Rosemary Kiladitis

The Over and Under series continues with Over and Under the Canyon

Posted on November 3, 2021November 3, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Over and Under the Canyon, by Kate Messner/Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal, (Sept. 2021, Chronicle Books), $18.99, ISBN: 9781452169392

Ages 5-8

The fifth book in Kate Messner and Christopher Silas Neal’s series on the world’s habitats, Over and Under the Canyon explores life in a desert through the eyes of a family on a hike. Mom and child hike through the desert, glimpsing hawks circle, hear stones crunch underfoot, and see any animal life scrambling, seeking relief from the sweltering sun. They squeeze through tight spaces and observe animals hunting for food: a jackrabbit is lucky, a rattlesnake is not. The boy joyfully dances in flowerbeds and marvels at the world around him. Back at camp, the family eats together; as the sun goes down, they hear coyotes howl and glimpse – thanks to mom’s special flashlight – a scorpion making its way through the dark. The son is biracial; his mother is a woman of color, and his father appears white. A lovely, nonintrusive look at both diurnal and nocturnal animals and desert life, the artwork is rich with browns and oranges during the day, cool blues at night. Kate Messner tells a beautiful story, describing the desert evening as a “desert-night lullaby of moonlight and shadows, insect song and stars”. Together, she and Christopher Silas Neal make an outstanding team. Great for early STEM/STEAM collections.

picture books

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star… Ada and the Galaxies

Posted on November 3, 2021November 3, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Ada and the Galaxies, by Alan Lightman & Olga Pastuchiv/Illustrated by Susanna Chapman, (Sept. 2021, MIT Kids Press), $17.99, ISBN: 9781536215618

Ages 4-8

Author and physicist Alan Lightman, together with author Olga Pastuchiv, create a story about stars, galaxies, and the natural world, perfect for stargazers and astronomy fans. Ada is a young girl visiting her grandparents, Ama and Poobah, in Maine. Ada is hoping to see a sky full of stars in Maine, because in New York, where she lives, too much light pollution keeps her from seeing the night sky in all its beauty. Ama and Poobah take Ada all around, showing her the beautiful nature that Maine offers, but Ada is singularly focused: when will it be dark enough to see the night sky? When nature decides to intervene, Poobah turns to his astronomy books and shows Ada incredible photos of galaxies, all photographed by the Hubble telescope. Fascinated, Ada and Poobah talk about galaxies, space, and what we’re all made of: space stuff. Using watercolor, digital artwork, and actual Hubble telescope photos, Ada and the Galaxies is a breathtaking look at our night skies, a warm story of a little girl enjoying her grandparents, and a story about the incredible wonder of nature. It takes readers from a small moment – finding a crab on a beach – and expands to the size of our universe. A wonderful story about life and everything in it, with lovely illustrations that also wrap readers in the smallest of moments – reading a book with a grandparent – growing it into a story about the night sky, filled with stars, and, ultimately, the universe and its galaxies. There are beautiful details here, like Ada and Poobah sharing a rocketship ride together; the artwork of the rocket appears over a photo of a crab-shaped galaxy, NGC 1300, and a bright red crab adorns the rocket. A word on seeing the night sky informs readers about some of the numbers behind our world, and confirms that the numbers Poobah uses in the book to describe the size and distance of galaxies is scientifically accurate. Read and display with The Stars Just Up the Street by Sue Soltis and Marion Dane Bauer’s The Stuff of Stars.

Ada and the Galaxies has starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. Visit the Hubble Telescope website for news, images, and video; you can also follow the Hubble on Twitter and on Instagram for photos and updates. Educator John Williams on Teachers Pay Teachers has Hubble Star Cards, downloadable for free, that you can share with your library and school kids.

Early Reader, Fiction, Preschool Reads

See the Dog follows See the Cat for wordplay hilarity

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

See the Dog: Three Stories About a Cat, by David LaRochelle/Illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka, (Sept. 2021, Candlewick Press), $8.99, ISBN: 9781536216295

Ages 4-7

The hilarious follow-up to last year’s Geisel Award-winning See the Cat has Cat taking center stage while Dog is out sick. Cat’s not thrilled with the bossy book, though, and the results are laugh-out-loud funny. In the first story, “See the Dog”, we get the scoop on Cat, who’s filling in for Dog, but isn’t really up for that whole “Dogs dig holes” sort of business. “See the Lake”, story number two, has the book trying to get Cat to jump in a cold lake and swim, and “See the Sheep” is all about how brave Cat will save a sheep… until Cat discovers that there’s a wolf on the way. A surprise cameo caps off this side-splitting story. Gouache artwork makes for warm, cartoony expressions and the back-and-forth dialogue between “Book” and “Cat” makes for a hilarious readaloud. Download the activity kit from Candlewick!

See the Dog has starred reviews from School Library Journal and Kirkus.

Non-Fiction, picture books, Preschool Reads, Toddler Reads

A Laura Gehl two-fer!

Posted on November 2, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I love Laura Gehl’s books: from Peep and Egg to One Big Pair of Underwear and beyond, her stories have been hits at my storytimes and they’re just fun to read. Now, I’ve got some nonfiction by Laura Gehl to rave about that’s every bit as fun and unputdownable as her fiction is. Join me!

Odd Beasts: Meet Nature’s Weirdest Animals, by Laura Gehl/Illustrated by Gareth Lucas, (Nov. 2021, Abrams Appleseed), $8.99, ISBN: 9781419742224

Ages 2-4

A very happy book birthday to Odd Beasts! This rhyming board book introduces readers to some of nature’s wildest citizens: an armored pangolin, a frog with see-through skin, and a fish that weighs a ton are just a few of the animals waiting inside. This board book has back matter: two spreads include photos of each animal mentioned, with a brief factual paragraph. The artwork is incredible, offering colorful illustrations of each of the eight animals; they’re the perfect mixture of kid-friendly, expressive illustration and realism, making this a book readers will pick up and enjoy again and again. Sturdy pages hold up to multiple readings and definitely pass the “mom’s bag” test; I carried this one around with me for a couple of weeks. Great for an animal storytime.

Visit Laura Gehl’s author webpage for more info on her books, and great educator/caregiver resources, including coloring sheets for Odd Beasts!

Who Is a Scientist?, by Laura Gehl, (Oct. 2021, Millbrook Press), $9.99, ISBN: 9781728441085

Ages 4-9

Scientists are people, too! Who Is a Scientist? humanizes the science providers by providing profiles on 14 different scientists; who they are, what they study and do, and what they like to do when they’re not science-ing. Isha is a meteorologist who studies the weather, and also enjoys dancing, playing volleyball, and eating chocolate. She’s photographed dancing in a flowing red skirt on one page and operating a weather balloon on another. Names appear in bright colors to personalize each scientist, and fun photos like Isha’s show readers that scientists like karate, surfing, cooking, and painting: just like they do. Each descriptive paragraph explains what the scientists study, introducing them to fields like astronomy, neuroscience, and mechanical engineering. The group is diverse, and really encourages kids to see themselves in this book, offering a QR code to learn more about the scientists, and a flow chart to help guide readers to a field of study that may be right for them, based on their own interests. What a great way to inspire the next generation of scientists, right? Who Is a Scientist? makes science playful and fun, like it should be. A guide to phonetic pronunciations at the end of the book help readers learn to pronounce Laura Gehl’s name, and the names of each scientist.

Visit Laura Gehl’s author page for a Who Is a Scientist? educator’s guide.

Graphic Novels, Realistic Fiction, Teen, Young Adult/New Adult

Himawari House: A glimpse of adjusting to life as an expat

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Himawari House, by Harmony Becker, (Nov. 2021, First Second), $17.99, ISBN: 9781250235572

Ages 14+

A glimpse into the lives of three exchange students living in Japan, Himawari House is about the friendships, frustrations, and adjustments that come with living in a new country: in this case, Japan. Nao, Hyejung, and Tina all move into Himawari House and attend the same Japanese school, but have different reasons for being there. Nao wants to reconnect to her Japanese heritage and worries about fitting in with Japanese culture. “Too Japanese” for her American life and “Too American” to Japanese classmates, she struggles with cultural identity. Hyejung, is Korean and moved to Japan to escape her overbearing parents and their unrelenting focus on her academic success. Tina is from Singapore and struggles with connection, preferring to lose herself in fandom. Although Nao’s story is the main driver, Hyejung and Tina have fully realized, moving backstories, all explored here, along with their roommates, two Japanese brothers with widely differing personalities. The group all come together and live here at Himawari House, and the story is a slice of life look into a year in their lives, as they all live and work side-by-side, eat, fall in and out of love, go to school, and talk late into the night. The language barriers are expertly illustrated here – largely bilingual, Japanese characters appear in many word bubbles; the dialogue has a blend of English, Japanese, Korean, and Singlish (the English Creole spoken in Singapore), with a brilliant explanation of the use of accents in the story at the end. Black and white artwork is largely realistic, with Chibi renderings to communicate extreme emotion. It’s a well-done character study and will be popular with teens and young adults.

Himawari House has starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and School Library Journal.

Middle Grade, Non-Fiction, Non-fiction, Tween Reads

Break the monster codes with Sleuth & Solve: Spooky

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Sleuth & Solve: Spooky: Decode Mind-Twisting Mysteries Inspired by Classic Creepy Characters, by Ana Gallo/Illustrated by Victor Escandell, (Aug. 2021, Chronicle Books), $18.99, ISBN: 9781797205908

Ages 8-12

I do love a good code-breaking book, and this one is right in step with the season. Part of Chronicle’s Sleuth & Solve series, Sleuth & Solve: Spooky puts readers up against the creepiest characters to solve mysteries. Unlock a mummy’s hieroglyphics; discover the Frankenstein monster’s hideout; help a deceased aunt keep her promise to her niece. There are nine mysteries to solve, with a cryptograph available to help readers break the codes. Readers can use their problem-solving skills to unravel the mysteries, and it makes for a great addition to escape room challenges or spy school programs. The stories are told in entertaining comic book style, with characters wandering around the page offering prompts and thinking points. Each spooky creature gets a little factual bio at the beginning of the section, giving readers some context to the game as it unfolds. Great for cooperative gaming, the mysteries work best when teams can work together to solve the puzzles.

Display and booktalk with escape room books like the Escape Room Adventure series from Schiffer Books. Check out Sleuth & Solve and Sleuth & Solve: History for more code-breakers in the series.

picture books, Preschool Reads, Uncategorized

Itch the Witch learns about real friends in The Twitchy Witchy Itch

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Twitchy Witchy Itch, by Priscilla Tey, (June 2021, Candlewick Press), $17.99, ISBN: 9780763689810

Ages 4-7

Itch the witch is having friends over to tea, but the worries are tickling her brain: is her house too twitchy? After some whirlwind housecleaning, her friends, Fidget and Glitch arrive, each with their own quirks, but Itch is too worried about her home’s appearance to enjoy herself. She casts another spell to get rid of the fidgets and glitches, only to discover that she’s banished her friends to the closet along with the itches, fidgets, and glitches! A humorous story about what really matters, Twitchy Witchy Itch shows readers – big and little! – that real friends don’t worry about appearances: they just want to spend time together.

Digital and gouache artwork gives feeling to the sensations described in the story: Itch has what looks like curly hair all over the house. As a proud pet mom, I feel Itch’s pain; my home is itchy, too. Fidget the witch appears blurred, in a constant state of fidgeting; she’s technicolor, and spreads her fidgets and colorful world to her surroundings. Glitch looks like a glitchy computer screen, with colorful, geometric smears that remind readers of a buggy video game. Like Fidget, she spreads her glitchiness around, but Itch doesn’t realize that these are her friends, sharing themselves with her; she immediately sees everything as a reflection on her and a need to be perfect. The rhyming text offers great opportunities for readaloud interaction, with knocks and amusingly worded spells for everyone to chant together.

Animal Fiction, Fiction, Horror, Middle Grade, Tween Reads

This Halloween, Zombert returns!

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Return of Zombert, by Kara LaReau/Illustrated by Ryan Andrews, (July 2021, Candlewick Press), $16.99, ISBN: 9781536201079

Ages 8-12

Last summer, I read Kara LaReau and Ryan Andrews’s Rise of Zombert, and audibly squawked at the cliffhanger ending; needless to say, seeing Return of Zombert in my review box of goodies from Candlewick Press gave me a large amount of seasonal joy.

To catch you up: Lambert is a corporate town, with the YummCo corporation at the town’s heart. Everyone is employed by or affected by YummCo in some way, but it’s okay! Because YummCo is great! They have a catchy jingle, and the head of the company loves to give people the thumbs up! And they swear they don’t test on animals! Except they do. YummCo’s got their corporate fingers in a lot of pies, and some projects are shadowy and secret, and involve some awful animal testing. Zombert – known at the lab as Y-91 – is a cat that escaped from the lab with promises of revenge when he returns to liberate the other animals, but he’s found by a girl named Mellie, who cares for him, nurses him back to health, names him Bert, and doesn’t mind (too much) that he prefers to eat the heads of his live prey.

Zombert – as Mellie’s best friend Danny calls the “zombie cat” – has started easing into life with Mellie while haunted by nightmares of his mother, who never returned from a food run; his brother and sister, captured with him and brought to the lab, and the memories of Cold Hands, the cruel human at the lab who experimented on him. And YummCo hasn’t forgotten about Zombert, either: there are new plans afoot to get him back, and they have another inside man infiltrating Mellie’s and Danny’s lives to facilitate that. Mellie needs to earn some money to get Bert to the vet, and YummCo just happens to be holding a Best Pet contest. Is the contest legit? What do you think? This latest entry into the Zombert chronicles is even more compulsively readable than Rise of Zombert. It’s dark humor at its best, with poignant moments as we experience Zombert’s trauma through his memories. The ending will leave you yelling at the book yet again, and waiting not-so-patiently for the third part of the series, due in the Summer of 2022. Ryan Andrew’s black and white illustrations add the perfect touch of chiller to this story. Definitely grab this one.

Read a sample chapter of Return of Zombert here.

Animal Fiction, Fiction, Horror, Middle Grade, Teen, Tween Reads

Spooooktastic middle grade: SCARY STORIES FOR YOUNG FOXES

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I can’t believe Halloween is THIS WEEKEND. I’ve been booktalking all the spooky books I’ve been reading year-round, in anticipation of this moment!

Scary Stories for Young Foxes, by Christian McKay Heidicker/Illustated by Junyi Wu, (July 2019, Henry Holt & Co.), $16.99, ISBN: 9781250181428

Ages 9-14

A Newbery Honor-winning collection of interconnected stories, Scary Stories for Young Foxes stole the show when it hit shelves in 2019, and it’s still going strong today. Framed by the setting of a storyteller spinning tales for a group of young foxes, the heart of each story involves two kits, Mia and Uly, separated from their litters, and fighting scary creatures to get back. It’s a great concept, because the stories are told for young foxes, putting readers into the mindset of a fox, not a person, and thinking about things that would terrify a young animal, rather than a person, and realizing that we share similar fears. These are stories for older kids – there are some moments that may be tough to read about, including domestic abuse, a witch who wants to wear the kits’ skins, and a very hungry zombie – not fare for kids who are still loving Goosebumps. Think of your Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark fans, maybe a year or two older. Junyi Wi’s illustrations add additional chills. As Kirkus writes, “Dark and skillfully distressing, this is a tale for the bold”.

Scary Stories for Young Foxes has starred reviews from Booklist and the Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books. You can visit author Christian McKay Heidicker’s author webpage and learn more about his books and school visits, and read his blog.

Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City, by Christian McKay Heidicker/Illustated by Junyi Wu, (Aug. 2021, Henry Holt & Co.), $17.99, ISBN: 9781250181442

Ages 9-14

The stories continue in the companion to Scary Stories for Young Foxes! Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City is back with eight new stories, more gloriously horrifying illustration, and two new foxes. Fox kit 0-730 loves the “old stories” about Mia and Uly, and is desperate for an exciting, adventurous life away from the Farm and what he thinks are the safe, wire dens the foxes inhabit. He escapes his cage to discover the truth behind what’s going on at the Farm, and runs for his life. Cozy is a fox who lives in the suburbs with her skulk, forced to escape her den when a terrifying creature that hunts foxes arrives. Both foxes arrive in The City, a scary new world with scary new dangers awaiting them.

The book can be read on its own as a stand-alone, or as a companion to the first book. Either way, the stories are scary: the kind of scary that creeps like dread as you read, and the heart-pounding panic you experience when you have information that the characters just don’t know (yet). Fans who love Katherine Arden, Mary Downing Hahn and Holly Black will love Scary Stories for Young Foxes and Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City.

Visit illustrator Junyi Wu’s website to see more amazing artwork.

Fantasy, Fiction, Middle Grade, Tween Reads, Uncategorized

Anne Ursu’s The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy is brilliant!

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, by Anne Ursu, (Oct. 2021, Walden Pond Press), $17.99, ISBN: 9780062275127

Ages 9-13

Anne Ursu is an undisputed champion of kidlit fantasy. I’ve devoured The Real Boy and Breadcrumbs and am in awe of how she creates these incredible worlds with characters that are so realistic, so well-written, that looking up and realizing I’m still in my living room, dog across my legs, with a book in my lap, can be a little jarring. Her latest story, The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, is kidlist feminist fantasy at its best. Taking place in a fantasy world and time, Marya Lupu is a girl living in a kingdom under attack from an army called The Dread. Her parents are straight-up awful; they dote on her brother, Luka, because in this world, the young men are sent into service as sorcerers to fight the dread while, if they’re lucky, the girls and families get to live off the sorcerer’s reputation. This sets the siblings up against each other, which never ends well: sure enough, on the day Luka is to be evaluated by the sorcerers for his skill, chaos ensues and it leads right back to Marya. The next day, a letter from a school called the Dragmoir Academy shows up for Marya: it’s a school for wayward girls, and her parents can’t pack her off quickly enough. What she discovers at the Academy, though, are a group of young women who are far more than just a bunch of “troubled” young women, and the Dragomir Academy has a darker history than they’re owning up to.

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy is about women, power, and fear. It’s a school story, with different personalities and the conflict that comes with putting that many personalities together under stressful circumstances; it’s also a story of hidden women, hidden messages, and who really controls the dialogue, whether it comes to today’s news or a high-fantasy novel about a land under threat from a horrific enemy that devastates everything in its path. Brilliantly written, with characters that readers will love; Marya is a smart young woman who’s been beaten down for a long time; unlike many of the other girls in the novel, though, she refuses to second-guess or question herself when it’s time to take action, and she motivates her schoolmates to own their own power, too.

Anne Ursu is an award-winning, National Book Award-nominated fantasy author. Visit her website for more information about her books and teacher guides, and upcoming events.

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy has a starred review from Kirkus and is an Indie Next pick.