New Picture Books

photo Soy Sauce!
by Laura G. Lee

Salty, savory, rich, and even sweet, soy sauce is as fascinating to make as it is delicious to eat!
Luan makes a classic Chinese soy sauce. Haru uses his own recipe at his family's traditional Japanese brewery. And Yoo-mi's Korean soy sauce features special ingredients to make it spicy and sweet.

This is a joyful picture book for kids and foodies of all ages (with real soy sauce as paint!) that celebrates the iconic kitchen staple and the magical way food connects family and friends across the world.

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photo Robinson's New Thing
by Julia Mills

Robinson the raccoon loves to collect things—big and small. His collection is amazing. One day he collects a shell that turns out to be...Rosie the snail! Rosie is not impressed by Robinson’s stuff, and she takes him to see what she collects: breezes on the hilltop, the bubbles in the stream, and the magnificent northern lights. Robinson soon realizes that the best things to hold on to aren’t always things—instead, experiences with friends will last a lifetime.

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photo Mister Norton's New Hat
by Huw Lewis Jones

One Monday morning, Horace Norton finds that a mouse has made a house in his hat. Now, this is something of a surprise...and it’s only the start of a wild week for the kind and calm Mister Norton, who, with each passing day, discovers more and more animals have moved in with him. From birds in his bicycle basket to squirrels in his shoes, not to mention the collection of cats curled up in his coat!
What will Mister Norton do when the animals take over his bathroom, his bed – and even HIS BEARD?

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photo Book Comes Home, A Banned Book's Journey
by Rob Sanders

Book loved being a book.
And she loved the children who came to visit her.
She was checked out.
Read and reread.
Shared and discussed.
And each time, Book was brought back to the library.
It was her home...until the day it wasn’t.

Celebrate the right to read with this kid-friendly picture book that explores book banning from the book’s point of view.

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photo And There Was Music
by Marta Pantaleo

Music is everywhere - can you hear it around you? Music might comfort you, or it might make you cry. Even if someone doesn't know your language, they can still understand you. There are sounds to celebrate an important day and sounds to help us find courage, strength, and hope. There are notes to remind you of where you came from and to remind you of the people who came before you. Whether you love gospel choirs, piano concertos, mariachi bands, or gamelan orchestras, music can connect you with people from across our planet.

Humming with color and variety, And There Was Music is a tribute to an art form that unites humanity even as it showcases our diversity.

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photo Baa Haa
by Audrey Perrott

Babette's life is filled with joy.
She loves to giggle and be silly.
And she loves to make her friends laugh, too.
But Babette also laughs when nothing is funny.
Like when she feels sad or mad or bad.
Hiding her true feelings is tangling her insides into a knot
and giving her a bellyache!
Is acting happy all the time everything it's cracked up to be?
Will Babette's friends still like her if she doesn't pretend?

This warm-hearted, rib-tickling read-aloud gently affirms feeling all your feelings and embracing exactly who you are.

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photo Mamiachi & Me, My Mami's Mariachi Band
by Jolene and Dakota Gutiérrez

oday's the day! Rosa will take the stage next to her mami and play along with her popular mariachi band. But as they fasten the shiny botonaduras and tie the moños on their charra suits, Rosa begins to worry. What if the audience doesn't like her? Is she ready to perform?
With her mamiachi and madrinas by her side, Rosa's stage fright is soothed away by the sound of trumpets, guitars, and violins.

Centering on the power of sisterhood, community, and music, the warm and lively text by mother-and-son writing duo Jolene and Dakota Gutiérrez--joined by Mirelle Ortega's beautiful illustrations--provides a unique perspective to the male-dominated world of mariachi.

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photo You're So Amazing!
by James and Lucy Catchpole

Joe and his friend Simone are practicing their best playground tricks, but everyone keeps saying how amazing Joe is, even when he tries to let Simone be the star. Will he ever get to be just Joe, whether he's amazing or not?

This Schneider Family Book Award Honor book is an authentic and humorous picture book sharing perspective of a child with a limb difference is tired of being told how amazing he is for doing normal things.

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photo The Quiet One
by Yiting Lee

In her noisy classroom, Milly is the quiet one: Show and Tell is the worst part of her week. She'd rather hide in her secret place and fix forgotten things. When Milly finds an old, broken robot, she takes out her toolbox and gets to work. But then the robot surprises her: "Hi, I'm Arnold," he says. Milly has made her first friend--someone who will listen to her ideas and help her with her projects. With Arnold by her side, can even Show and Tell become something better than before?

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photo All the Dogs
by Nicola Kent

Big dogs, small dogs, hardly there at all dogs. Two dogs, three dogs, always need a pee dogs! Have fun reading along in this gorgeous doggy picture book and meet ALL the dogs. Which one is your favorite?

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New Middle Grade Books

photo The Accidental Stowaway
by Judith Eagle

Twelve-year-old Patch hasn’t found a real home yet, despite being passed like a package from one distant relative to the next. When she runs up the gangway of the massive steamship RMS Glorious, she isn’t planning to hang around. But it’s too late—the ship is setting sail! Patch has become an accidental stowaway. Luckily, she’s fearless and resourceful and finds friends on board in both high and low places. But hiding from the stowaway-hunting chief steward becomes harder and harder. And to make matters worse, Patch’s new friends urgently need her help: it turns out that some passengers are not what they seem, and there’s a mystery that needs solving before they reach New York.
Can Patch protect her friends and stop some dastardly criminals? And will she find a home at last, or will the excitement of life on the move keep calling her name?

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photo Growing Home
by Beth Ferry

Ivy is the beloved houseplant of young Jillian Tupper of Number 3 Ramshorn Drive, much to the constant dismay of Toasty the goldfish, who is technically the family pet—swimming in his special place of honor, the antique octagonal fish tank—and should be the most loved. It seems that’s how the cookie (or cheese puffs, in Toasty’s case) crumbles in the curious Tupper household, but soon a sequence of thrilling and magical events challenges that way of life forever.
First, there’s the arrival of Arthur, a knowledgeable spider with a broken leg and a curious mind, hidden in an old typewriter. Then Jillian throws everyone for a loop when she brings home dear, sweet Ollie, a school houseplant who just wants to be friends and sing. When Toasty splashes the plants with his tank water out of frustration, the friends learn that they can do magical things—like lift heavy objects and turn things invisible!

It turns out Toasty’s fishtank isn’t just for fish; it was made by a curious inventor who gave it special powers that, in the wrong hands, could disrupt everything forever. And a curious man with purple shoes just so happens to want that tank at any cost. Can Ivy, Toasty, Arthur, and Ollie grow to be friends in time to work together to save their beloved Tupper family from utter ruin?

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photo The Green Kingdom
Cornelia Funke

Anywhere can feel like home if you are brave enough to put down new roots...

Caspia’s summer is transformed when she discovers a bundle of letters containing ten botanical riddles in this enchanting adventure.
Twelve-year-old Caspia hates big cities, especially one as busy as New York. So she isn’t thrilled by the news that her parents are taking her to stay in Brooklyn. But everything changes when Caspia discovers a bundle of letters, hidden in an old dresser. Each letter contains a ‘green’ riddle, with clues leading to a different plant.

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photo Snoop
by Gordon Korman

If Carter hadn't been checking his phone, he might have seen his brother coming down the ski slopes in his direction. And if Carter had seen his brother in time and avoided the crash, he might not have two broken legs right now.

Oops.

Now Carter is stuck at home for weeks, with both his legs in casts. Bored, he starts checking out the live feeds from police cams around his town. Before he knows it, he's obsessed -- watching his classmates when they don't know he's looking, and discovering some other VERY STRANGE things going on that no one else is noticing.
But what happens when Carter is found out...and the people he's watching know where he lives?

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photo Gus and Glory
by Sarah Guillory

Twelve-year-old Gloria St. Romain, Glory to everyone who knows her, has always loved mysteries. She spends her time solving puzzles and reading mystery books, comforted by the knowledge that truth can always be found for those who look closely enough for it.
But when her mom suddenly leaves without a word, Glory is finally faced with the one mystery she can't crack: Why did her mom leave, and where did she go?

Sent to spend the summer with her grandparents, Glory is determined to sniff out the clues to track down her mom. And when Glory comes upon Gus, a bloodhound in need of a friend, she realizes she's been paired with the perfect partner to do just that.

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photo Spark
by Chris Baron

Finn and his friend, nicknamed Rabbit, live in a rural area that's been hit hard by wildfires. Families were displaced and school was interrupted. Moreover, their beloved forest is suffering -- animals and plants haven't been able to come back, and the two friends wonder if there's anything they can do to help. Rabbit's uncle, a science teacher, is part of a study that may help bring the forest back to life, but Finn and Rabbit wonder if the forest can wait. And what if another fire comes in the meantime? They believe a small part of the forest -- the forest heart -- that survived the wildfire may hold the key to regrowth, but first, they have to find it and then convince the adults around them to listen.

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New Young Adult Books

photo All Better Now
by Neal Shusterman

A deadly and unprecedented virus is spreading. But those who survive it experience long-term effects no one has ever seen before: utter contentment. Soon after infection, people find the stress, depression, greed, and other negative feelings that used to weigh them down are gone.

More and more people begin to revel in the mass unburdening. But not everyone. People in power—who depend on malcontents and prey on the insecure to sell their products, and convince others they need more, new, faster, better everything—know this new state of being is bad for business. Surely, without anger or jealousy as motivators, productivity will grind to a halt and the world will be thrown into chaos. Campaigns start up to convince people that being eternally happy is dangerous. The race to find a vaccine begins. Meanwhile, a growing movement of Recoverees plans ways to spread the virus as fast as they can, in the name of saving the world.

It’s nearly impossible to determine the truth when everyone with a platform is pushing their agenda. Three teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in very different ways find themselves at the center of a power play that could change humanity forever.

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photo Louder Than Hunger
by John Schu

But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age... and the cruelty of mirrors... and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?

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photo Lucha of the Forgotten Spring
Tehlor Kay Mejia

A ruthless monster.
A daring heist.
A heart pulled in two directions.
A long-forgotten myth.

Killing a god was only the beginning of Lucha Moya’s story... Her mission is simple—eradicate olvida, the forgetting drug, once and for all. But something sinister is lurking in the Night Forest, eager to claim its prize.
Will Lucha’s training allow her to survive the machinations of the Forest and save the vulnerable people at its mercy?

Fresh off her triumph in the Night Forest, Lucha Moya is back in Robado to settle unfinished business. The stunning fantasy duology about addiction, power, and love comes to a close in tale of treacherous villains, environmental disaster, and a love triangle its heroine doesn’t see coming.

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photo The Otherwhere Post
by Emily J. Taylor

Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost everything: her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.
Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words: Your father was innocent.

To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.

Her secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation—or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.

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photo Under the Same Stars
by Libba Bray

It was said that if you write to the Bridegroom’s Oak, the love of your life will answer back. Now, the tree is giving up its secrets at last.

In 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom's Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too—but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis.

In 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk-rock girl hell-bent on tearing down the wall separating West Germany from East Germany, and meeting Frau Hermann, a kind old lady with secrets of her own.

In Spring 2020, New York City, best friends Miles and Chloe are slogging through the last few months of senior year when an unexpected package from Chloe’s grandmother leads them to investigate a cold case about two unidentified teenagers who went missing under the Bridegroom’s Oak eighty years ago.

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