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Monday, December 7, 2015
Notable Children's Books of 2015
More wonderful reading ahead! "The
best in picture books, middle grade and young adult fiction and
nonfiction, selected by the children’s books editor of The New York
Times Book Review."
Notable Children’s Books of 2015
Picture Books
ASK ME.By Bernard Waber. Illustrated by Suzy Lee. 40 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99.
This posthumous book by the great Waber (“Lyle, Lyle Crocodile”)
features a long, leisurely, lovely conversation between a father and
daughter out taking an autumn walk.
FINDING WINNIE: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear.By Lindsay Mattick. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall. 32 pp. Little, Brown. $18.
Written by a great-granddaughter of the Canadian soldier who bought a
bear cub from a trapper and took her to Europe in World War I, this
delightful account of the story behind A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” is
also a family history.
LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET.By Matt de la Peña. Illustrated by Christian Robinson. 32 pp. Putnam. $16.99.
In this wise, moving story, C.J. is full of complaints as he and his
peppery grandmother take a bus ride, but Nana helps him see the other
side of things, especially after they arrive to help at a soup kitchen.
THE MENINO: A Story Based on Real Events.Written and illustrated by Isol. Translated by Elisa Amado. 53 pp. Groundwood/House of Anansi. $19.95.
Our reviewer, Samantha Hunt, praised “the humor and the poetry” of this
original take on the strangeness of babies — the alien sounds they
make, the odd way they move — from the point of view of an older
sibling.
IS MOMMY?By Victoria Chang. Illustrated by Marla Frazee. 30 pp. Beach Lane. $15.99.
Children mischievously answer a question about their mommies on each
page in this buoyant, refreshing look at parent-child love.
POOL.Written and illustrated by JiHyeon Lee. 56 pp. Chronicle. $16.99. A wondrous, wordless tale of a girl and boy and the magical world they discover once they brave the depths of a pool.
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT.Written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell. 32 pp. Little, Brown. $15.99. This playful, extraordinarily charming bedtime book features a girl whose stuffed rabbit hosts a surprise sleepover party.
TOYS MEET SNOW.By Emily Jenkins. Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. 40 pp. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.
The three toys from the “Toys Go Out” chapter book series get their own
picture book, a transporting look at the wonders of snow.
WAITING.Written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes. 32 pp. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.99.
Five toys wait on a window ledge, each for something different, in this
profound and beautiful take on patience and perspective from the
matchless Henkes.
Middle Grade
CIRCUS MIRANDUS.By Cassie Beasley. Illustrated by Diana Sudyka. 292 pp. Dial. $17.99.
An orphaned fifth grader, falling under the spell of his dying
grandfather’s tales of a magic circus, attempts to cash in a deferred
wish in this shimmering debut novel.
ECHO.By Pam Muñoz Ryan. 592 pp. Scholastic. $19.99.
Muñoz Ryan’s enchanting novel sends a harmonica traveling across years
and over continents and seas to touch, and possibly save, the lives of
three music-obsessed children, each facing serious struggles.
FIRSTBORN.By Tor Seidler. 227 pp. Atheneum. $16.99.
In this artful and affecting novel, a solitary magpie travels with and
becomes attached to a family of wolves who are repopulating the remote
Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park.
GOODBYE STRANGER.By Rebecca Stead. 289 pp. Wendy Lamb. $16.99.
A seventh grader recovering from a near-fatal accident navigates
changes in herself and her tight group of friends in this moving novel,
which our reviewer, Meg Wolitzer, called “masterly.”
LISTEN, SLOWLY.By Thanhha Lai. 260 pp. Harper/HarperCollins. $16.99.
The funny, gently heartbreaking story of a 12-year-old
Vietnamese-American girl who travels reluctantly to Vietnam with her
grandmother and learns to love the fractured country and culture her
family came from.
THE MARVELS.Written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. 665 pp. Scholastic. $32.99.
Half wordless illustrated tale, half prose narrative, this captivating
hybrid novel set over several centuries follows a family of theater
legends who may or may not have really existed.
NIMONA.Written and illustrated by Noelle Stevenson. 266 pp. HarperTeen/HarperCollins. $17.99.
A shapeshifting girl becomes a sidekick to a would-be villain in this
winning, genre-convention-busting graphic novel that charts the terrain
between magic and science.
ROLLER GIRL.By Victoria Jamieson. 240 pp. Dial. $20.99.
In this spiky, winning graphic novel, a summer at roller-derby day camp
helps a 12-year-old girl learn to rechannel her anger and let go of her
former, more uncertain self.
STELLA BY STARLIGHT.By Sharon M. Draper. 320 pp. Atheneum. $16.99.
An African-American girl in the Jim Crow South, a budding writer,
witnesses a frightening Ku Klux Klan event and decides to fight with her
family for change in this stirring, heartfelt novel.
THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH.By Ali Benjamin. 343 pp. Little, Brown. $17.
A shattering debut novel about a grieving, lonely girl, stung by the
treachery of middle-school social alliances, who tries to use the
scientific method to explain her former best friend’s death by drowning.
Young Adult
THE HIRED GIRL.By Laura Amy Schlitz. Illustrated. 387 pp. Candlewick. $17.99.Set
in 1911, this transcendent novel features a literature-loving teenage
narrator, raised poor and Catholic, who flees an abusive home and gains
acceptance and worldly knowledge working as a servant for a Jewish
family.
SHADOWSHAPER.By Daniel José Older. 297 pp. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $17.99.
“Magnificent,” our reviewer, Holly Black, called this sharp urban
fantasy set in Brooklyn, about a young muralist — a shadowshaper, able
to channel friendly spirits into art — facing an assortment of dangers.
SIX OF CROWS.By Leigh Bardugo. 465 pp. Holt. $18.99.
This crackling first book in a new series by the author of the Grisha
Trilogy assembles a team of outcasts who must band together to pull off a
heist in order to save the Grisha, a tribe with magical powers.
BECOMING MARIA. Love and Chaos in the South Bronx.By Sonia Manzano. Illustrated. 262 pp. Scholastic. $17.99.
In prose that shines brightly, the “Sesame Street” star recounts her
path from a poor Nuyorican family ravaged by her father’s alcoholism to a
scholarship at a prestigious college theater program.
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