This Book Won’t Burn
by Samira Ahmed
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group
★ “[Ahmed] employs high stakes, increasing tensions, romantic near-misses, and adult hypocrisy to powerful effect.” –Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
From the New York Times bestselling author of Internment comes a timely and gripping social-suspense novel about book banning, activism, and standing up for what you believe.
After her dad abruptly abandons her family and her mom moves them a million miles from their Chicago home, Noor Khan is forced to start the last quarter of her senior year at a new school, away from everything and everyone she knows and loves.
Reeling from being uprooted and deserted, Noor is certain the key to survival is to keep her head down and make it to graduation.
But things aren’t so simple. At school, Noor discovers hundreds of books have been labeled “obscene” or “pornographic” and are being removed from the library in accordance with a new school board policy. Even worse, virtually all the banned books are by queer and BIPOC authors.
Noor can’t sit back and do nothing, because that goes against everything she believes in, but challenging the status quo just might put a target on her back. Can she effect change by speaking up? Or will small-town politics—and small-town love—be her downfall?
Cover image and summary via Edelweiss
Marya Khan And The Spectacular Fall Festival
(The Marya Khan Series , Vol. 3)
by Saadia Faruqi
Amulet/Abrams
Perfect for fans of Ivy & Bean and Stella Diaz, Marya Khan and the Spectacular Fall Festival is the third stand-alone adventure in Saadia Faruqi and Ani Bushry’s illustrated chapter book series about a Pakistani American third grader whose ambition sometimes gets away from her.
Marya loves fall. Every year, her family goes to the town’s pumpkin patch and picks out the best pumpkin. But this year, after she sees her frenemy, Alexa, winning a big, cool pumpkin-shaped trophy, Marya knows she’s got to win a trophy for something.
It just so happens that her school is going to hold its own fall festival, with games and food and even a hayride. All the ticket sales will go to an animal shelter, and the person who sells the most tickets will win a prize. Cue Operation Sell Tickets! But when Marya is so focused on winning, is she losing sight of what really matters?
Includes a Pumpkin-Based Recipe to Make and Enjoy
Cover image and summary via Abrams
Shiny Misfits: A Graphic Novel
by Maysoon Zayid; illustrated by Shadia Amin
Graphix/Scholastic
A hilarious story about fame and friendship, by comedian and disability activist Maysoon Zayid, paired with Shadia Amin’s absolutely perfect art!
Bay Ann wants to shine.
She’s sure her moment in the spotlight has arrived when she wins the school talent show with a showstopping tap routine! But then her classmate and crush, Alyee Maq, causes her to wobble and almost fall. The video of him catching her goes viral, making Alyee an overnight sensation for “helping her.” Bay Ann is reduced to her disability and her talent is ignored.
Bay Ann doesn’t want her classmate to get all the fame, and she is NOT satisfied being anything but the best. She’ll do everything in her power to beat Alyee at his own attention-seeking game. With the help of her two best friends, Michelle and Davey Matt, she’ll go up against Alyee and his crew to prove she’s number one.
But as Bay Ann tries to find the thing that really makes her stand out, everything she tries goes disastrously wrong. What if the only way to beat her enemy . . . is to join him?
This is a hilarious and one-of-a-kind graphic novel about fame, friendship, and fighting to take back your own story.
Cover image and summary via Shiny Misfits
The Next New Syrian Girl
by Ream Shukairy
Little Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group
Furia meets I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter about the unlikely friendship between two very different Syrian girls, the pressures and expectations of the perfect Syrian daughter, and the repercussions of the Syrian Revolution both at home and abroad.
Khadija Shami is a Syrian American high school senior raised on boxing and football. Saddled with a monstrous ego and a fierce mother to test it, she dreams of escaping her sheltered life to travel the world with her best friend.
Leene Tahir is a Syrian refugee, doing her best to adjust to the wildly unfamiliar society of a suburban Detroit high school while battling panic attacks and family pressures.
When their worlds collide the result is catastrophic. To Khadija, Leene embodies the tame, dutiful Syrian ideal she’s long rebelled against. And to Leene, Khadija is the strong-willed, closed-off American who makes her doubt her place in the world.
But as Khadija digs up Leene’s past, a startling and life-changing discovery forces the two of them closer together. As the girls secretly race to unravel the truth, a friendship slowly and hesitantly begins blooming. Doubts are cast aside as they realize they have more in common than they each expected. What they find takes them on a journey all the way to Jordan, challenging what each knows about the other and herself.
Fans of Samira Ahmed’s Love, Hate, and Other Filters and Tahereh Mafi’s A Very Large Expanse Of Sea will love Khadija and Leene’s sharp-witted voices in this dual POV narrative. The Next New Syrian Girl is a poignant and timely blend of guilt, nostalgia, devotion, and bad-ass hijabees.
Cover image and summary via Edelweiss
Cooke, Stephanie and Costa, Mari. ParaNorthern: And the Chaos Bunny A-hop-calypse, July 2021. 240pp. Etch/Clarion Books, $19.99. (9780358168997). Grades 3 – 7.
Stephanie Cooke’s ParaNorthern (illustrated by Mari Costa) is a humorous and heartfelt graphic novel fit for any age group. When young witch Abby Morgan accidentally opens a portal in the magical realm of North Haven unleashing a horde of chaos bunnies, her initial instinct is to keep the problem to herself. When she realizes that these destructive hares are too big of a job to take care of on her own she must look beyond her worries and accept the help of her family and friends.
With a consistent theme of adolescent independence and relying on others, Abby’s struggles can be relatable to many middle grade readers. Though first resistant to receive help, Abby’s friends–werewolf Gita, pumpkinhead Silas, and ghost Hannah–support her through her fears to help her find the confidence in her witch powers. Costa’s engaging illustrations and palette of fall-like hues of orange, purple, and red complement the dialogue and flow of the narrative. With no real introduction to the characters or setting, the novel reads like a second volume. Readers may find it necessary to read the first volume in order to have foundational knowledge of the world.
The characters of Paranorthern are quite diverse, ethnically and by paranormal standards. Many of the characters appear to have brown skin. Gita is a werewolf and presents as female, and there seems to be a mutual crush between her and Abby. Silas is a pumpkinhead boy trying to convince the other paranormal creatures to stop ingesting pumpkins. Hannah is an undead ghost from another dimension. In a realistic portrayal of the observance of hijab, Hannah wears a headscarf whenever she is outside her own home and does not wear it inside her house. However, though Hannah’s hijab is normalized in illustrations and not constantly called out, she is never explicitly named as Muslim. Throughout the book, Hannah mentions how she and her family are ghosts from another dimension, Hannah is seen chatting with her grandmother through the computer, and magically she needs a charm to be physically present in North Haven’s dimension. These elements hint that Hannah may be part of a diaspora community, living away from her home dimension. But though this parallels real life SWANA diaspora communities in North American or European countries, Hannah’s ethnicity is also never specified, though usage of language implies that they are Arab but terminology is incorrectly used.
With heartwarming, fun, and laugh-out-loud moments, Paranorthern celebrates the power of friendship in a paranormal world. Readers will cheer for Abby and her friends as they work together to return the Chaos bunnies back to their realm.
A New Friend
by Lucy Menzies, illustrated by Maddy Vian
Frances Lincoln Children’s Book/ Quarto Group
A New Friend is a heartwarming tale of a new friendship made at school, told from two perspectives through an innovative split book format.
Follow the heartwarming story of a new friendship in this innovative title, comprised of two books telling two different perspectives of the story of Joe and Mae!
It’s Joe’s first day at a new school. It’s big, scary and different. He misses his school, his old friends and his old life. Can’t he just go back to the way things were?
When Mae hears that there’s a new kid starting school, she can’t wait to meet him. Is this her chance to make a true friend?
A New Friend is the next book in the One Book, Two Stories format. With this innovative format, two books, telling two different stories, are bound together.
One book follows Joe on his first day at school, and the other shows Mae on her quest to make friends with the new kid. The stories can also be read side-by-side, as spreads from each book complement each other and are linked with corresponding page numbers. The final spread at the back of the book reveals a shared ending, in which Joe and Mae are united in the playground!
This uplifting tale of overcoming fears and making new friends is the perfect gift for anyone struggling with new challenges, and the innovative format means kids can read the story again and again, each time in different ways!
Cover image and summary via Edelweiss
The Kaya Girl by Mamle Wolo
Hachette / Little Brown
This rags-to-riches story by an award-winning Ghanaian author has page-turning appeal with luminous literary resonance.
Writing with effortlessly engaging prose, Wolo showcases the interweaving layers of Ghanaian culture to create a prismatic, multifaceted world in which two young girls, against all odds, are able to find each other.
When Faiza, a Muslim migrant girl from northern Ghana, and Abena, a wealthy doctor’s daughter from the south, meet by chance in Accra’s largest market, where Faiza works as a porter or kaya girl, they strike up an unlikely and powerful friendship that transcends their social inequities and opens up new worlds to them both.
Set against a backdrop of class disparity in Ghana, The Kaya Girl has shades of The Kite Runner in its unlikely friendship, and of Slumdog Millionaire as Faiza’s life takes unlikely turns that propel her thrillingly forward. As, over the course of the novel, Abena awakens to the world outside her sheltered, privileged life, the novel explores a multitude of awakenings and the opportunities that lie beyond the breaking down of barriers. This is a gorgeously transporting work, offering vivid insight into two strikingly diverse young lives in Ghana.
Cover image and summary via Edelweiss
Sister Friend
