house, Chester, isn’t afraid and can think of nothing more fun than spending time with a real, undead ghost! And for the true horror fans, there are dozens of horror-movie Easter eggs throughout the book’s illustrations.

In other tales of failed ghosts, No Such Thing by Ella Bailey features a poltergeist who can’t seem to spook a clever, skeptical girl named Georgia. No matter what the ghost does, Georgia has an explanation! This picture book is a perfectly not-too-spooky blend of supernatural and STEM.

And Riel Nason and Byron Eggenschweiler’s The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt is a ghost who demonstrates that being different is great, even if it makes being a ghost a little harder than he’d like. The book also makes for a great homemade Halloween costume that’s a level-up from the traditional sheet.

Lest we forget Gustavo: The Shy Ghost by Flavia Z. Drago, about a ghost who would love to make some friends – if only he could work up the courage. Technically a Day of the Dead book (rather than a Halloween one) – but that’s just a couple days after Halloween – Gustavo is a sweet story about introverted ghosts and companionship.

If these ghosts sound pretty cool and you need a few tips on how to make a ghost friend of your own, you need to read How to Make Friends with a Ghost by Rebecca Green. It whimsically provides tips for ghost care so you’ll make a spectral friend for life, including how to read your ghost spooky stories, and what snacks ghosts prefer.

Not to be outshone by ghosts, witches are also a time-honored Halloween favorite, and the perfect place to start, book-wise, is Leila: The Perfect Witch, by Flavia Z. Drago. From the creator who brought us Gustavo comes this other spooky picture book, featuring a witch who excels at nearly everything she does: flying, conjuring, shape-shifting. There’s only one thing she can’t do: cook. She tries to learn from her witchy sisters, but instead learns the value of trying your best, even if it’ll never win you any awards.

Witches are usually associated with Halloween, but what about Christmas? That’s where The Legend of the Christmas Witch by Aubrey Plaza (April Ludgate herself), Dan Murphy, and Julie Iredale comes in. The Christmas Witch is Santa Claus’s misunderstood twin sister, separated from the big elf at a young age, in a picture book that rethinks everything we know about witches and the holidays!

If you want to get a sense of the kinds of things witches get up to outside of the major holidays, Little Witch Hazel by Phoebe Wahl is for you. In four stories (one for each season), a tiny witch gets into adventures in the forest, be they rescuing an orphaned egg, investigating the howls of a ghost (this story is the spookiest), or lazing on a summer’s day.

But then, there are many other monsters to consider at Halloween, as well. Best to start with the guidebook, Monsters 101 by Cale Atkinson (man, he loves Halloween). Professors Vampire, Blob and Werewolf, along with their trusty lab assistant – a zombie named Tina – reveal some ridiculous and fang-in-cheek monster facts about creepy favorites from swamp creatures to demons.

And if you like monsters, you’ll want to read the story of the woman who created one of the granddaddies (if not the entire genre of horror): Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein by Linda Bailey and Júlia Sardà. This is the picture book biography of the girl behind one of the greatest novels and monsters of all time: Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. The book is also a wonderful exploration of creativity and where stories come from, complete with spine-chilling and gothic illustrations.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

Once again, we start with ghosts, this time with beloved Canadian writing legend Kenneth Oppel giving us chills with Ghostlight. It’s a fun (though sometimes terrifying) horror story in which young Gabe’s summer job scaring tourists with ghost stories turns real when he accidentally summons the spirit of a dead girl – and must join forces with her to protect the world of the living. As a bonus, it’s partially based on a real ghost story about Toronto’s Gibraltar Point Lighthouse.

Like ghosts by the water? Well, Double O Stephen and the Ghostly Realm by Angela Ahn features ghost pirates. A kid who loves pirates, Stephen Oh-O’Driscoll, comes face-to-pale-face with the ghost of pirate Captain Sapperton, who needs his help to cross over to the titular ghostly realm.

Karma Moon: Ghosthunter by Melissa Savage looks at the intersection of the supernatural and the reality-television in the story of a girl whose father is a TV ghost-hunter! Karma stays in a haunted Colorado hotel and must face her own anxiety and help her dad’s flailing TV series in this spooky book that’s part Veronica Mars, part The Shining.

Ghosts and spooky dolls? Sign us up for The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story by Canadian master of the middle-grade macabre Charis Cotter. When Alice and her mom head to some small town where Alice’s mom has been hired as the new live-in nurse to a rich elderly lady, Alice finds a dollhouse in an attic that’s an exact replica of the house she’s in. Then she wakes up to find a girl who look a lot like one of the dolls from the dollhouse – let the creeping dread begin!

And Sir Simon returns – this time in comic form, with the Simon & Chester graphic novel series (again by Mr. Halloween, Cale Atkinson). In the three books that exist so far, the ghost and human friends solve mysteries (Super Detectives), stay up late (Super Sleepover), and visit the waterpark and a ghost conference (Super Family). Who says it’s all hauntings and eerie moans?

But we have witchcraft for early readers and middle-grade lovers, as well! Evie and the Truth about Witches by John Martz is about a girl who wants to be scared, and the usual horror stories aren’t doing it for her anymore (we’ve all been there). When she stumbles across a different sort of book, The Truth about Witches, she hopes she’s found a new scare, but she’s forbidden by a kindly shopkeeper from reading the last page out loud! Find out why in this graphic novel that is honestly quite unsettling!

Escape to Witch City by E. Latimer explores an alternate Victorian London where a sentence of witchcraft comes with dire consequences. Here, all children are tested at age thirteen to ensure they have no witch blood. So, Emmaline Black must attempt to stamp out her power before her own test comes. But the more she researches, the more she begins to suspect that her radically anti-witch aunt and mother are hiding something.

Speaking of witches and cities . . . readers so often encounter witches in the woods, standing over a bubbling cauldron. But what about urban witches? Crimson Twill: Witch in the City by Kallie George and Birgitta Sif features a little witch who loves bright colors as she ventures out on a big-city shopping adventure (think the Shopaholic series meets Bewitched). The book is also up for the Silver Birch Express Award, which makes us think there may be a few covens hidden amongst the Ontario Library Association.

And the city witches keep coming with Sophie Escabasse’s Witches of Brooklyn graphic novel series. Life in Brooklyn takes a strange turn when Effie discovers magic runs in the family when she starts to live with her weird aunts – and weird in the Macbeth version of the term.

Ghosts and witches are fine, but what about the scary stuff out there. You know, the creepy things from outer space that Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully protected us from? Then you need The Area 51 Files from Julie Buxbaum and illustrator Lavanya Naidu. When Sky Patel-Baum is sent to live with her mysterious uncle, she didn’t imagine she’d end up at Area 51, a top-secret military base that just so happens to be full of aliens.

And Natasha Deen’s Spooky Sleuths series, illustrated by Lissy Marlin, follows kids Asim and Rokshar as they uncover paranormal mysteries in their town. Whether it’s ghostly trees or teachers who glow in the moon or mermaids, the creepy supernatural encounters our heroes have are all based on ghost stories and folklore from Guyana!

Halloween in summer? It’s possible with New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White’s Sinister Summer books. In each, the Sinister-Winterbottom twins solve mysteries at increasingly bizarre (and creepy) summer vacation spots. The books begin with an amusement park that’s seemingly cursed (Wretched Waterpark), then travel to a suspicious spa in the Transylvanian mountains (Vampiric Vacation).

And from the creator of Séance Tea Party (which is also a good Halloween read), Remeina Yee, comes the uncategorizable creatures of the graphic novel My Aunt Is a Monster. Safia thought that being blind meant she would only get to go on adventures through her audiobooks. This all changes when she goes to live with her distant and mysterious aunt, Lady Whimsy (who may be – okay, definitely is – a monster).

YOUNG ADULT

Now, do you want to be scared, or have a good horror-adjacent time? Because we have YA for both moods. In the realm of real scares is How to Survive your Murder by Danielle Valentine, that comes recommended by Mr. Goosebumps R. L. Stine himself! Kind of like a more murdery Back to the Future, the book concerns Alice, a teen about to testify in her sister Claire’s murder trial. But as she approaches the courtroom, she’s knocked out cold. When she awakes, it is Halloween night (see?) a year earlier, the same day Claire was murdered. Alice has until midnight to save her sister and find the real killer in this inventive slasher.

Speaking of slashers, let’s talk Stephanie Perkins and There’s Someone Inside Your House. The thriller works like a classic slasher, with students at Makani Young’s high school dropping like flies to a grotesque series of murders. Makani tries to sort out the rhyme and reason as the body count increases. Read it, then check out the Netflix adaptation (don’t watch this trailer unless you’re not easily spooked!) and see which you prefer.

And the slasher gets witchy with Coven by Jennifer Dugan and Kit Seaton, a queer, paranormal YA graphic novel featuring a young witch racing to solve a series grisly supernatural murders of her coven members in upstate New York before the killer strikes again.

Like your spooky stories with a healthy heaping of Cronenberg-esque body horror? You need to be reading Rory Power. Her debut novel Wilder Girls starred three best friends living in quarantine at their island boarding school where a disturbing infection, the Tox, has started seeping into everything – and everyone. She then followed that up with Burn Our Bodies Down a creepy yarn about weird and dark secrets in a teen girl’s mom’s hometown, for fans of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and people frightened by corn mazes.

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass gives sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston the ability to see dead people everywhere. But for him, watching the last moments of dead people is easy compared to the racism he faces as one of the few Black students at St. Clair Prep. Just when a little romance enters his life, he encounters a dangerous ghost: Sawyer Doon, a troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school before taking his own life. Jake finds his supernatural abilities bring him into contact with some very dark forces.

If you like the trappings and style of horror, but a little less distress, we have YA novels for you, too. Case in point: Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson. In it, teenage Wiccan Mila Flores investigates the murders of three classmates (including one friend), but accidentally ends up bringing them back to life to form a hilariously unlikely – and mostly unwilling – vigilante girl gang. Sounds rad, right?

What We Harvest by Ann Fraistat isn’t all fun-and-games – in fact, it’s a folk horror about an idyllic small town being devoured by a mysterious blight called Quicksilver – but it certainly has some funny moments. And when Wren finds herself one of the last in her town unaffected by the blight, she turns to her ex, Derek, and the two have to uncover the weird and disturbing secrets that kept their town’s crops so plentiful.

Jessica Lewis’s Bad Witch Burning is a witchy story full of Black girl (occult) magic. Katrell’s ability to summon the dead offers her a chance at a new life, as she figures it could help out at home, where her mother is unemployed and her dad avoids paying child support. So she doesn’t listen to the ghosts and takes her summoning a little too far, with very dark consequences.

Finally, The Babysitters Coven by Kate M. Williams is a funny, action-packed series about a coven of witchy babysitters who protect the innocent and save the world from evil. The series follows the indoctrination of seventeen-year-old babysitter Esme Pearl’s to this heroic lineage when she meets Cassandra Heaven, a force of nature who – for some reason – wants to join her babysitters club. And the sequel, For Better or Cursed, takes readers to the Summit of the Synod, the governing group of the Sitterhood – a sort of work conference for super-powered demon-fighting babysitters. Spells Like Teen Spirit wraps up the trilogy.

Women’s History Month 2022: Women in Art

March is Women’s History Month and there are so my incredible and inspiring books to read! We’ll be sharing a new themed list every week this month so make sure to keep an eye on our blog!

Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli
By Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
40 Pages | Ages 5-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101918562 | Tundra Books
Here is the life of iconic fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who as a little girl in Rome, was told by her own mamma that she was brutta. Ugly. So she decided to seek out beauty around her, and found it everywhere. What is beauty? Elsa wondered. She looked everywhere for beauty until something inside of Elsa blossomed, and she became an artist with an incredible imagination. Defining beauty on her own creative terms, Schiaparelli worked hard to develop her designs, and eventually bloomed into an extraordinary talent who dreamed up the most wonderful dresses, hats, shoes and jewelry. Why not a shoe for a hat? Why not a dress with drawers? And she invented a color: shocking pink! Her adventurous mind was the key to her happiness and success – and is still seen today in her legacy of wild imagination. Daring and different, Elsa Schiaparelli used art to make fashion, and it was quite marvelous.

Charlotte and the Nutcracker: The True Story of a Girl Who Made Ballet History
By Charlotte Nebres
Illustrated by Alea Marley
40 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593374900 | Random House BFYR
The only thing Charlotte loves as much as ballet is Christmas. So, when she gets the opportunity to play Marie in the New York City Ballet’s The Nutcracker, she leaps at the chance. Dancing takes practice-hours of adjusting her arms and perfecting her jumps. With the help of her Trinidadian and Filipino families, encouragement from her sister, and a view of her mom and dad in the audience, Charlotte finds the strength to never give up. In this spectacular debut full of fluid, dynamic illustrations, Charlotte provides youngsters with a multicultural tale of family, dance, and holiday cheer.

It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way
By Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
48 Pages | Ages 5-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101918593 | Tundra Books
Growing up quiet and lonely at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gyo Fujikawa learned from her relatives the ways in which both women and Japanese people lacked opportunity. Her teachers and family believed in her and sent her to art school and later Japan, where her talent flourished. But while Gyo’s career grew and led her to work for Walt Disney Studios, World War II began, and with it, her family’s internment. But Gyo never stopped fighting – for herself, her vision, her family and her readers – and later wrote and illustrated the first children’s book to feature children of different races interacting together.

Julia, Child
By Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
32 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Paperback
ISBN 9780735264014 | Tundra Books
Julia and Simca are two young friends who agree that you can never use too much butter – and that it is best to be a child forever. Sharing a love of cooking and having no wish to turn into big, busy people who worry too much and dawdle too little, they decide to create a feast for growing and staying young. A playful, scrumptious celebration of the joy of eating, the importance of never completely growing up and mastering the art of having a good time, Julia, Child is a fictional tale loosely inspired by the life and spirit of the very real Julia Child – a story that should be taken with a grain of salt and a generous pat of butter.

Little Frida: A Story of Frida Kahlo
By Anthony Browne
32 Pages | Ages 4-6 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781536209334 | Candlewick
Following a bout with polio at the age of six, Frida Kahlo’s life was marked by pain and loneliness. In real life she walked with a limp, but in her dreams she flew. One day her imagination took her on a journey to a girl in white who could dance without pain and hold her secrets, an indelible figure who would find her way into Frida’s art in years to come. Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s diary, Anthony Browne captures the essence of the artist’s early flights of fancy and depicts both Frida and her imaginary friend in vivid illustrations evoking Kahlo’s iconic style. A note at the end offers a brief biography of the artist who has intrigued art lovers the world over.

Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Julia Sarda
56 Pages | Ages 5-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781770495593 | Tundra Books
How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, another dreamer. Two years later, they travel to Switzerland where they meet a famous poet, Lord Byron. On a stormy summer evening, with five young people gathered around a fire, Byron suggests a contest to see who can create the best ghost story. Mary has a waking dream about a monster come to life. A year and a half later, Mary Shelley’s terrifying tale, Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, is published — a novel that goes on to become the most enduring monster story ever and one of the most popular legends of all time.

My Little Golden Book about Misty Copeland
By Sherri L. Smith
Illustrated by Tara Nicole Whitaker
24 Pages | Ages 2-5 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593380673 | Golden Books
Help your little one dream big with a Little Golden Book biography all about Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theatre’s first Black principal dancer! The perfect introduction to nonfiction for preschoolers! This Little Golden Book introduces ballet prodigy Misty Copeland to the youngest readers. The first Black principal dancer in the history of the American Ballet Theatre – who didn’t start dancing until she was almost thirteen – continues to impress the world and pave the way for young Black girls to chase their dreams.

Nina: A Story of Nina Simone
By Traci N. Todd
Illustrated by Christian Robinson
56 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781524737283 | Putnam BFYR
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in small town North Carolina, Nina Simone was a musical child. She sang before she talked and learned to play piano at a very young age. With the support of her family and community, she received music lessons that introduced her to classical composers like Bach who remained with her and influenced her music throughout her life. She loved the way his music began softly and then tumbled to thunder, like her mother’s preaching, and in much the same way as her career. During her first performances under the name of Nina Simone her voice was rich and sweet but as the Civil Rights Movement gained steam, Nina’s voice soon became a thunderous roar as she raised her voice in powerful protest in the fight against racial inequality and discrimination.

Sing with Me: The Story of Selena Quintanilla
By Diana López
Illustrated by Teresa Martínez
32 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593110959 | Dial BFYR
An exuberant picture book celebrating the life and legacy of Selena Quintanilla, beloved Queen of Tejano music. From a very early age, young Selena knew how to connect with people and bring them together with music. Sing with Me follows Selena’s rise to stardom, from front-lining her family’s band at rodeos and quinceañeras to performing in front of tens of thousands at the Houston Astrodome. Young readers will be empowered by Selena’s dedication – learning Spanish as a teenager, designing her own clothes, and traveling around the country with her family – sharing her pride in her Mexican-American roots and her love of music and fashion with the world.

Ten Little Dumplings
By Larissa Fan
Illustrated by Cindy Wume
48 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735266193 | Puffin Canada
In the city of Tainan, there lives a very special family – special because they have ten sons who do everything together. Their parents call them their ten little dumplings, as both sons and dumplings are auspicious. But if you look closely, you’ll see that someone else is there, listening, studying, learning and discovering her own talent – a sister. As this little girl grows up in the shadow of her brothers, her determination and persistence help her to create her own path in the world . . . and becomes the wisdom she passes on to her own daughter, her own little dumpling. Based on a short film made by the author, inspired by her father’s family in Taiwan, Ten Little Dumplings looks at some unhappy truths about the place of girls in our world in an accessible, inspiring and hopeful way.

Unbound: The Life and Art of Judith Scott
By Joyce Scott, Brie Spangler, and Melissa Sweet
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
48 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780525648116 | Knopf BFYR
Judith Scott was born with Down syndrome. She was deaf, and never learned to speak. She was also a talented artist. Judith was institutionalized until her sister Joyce reunited with her and enrolled her in an art class. Judith went on to become an artist of renown with her work displayed in museums and galleries around the world. Poignantly told by Joyce Scott in collaboration with Brie Spangler and Melissa Sweet and beautifully illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist, Melissa Sweet, Unbound is inspiring and warm, showing us that we can soar beyond our perceived limitations and accomplish something extraordinary.

When Emily Was Small
By Lauren Soloy
44 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735266063 | Tundra Books
A joyful frolic through the garden helps a little girl feel powerful in this beautiful picture book that celebrates nature, inspired by the writings of revered artist Emily Carr. Emily feels small. Small when her mother tells her not to get her dress dirty, small when she’s told to sit up straight, small when she has to sit still in school. But when she’s in the garden, she becomes Small: a wild, fearless, curious and passionate soul, communing with nature and feeling one with herself. She knows there are secrets to be unlocked in nature, and she yearns to discover the mysteries before she has to go back to being small . . . for now.

For older kids:

Helen Oxenbury: A Life in Illustration
By Leonard S. Marcus and Helen Oxenbury
256 Pages | All Ages | Hardcover
ISBN 9780763692582 | Candlewick
Filled with insights that span Helen Oxenbury’s life – from her early childhood through a career in children’s books that started in the 1960s and is still going strong today – here is an exquisitely designed and thoroughly entertaining celebration of one of the finest illustrators of our time. Written by acclaimed author Leonard S. Marcus, Helen Oxenbury: A Life in Illustration is a keepsake that is sure to engage and delight everyone from scholars to art aficionados, as well as the many fans who have grown up with Helen Oxenbury’s enchanting books.

House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery
By Liz Rosenberg
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
352 Pages | Ages 10-14 | Paperback
ISBN 9781536213140 | Candlewick
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, “I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them.” Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her “year of mad passion,” and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up “the substance of things hoped for” will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

Scribbles, Sorrows, and Russet Leather Boots: The Life of Louisa May Alcott
By Liz Rosenberg
Illustrated by Diana Sudyka
432 Pages | Ages 10-14 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780763694357 | Candlewick
Moody and restless, teenage Louisa longed for freedom. Faced with the expectations of her loving but hapless family, the Alcotts, and of nineteenth-century New England society, Louisa struggled to find her place. On long meandering runs through the woods behind Orchard House, she thought about a future where she could write and think and dream. Undaunted by periods of abject poverty and enriched by friendships with some of the greatest minds of her time and place, she was determined to have this future, no matter the cost. Drawing on the surviving journals and letters of Louisa and her family and friends, author and poet Liz Rosenberg reunites Louisa May Alcott with her most ardent readers. In this warm and sometimes heartbreaking biography, Rosenberg delves deep into the oftentimes secretive life of a woman who was ahead of her time, imbued with social conscience, and always moving toward her future with a determination that would bring her fame, tragedy, and the realization of her biggest dreams.

2021 Writers’ Trust Awards

The Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People is given annually to the author of an exceptional body of work in children’s literature and the winner is selected by a three-member judging panel. We would like to congratulate Linda Bailey who was the recipient of this year’s award!

From the jury citation: “Warm, humorous, and fun are the best words to describe the works of Linda Bailey over a career that has spanned three decades,” said the jury. “Bailey’s highly imaginative, propulsive plots frequently send characters — two, four, and six-legged — on journeys across uncharted territory or time, driven by burning questions or a yearning to escape the ordinary.”

Thank you to the 2021 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People Jury: Hadley Dyer, Marthe Jocelyn, and Mahtab Narsimhan!

Carson Crosses Canada
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Kass Reich
36 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101918838 | Tundra Books
Feisty Annie Magruder and her dog, Carson, live in British Columbia, Canada, and they’re setting out to visit her sister, Elsie, in Newfoundland. In their little rattlebang car, packed with Carson’s favorite toy, Squeaky Chicken, and plenty of baloney sandwiches, Annie and Carson hit the road! They travel province by province, taking in each unique landscape and experiencing something special to that particular part of this vast, grand country. For example, they marvel at the beauty of the big, open sky – and grasshoppers! – in Saskatchewan and discover the gorgeous red earth and delicious lobster rolls in PEI, before finally being greeted by Elsie – and a surprise for Carson!

If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Colin Jack
40 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781770495685 | Tundra Books
If you happen to have a dinosaur, lying around your living room, and you don’t know what to do with it . . . why don’t you use it as a can opener? It will make a terrific nutcracker too! There are oodles of uses for a dinosaur – from a fine umbrella to an excellent kite and a dandy pillow, not to mention a reliable burglar alarm and the perfect excuse to forget your homework. This delightfully absurd exploration of the domestic uses of dinosaurs – and the things dinos just aren’t good for at all – is guaranteed to tickle funny bones and spark imaginations. If you read carefully, you’ll learn how to make your dinosaur last a very long time.

Mary Who Wrote FrankensteinMary Who Wrote Frankenstein
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Júlia Sardà
Hardcover | 56 Pages | Ages 5-8
ISBN 9781770495593 | Tundra Books
How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, another dreamer. Two years later, they travel to Switzerland where they meet a famous poet, Lord Byron. On a stormy summer evening, with five young people gathered around a fire, Byron suggests a contest to see who can create the best ghost story. Mary has a waking dream about a monster come to life. A year and a half later, Mary Shelley’s terrifying tale, Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, is published – a novel that goes on to become the most enduring monster story ever and one of the most popular legends of all time.

Princesses Versus Dinosaurs
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Joy Ang
40 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735264298 | Tundra Books
This is a princess book! No, it’s a dinosaur book! No, it’s . . . a T. rex book? A dragon book? A rubber ducky book?! From Linda Bailey, award-winning and critically acclaimed author, and Joy Ang, Adventure Time-artist and illustrator of the Mustache Baby series, comes an irresistibly irreverent picture book in which plucky princesses and determined dinosaurs have a battle royale over whose book this is. When they start calling in the big guns – or rather, the big carnivores – and decide to build a wall to resolve their differences, princesses and dinosaurs alike learn a thing or two about open-mindedness and sharing.

Seven Dead Pirates
By Linda Bailey
304 Pages | Ages 8-12 | Paperback
ISBN 9781770498167 | Tundra Books
Lewis Dearborn is a lonely, anxious, “terminally shy” boy of eleven when his great-grandfather passes away and leaves Lewis’s family with his decaying seaside mansion. Lewis is initially delighted with his new bedroom, a secluded tower in a remote part of the house. Then he discovers that it’s already occupied – by the ghosts of seven dead pirates. Worse, the ghosts expect him to help them re-take their ship, now restored and on display in a local museum, so they can make their way to Libertalia, a legendary pirate utopia. The only problem is that this motley crew hasn’t left the house in almost two hundred years and is terrified of going outside. As Lewis warily sets out to assist his new roommates – a raucous, unruly bunch who exhibit a strange delight in thrift-store fashions and a thirst for storybooks – he begins to open himself to the possibilities of friendship, passion and joie de vivre and finds the courage to speak up.

The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Victoria Jamieson
336 Pages | Ages 7-10 | Paperback
ISBN 9780735263208 | Tundra Books
Eddie is a tiny green bug who loves to read and who lives behind the chalkboard in Mr. Wang’s fourth-grade classroom with his parents, his 53 brothers and sisters, and his Aunt Min. But when Aunt Min goes to the school library and never returns, Eddie leaves the comfort of his home for the first time and begins the dangerous trek through the elementary school. After dodging sneakers, falling books and terrifying spiders, Eddie reaches the library, where he finds Aunt Min stuck on a desk with two broken legs! To top it all off, there’s a substitute librarian who has terrible plans to close the library and turn it into a local testing center. No more books at all! Encouraged by the brave deeds done by small creatures like Stuart Little and Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web, Eddie comes up with a plan to save the library – a plan that requires all the courage one little bug can muster.

Under-the-Bed Fred
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Colin Jack
64 Pages | Ages 6-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781770495531 | Tundra Books
There’s a monster under Leo’s bed making a ruckus every night. When Leo needs to go to the bathroom, he leaps from the bed to the door – careful not to put his feet on the floor within the monster’s reach. But one night Leo gets tired of being scared and boldly calls out to the monster to see if they can’t just work something out. Surprisingly, the monster listens, and Leo finds out that even enormous monsters have fears! Leo and his monster, Fred, team up to face their fears, each with his own unique strengths. Over the course of five easy-to-read chapters, their friendship blooms as they face everything from bullies to bedbugs. A funny and endearing tale of two very different and unlikely friends, in the tradition of Bink and Gollie and Frog and Toad.

When Santa Was a Baby
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Geneviève Godbout
32 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781770495562 | Tundra Books
Santa’s parents think their little one is absolutely wonderful, even though he has a booming voice instead of a baby’s gurgle, loves to stand in front of the refrigerator, gives his birthday presents away, trains his hamsters to pull a matchbox sleigh . . . and has an unusual interest in chimneys. The adorably funny portrait of an oddball kid who fulfills his destiny – and two very proud parents.

Halloween Books: Get into the Spirit

The spooky season is almost upon us. Get into the Halloween spirit with these books for all ages!

Picture Books

Evie and the Truth About Witches
By John Martz
64 Pages | Ages 5-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735271005 | Tundra Books
Evie wants to be scared, and the usual scary stories just aren’t doing it for her anymore. When she stumbles across a different sort of book, The Truth about Witches, she hopes she’s found something thrilling . . . but she’s forbidden by a kindly shopkeeper from reading the last page out loud! Naturally, her curiosity gets the better of her, and upon reading the last page out loud – a real summoning spell – Evie is spirited off to a strange land of magic, weird creatures, feasts, and actual witches! They’re not as scary as they seem, until Evie asks to join their ranks . . . and only once she does is her quest for true scariness satisfied . . .

How to Make Friends with a Ghost
By Rebecca Green
40 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101919019 | Tundra Books
What do you do when you meet a ghost? One: Provide the ghost with some of its favorite snacks, like mud tarts and earwax truffles. Two: Tell your ghost bedtime stories (ghosts love to be read to). Three: Make sure no one mistakes your ghost for whipped cream or a marshmallow when you aren’t looking! If you follow these few simple steps and the rest of the essential tips in How to Make Friends with a Ghost, you’ll see how a ghost friend will lovingly grow up and grow old with you. A whimsical story about ghost care, Rebecca Green’s debut picture book is a perfect combination of offbeat humor, quirky and sweet illustrations, and the timeless theme of friendship.

Little Witch Hazel
By Phoebe Wahl
96 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735264892 | Tundra Books
Little Witch Hazel is a tiny witch who lives in the forest, helping creatures big and small. She’s a midwife, an intrepid explorer, a hard worker and a kind friend. In this four-season volume, Little Witch Hazel rescues an orphaned egg, goes sailing on a raft, solves the mystery of a haunted stump and makes house calls to fellow forest dwellers. But when Little Witch Hazel needs help herself, will she get it in time? Little Witch Hazel is a beautiful ode to nature, friendship, wild things and the seasons that only Phoebe Wahl could create: an instant classic and a book that readers will pore over time and time again.

Mary Who Wrote FrankensteinMary Who Wrote Frankenstein
By Linda Bailey
Illustrated by Júlia Sardà
56 Pages | Ages 5-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781770495593 | Tundra Books
How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, another dreamer. Two years later, they travel to Switzerland where they meet a famous poet, Lord Byron. On a stormy summer evening, with five young people gathered around a fire, Byron suggests a contest to see who can create the best ghost story. Mary has a waking dream about a monster come to life. A year and a half later, Mary Shelley’s terrifying tale, Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, is published – a novel that goes on to become the most enduring monster story ever and one of the most popular legends of all time.

Monsters 101Monsters 101
By Cale Atkinson
32 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735267084 | Tundra Books
Readers who loved Unicorns 101 will love this laugh-out-loud picture book that finally sets the record straight about monsters! They’re so much more than just that scary thing under your bed. Join Professors Vampire, Blob and Werewolf, and their trusty lab assistant – a zombie named Tina – as they reveal eerie and frankly ridiculous monsters facts never uttered outside a crypt! Full of eye-popping illustrations and a story with nonstop sidesplitting laughs, plus a removable Professor of Monstrology diploma at the end of the book, Monsters 101 will have children – and adults – eager to enroll, time and time again!

Sir Simon: Super Scarer
By Cale Atkinson
48 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101919095 | Tundra Books
Meet Sir Simon, Super Scarer. He’s a professional ghost who has been transferred to his first house. And to top it off, this house is occupied by an old lady – they’re the easiest to haunt! But things don’t go as planned when it turns out a KID comes with this old lady. Chester spots Simon immediately and peppers him with questions. Simon is exasperated . . . until he realizes he can trick Chester into doing his ghost chores. After a long night of haunting, it seems that maybe Chester isn’t cut out to be a ghost, so Simon decides to help with Chester’s human chores. Turns out Simon isn’t cut out for human chores either. But maybe they’re both cut out to be friends . . .

The Barnabus Project
By Terry Fan, Eric Fan, and Devin Fan
72 Pages | Ages 5-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735263260 | Tundra Books
Deep underground beneath Perfect Pets, where children can buy genetically engineered “perfect” creatures, there is a secret lab. Barnabus and his friends live in this lab, but none of them is perfect. They are all Failed Projects. Barnabus has never been outside his tiny bell jar, yet he dreams of one day seeing the world above ground that his pal Pip the cockroach has told him about: a world with green hills and trees, and buildings that reach all the way to the sky, lit with their own stars. But Barnabus may have to reach the outside world sooner than he thought, because the Green Rubber Suits are about to recycle all Failed Projects . . . and Barnabus doesn’t want to be made into a fluffier pet with bigger eyes. He just wants to be himself. So he decides it’s time for he and the others to escape. With his little trunk and a lot of cooperation and courage, Barnabus sets out to find freedom – and a place where he and his friends can finally be accepted for who they are.

The Little Ghost Who Was a QuiltThe Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt
By Riel Nason
Illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler
48 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735264472 | Tundra Books
Ghosts are supposed to be sheets, light as air and able to whirl and twirl and float and soar. But the little ghost who is a quilt can’t whirl or twirl at all, and when he flies, he gets very hot. He doesn’t know why he’s a quilt. His parents are both sheets, and so are all of his friends. (His great-grandmother was a lace curtain, but that doesn’t really help cheer him up.) He feels sad and left out when his friends are zooming around and he can’t keep up. But one Halloween, everything changes. The little ghost who was a quilt has an experience that no other ghost could have, an experience that only happens because he’s a quilt . . . and he realizes that it’s OK to be different.

Graphic Novels

Super Detectives: Simon and Chester #1
By Cale Atkinson
64 Pages | Ages 6-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735267428 | Tundra Books
Welcome to the world of Simon and Chester, ghost and boy duo extraordinaire.
They like to kick butt and take names.
They don’t like chores.
They are best friends.
And they are about to solve the mystery of a lifetime.
(Oh, and eat some snacks probably.)
Join Simon and Chester in their first adventure, and fall in love with this hilarious odd couple by fan favorite author and illustrator Cale Atkinson.

Super Sleepover: Simon and Chester #2
By Cale Atkinson
88 Pages | Ages 6-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735267442 | Tundra Books
Welcome to the world of Simon and Chester, ghost and boy duo extraordinaire.
They like to kick butt and take names.
They don’t like chores.
They are best friends.
And they are about to hit Chester’s VERY FIRST SLEEPOVER.
(Oh, and eat some snacks probably.)
Join Simon and Chester in their second adventure, and fall in love with this hilarious odd couple by fan favorite author and illustrator Cale Atkinson.

Middle Grade

Aggie Morton Mystery Queen The Body Under the PianoAggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Body Under the Piano
By Marthe Jocelyn
Illustrated by Isabelle Follath
336 Pages | Ages 10+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780735265486 | Tundra Books
Aggie Morton lives in a small town on the coast of England in 1902. Adventurous and imaginative, but deeply shy, Aggie hasn’t got much to do since the death of her beloved father . . . until the fateful day when she crosses paths with twelve-year-old Belgian immigrant Hector Perot and discovers a dead body on the floor of the Mermaid Dance Room! As the number of suspects grows and the murder threatens to tear the town apart, Aggie and her new friend will need every tool at their disposal – including their insatiable curiosity, deductive skills and not a little help from their friends – to solve the case before Aggie’s beloved dance instructor is charged with a crime Aggie is sure she didn’t commit. Filled with mystery, adventure, an unforgettable heroine and several helpings of tea and sweets, The Body Under the Piano is the clever debut of a new series for middle-grade readers and Christie and Poirot fans everywhere, from a Governor General’s Award-nominated author of historical fiction for children.

Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Dead Man in the Garden
By Marthe Jocelyn
Illustrated by Isabelle Follath
400 Pages | Ages 10+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735270817 | Tundra Books
Aspiring writer Aggie Morton is ready to enjoy an invigorating trip to a Yorkshire spa, where her widowed mother can take the waters and recover from a long mourning period. Having solved yet another murder and faced extreme peril with her best friend Hector over Christmas, Aggie’s Morbid Preoccupation is on alert when rumors abound about the spa’s recently deceased former patient . . . and then another body appears under mysterious circumstances. Together with Grannie Jane, and often in the company of George, a young patient at the spa, Aggie and Hector take a closer look at the guests and staff of the Wellspring Hotel, and venture into the intriguing world of the local undertaker. Has there been a murder – or even two? As Aggie and Hector ignite their deductive skills, their restful trip takes a sudden, dangerous turn.

Escape to Witch City
By E. Latimer
312 Pages | Ages 10+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101919316 | Tundra Books
Emmaline Black has a secret. She can hear the rhythm of heartbeats. Not just her own, but others’ too. It’s a rhythm she’s learned to control, and that can only mean one thing . . . Emma’s a witch. In a world where a sentence of witchcraft comes with dire consequences and all children who have reached the age of thirteen are tested to ensure they have no witch blood, Emma must attempt to stamp out her power before her own test comes. But the more she researches, the more she begins to suspect that her radically anti-witch aunt and mother are hiding something – the truth about their sister, her Aunt Lenore, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances years ago. The day of the test comes, and Emma’s results not only pair her up with strange new friends, but set her on a course to challenge everything she’s ever been taught about magic, and reveal long-buried family secrets. It seems witches may not have been so easy to banish after all. Secret cities, untapped powers, missing family members – Emma is about to discover a whole new world.

Seven Dead Pirates
By Linda Bailey
304 Pages | Ages 8-12 | Paperback
ISBN 9781770498167 | Tundra Books
Lewis Dearborn is a lonely, anxious, “terminally shy” boy of eleven when his great-grandfather passes away and leaves Lewis’s family with his decaying seaside mansion. Lewis is initially delighted with his new bedroom, a secluded tower in a remote part of the house. Then he discovers that it’s already occupied — by the ghosts of seven dead pirates. Worse, the ghosts expect him to help them re-take their ship, now restored and on display in a local museum, so they can make their way to Libertalia, a legendary pirate utopia. The only problem is that this motley crew hasn’t left the house in almost two hundred years and is terrified of going outside. As Lewis warily sets out to assist his new roommates — a raucous, unruly bunch who exhibit a strange delight in thrift-store fashions and a thirst for storybooks — he begins to open himself to the possibilities of friendship, passion and joie de vivre and finds the courage to speak up.

The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story
By Charis Cotter
360 Pages | Ages 9-12 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735269064 | Tundra Books
Alice’s world is falling apart. Her parents are getting a divorce, and they’ve cancelled their yearly cottage trip – the one thing that gets Alice through the school year. Instead, Alice and her mom are heading to some small town where Alice’s mom will be a live-in nurse to a rich elderly lady. The house is huge, imposing, and spooky, and everything inside is meticulously kept and perfect – not a fun place to spend the summer. Things start to get weird when Alice finds a dollhouse in the attic that’s an exact replica of the house she’s living in. Then she wakes up to find a girl asleep next to her in her bed – a girl who looks a lot like one of the dolls from the dollhouse . . . When the dollhouse starts to change when Alice isn’t looking, she knows she has to solve the mystery. Who are the girls in the dollhouse? What happened to them? And what is their connection to the mean and mysterious woman who owns the house?