by Jacob Tobia
Author, performer, and "gender defector" Jacob Tobia (Sissy) leads off their taut, iconoclastic essay collection Before They Were Men with a provocative gambit: "Men and boys are now the ones suffering the most under the gender binary." How is it that the identity marker stacked at the tippy-top of the patriarchal hierarchy suffers most? Tobia lovingly and painstakingly elucidates the pressures and abuses intended to transform boys into men, as well as the indiscriminate rage cultivated in the process. In
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by Cynthia Leitich Smith, editor
In the captivating and unconventional Legendary Frybread Drive-In, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids), 17 Indigenous writers collaborate to explore and celebrate a range of Native experiences. Through "winks, nods, and overlaps in their writing," the authors create a naturally interconnected anthology of stories centering on a fantastical setting.
Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In is a lively but humble-looking gathering place that appears when people from
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by R.F. Kuang
Hell is a campus. Or at least, the lower circles are, as Cambridge student Alice Law discovers when she makes the decision to journey into the underworld to retrieve the soul of her academic adviser after an unfortunate accident, and finds it a mirror of the world she descended from. Acclaimed fantasy author R.F. Kuang's Katabasis interrogates themes of loss, grief, and human nature in her refracted version of Cambridge University where Analytical Magick is a field that allows those able to master
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by Shoshana Walter
In Rehab: An American Scandal, journalist Shoshana Walter provides an in-depth, gripping, and often shocking report on the state of the billion-dollar addiction-treatment business in the United States through the personal stories of four individuals who have been through it.
These include Chris Koon, a young white man from Louisiana who opted to attend Cenikor, a treatment center, instead of serving time in a state prison, only to find himself bound by forced labor and punitive rules; April Lee, a Black woman
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by Catherine Bailey, illus. by Fiona Lee
Catherine Bailey's rhyming text and Fiona Lee's enchanting illustrations harmonize in Good Morning Main Street, a picture book companion to Goodnight School (illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld), which transforms an ordinary street into a whimsical world filled with personality and discovery.
A red cat observes as "Main Street blinks awake,/ quiet, still, and gray" and "soft light slowly spreads,/ bin by sleepy bin." A bookstore clerk leaves his apartment to do some morning errands, and the red cat follows unnoticed.
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by Matthew Forsythe
A plucky child meets her match in Aggie and the Ghost, author/illustrator Matthew Forsythe's delightfully droll picture book about navigating rules and unlikely friendships.
Aggie, a pale-skinned, rosy-cheeked child, is "very excited" to live alone, but there's a problem: her new house is haunted. A shapeshifting "ghost follow[s] her everywhere," never giving her any alone time. Frustrated, Aggie establishes ground rules: "No haunting after dark. No stealing my socks." Aggie's attempt to set boundaries proves
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by Ilana Kurshan
In Children of the Book, American-born Israeli writer, editor, and translator Ilana Kurshan combines a charming memoir focused on the joys and challenges of parenthood with a thoughtful exploration of the power of books and reading to shape young lives. Kurshan's candid yet warmhearted story is enriched by her skill in relating her family's experiences to ancient sources of Jewish wisdom in which their lives are rooted.
Kurshan (If All the Seas Were Ink) is a voracious reader, revealing that she comforted
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