Here at Penguin Random House Canada, we’re lucky to work with so many different publisher lists. This holiday season, we’ll be highlighting each one with a dedicated post to help you find the perfect gift (or your next read). Today’s post is all about Holiday House.
Challah Day!
By Charlotte Offsay
Illustrated by Jason Kirschner
40 Pages | Ages 3-5 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823454112 | Holiday House
Baked with love! A family mixes, kneads, braids, and bakes bread for dinner with Grandma and Grandpa in this joyful, rhyming story. Inspired by memories author Charlotte Offsay and illustrator Jason Kirschner have of baking Challah with their children, Challah Day celebrates the sweetness of sharing homemade food as a family.
Yeast and sugar – water’s warm,
mix and watch those bubbles form!
Crack the eggs – one . . . two . . . three . . . four
Extra if some hit the floor.
This read aloud can be a joyful introduction to a new culture or a cozy way to celebrate a familiar one. Perfect for any occasion as a holiday gift or the start of a new weekly tradition. In the back of the book, read about the cultural importance of Challah and Jewish traditions. A Challah recipe is included.
I Am Kavi
By Thushanthi Ponweera
272 Pages | Ages 8-12 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823453658 | Holiday House
1998, Colombo. The Sri Lankan Civil War is raging, but everyday life must go on. At Kavi’s school, her friends talk about the weekly Top 40, the Backstreet Boys, Shahrukh Khan, Leo & Kate . . . and who died – or didn’t – in the latest bombing. But Kavi is afraid of something even scarier than war. She fears that if her friends discover her secret – that she is not who she is pretending to be – they’ll stop talking to her.
I want to be friends with these / happy, / fearless, / girls / who look like they / belong.
So I could also be / happy, / fearless, / and maybe even / belong.
Kavi’s scholarship to her elite new school was supposed to be everything she ever wanted, but as she tries to find some semblance of normalcy in a country on fire, nothing is going according to plan. In an effort to fit in with her wealthy, glittering, and self-assured new classmates, Kavi begins telling lies, trading her old life – where she’s a poor girl whose mother has chosen a new husband over her daughter – for a new one, where she’s rich, loved, and wanted. But how long can you pretend to be someone else?
My Baba’s Garden
By Jordan Scott
Illustrated by Sydney Smith
32 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823450831 | Neal Porter Books
A young boy spends his mornings with his beloved Baba, his grandmother. She doesn’t speak much English, but they connect through gestures, gardening, eating, and walking to school together. Marked by memories of wartime scarcity, Baba cherishes food, and the boy learns to do the same. Eventually, Baba needs to move in with the boy and his parents, and he has the chance to care for her as she’s always cared for him
Pass the Baby
By Susanna Reich
Illustrated by Raúl Colón
32 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823450855 | Neal Porter Books
What does it take to make a perfect family meal? Is it the forks, spoons, plates, and napkins? Maybe it’s sister’s lemonade, Papi’s guacamole, or delicious meatballs and ravioli eyed by a hungry pup. When it’s time to sit down and dig in, there’s one thing everybody agrees they need to do, “Baby, baby, pass the baby!” This rollicking, rhyming picture book about one (rather large) diverse family dinner table captures the buzz and hum of a shared meal, with one adorably excitable baby at its center, eager to join the fun. With Pass the Baby, author Susanna Reich imbues her text with an undercurrent of harmony, warmth and inclusivity, complimented by ebullient illustrations by Raúl Colón.
Saint Juniper’s Folly
By Alex Crespo
304 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9781682635773 | Peachtree Teen
For Jaime, returning to the Vermont town of Saint Juniper means returning to a past he’s spent eight years trying to forget. After shuttling between foster homes, he hopes to make something out of this fresh start. But every gossip in town already knows his business, and with reminders of his past everywhere, he seeks out solitude into the nearby woods – Saint Juniper’s Folly – and does not return. For Theo, Saint Juniper means being stuck. He knows there’s more out there, but he’s scared to go find it. His senior year is going to be like all the rest, dull and claustrophobic. That is until he wanders into the Folly and stumbles on a haunted house with an acerbic yet handsome boy trapped – as in physically trapped – inside. For Taylor, Saint Juniper is a mystery. She tries to practice the magic her dad banned from the house after her mom, an accomplished witch, suddenly died. But without someone to guide her, she’s floundering. Then a wide-eyed teenager barges into her life, rambling about a haunted house and a trapped boy. He needs a witch. The Folly and its ghosts will draw these three teenagers together. But can they each face their demons to forge a bond strong enough to escape the Folly’s shadows?
Tadpoles
By Matt James
40 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823450053 | Neal Porter Books
One rainy morning, a father and son bond over a walk through a field full of freshly formed ponds teeming with tadpoles. In this tender reflection on the fleeting rhythms of the natural world and the enduring love of family, a boy and his father spend a morning exploring an ephemeral pond, a delicate nursery formed by rainfall, perfect for sheltering tadpoles from predators as they grow. The boy’s father doesn’t live with him anymore, and the ponds may only be temporary, but together they make memories that just might last a lifetime.
The Fall of Whit Rivera
By Crystal Maldonado
352 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823452361 | Holiday House
Frenemies Whit and Zay have been at odds for years (ever since he broke up with her in, like, the most embarrassing way imaginable), so when they’re forced to organize the fall formal together, it’s a literal disaster. Sparks fly as Whitney – type-A, passionate, a perfectionist, and a certified sweater-weather fanatic – butts heads with Zay, a dry, relaxed skater boy who takes everything in stride. But not all of those sparks are bad . . . Has their feud been a big misunderstanding all along? Blisteringly funny and profoundly well-observed, The Fall of Whit Rivera is a snug and cozy autumn romcom that also tackles weightier topics like PCOS, chronic illness, sexuality, fatphobia, Latine identity, and class. Funny, honest, insightful, romantic, and poignant, it is classic Crystal Maldonado – and it will have her legion of fans absolutely swooning.
The Problem with Gravity
By Michelle Mohrweis
320 Pages | Ages 8-12 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781682635957 | Peachtree
Autistic seventh-grader Maggie Weir loves spacecraft, but aerospace engineering isn’t the only thing that gives her butterflies: she’s teamed up with the amazing, baton-twirling Tatum Jones for an engineering contest! It’s an out of this world chance for Maggie to tell Tatum, her long time crush, how she feels. Only, Tatum is distracted with her own troubles at home. Worse still, when Maggie learns that her dad wants to move to Houston, her whole universe gets shaken up! Now she has a big decision to make: does she stay with her mom and remain in Tatum’s orbit, or does she launch her dreams of visiting NASA by following her Dad? If the stars are meant to align between these two, they’ll both have to admit their feelings before Maggie leaves forever. An easy-to-follow, dual perspective narrative that compassionately explores themes of separation, healthy friendship, and sibling rivalry. Another lovable cast of characters in the Barton Junior High universe!
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
By Andrew Joseph White
400 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593527702 | Peachtree Teen
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness – a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness – and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world – if the school doesn’t break him first.
You Are a Story
By Bob Raczka
Illustrated by Kristen Howdeshell and Kevin Howdeshell
32 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780823449149 | Neal Porter Books
Poet Bob Raczka’s You are a Story highlights all of the nuance and potential of a growing person’s identity, delighting in the things that make us special and connect us to others. Text and illustrations replete with inventive imagery and appealing metaphors show how we all live as individuals and citizens of the world.
You are a living thing.
You breathe. You eat. You Sleep.
You work and play.
You have dreams and fears.
You have thoughts and memories.
You are.
What makes you you? So much goes into who you are, and you are so many different things: A child, an animal, a body of water, a friend, a mystery, one-of-a-kind, a miracle. You are and could be so many things, but whatever you choose to do, it’s your life to write, you are a story.