A precocious princess must contend with ethical and physical peril in this immersive historical adventure from Zahler (Wild Bird). Twelve-year-old Princess Blanca prefers playing with her best friend Suna, whose hearing was impaired by a childhood illness, to devoting herself to her royal studies. As the youngest of Castile’s two princesses, Blanca knows that all aristocratic duties will fall to her beloved sister, Urraca. While eavesdropping on her father and a trusted adviser, Blanca overhears that the siblings’ grandmother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitane, will chaperone a princess of Castile to France, where she will enter a political marriage. To Blanca’s shock, the queen chooses not Urraca but Blanca. Together with Queen Eleanor, her sizable retinue, and Suna, Blanca embarks on an arduous journey over the mountains from Spain into France. Along the way, she must reconcile the privilege she experiences as royalty with the discrimination Suna endures due to her hearing impairment and “unchristian” religious beliefs, and navigate life-or-death situations that force her to reexamine her values and choose the type of leader she wants to become. Smoothly flowing prose accessibly presents myriad historical and philosophical concepts. Methodically generated interactions between empathetic characters provide ample opportunity for readers to consider how differing perspectives come together and how the past informs the future. Ages 8–12. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Resilient tweens must work together to survive in this race-against-the-clock fictionalization of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. After losing ownership of the family gold mine, 12-year-old Cora Henshaw’s father travels from San Francisco to Los Angeles for work, leaving Cora to take care of her mother and younger brothers. Desperate for money, Cora steals food and picks pockets to feed her family, and visits the docks at dawn to scan passenger ships for her father’s return. She’s on her daily trip to the docks—accompanied by Chi, a girl from Chinatown she’s just met—when an earthquake hits and the street cracks open beneath them. Callouts at the start of each chapter detail a minute-by-minute timeline of events, against which Nielsen (The Free State of Jax) hair-raisingly chronicles Cora and Chi’s struggle to escape the underground cave-in while contending with ruthless looters and corrupt officials. Though plot points lean heavily on convenience and some characterizations feel one-dimensional, high-tension conflict ensures reader investment across a thrilling adventure narrated via Cora’s sincere first-person POV. An author’s note concludes. Most characters are white; Chi reads as having Chinese ancestry. Ages 8–12. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

As addressed in an endnote, Anishinaabe/Métis author Lindstrom (Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior) pulls inspiration from the North-West Resistance of 1885 in Saskatchewan to deliver a rousing historical tale about standing up for what one believes in. After learning that her Métis community is at risk of being forcibly removed from their land by the Canadian government, 12-year-old Rose determines to do whatever it takes to protect her village of Batoche. As things throughout Batoche grow tense, Rose pleads with her parents to share stories of their similar ordeal in Manitoba and the Red River area in 1870. Though her family is hesitant to relive the experience by remaining in Batoche, Rose soon helps them see the value in aiding the burgeoning resistance: she assists in spying, gathering weapons, and generating a plan to stop an approaching steamboat carrying Gatling guns. Though the story is somewhat unevenly paced, it nevertheless excels in relaying potent depictions of the cycles of grief and loss that permeate Indigenous history as seen through the eyes of an indomitable protagonist who will engender empathy and inspire readers. Ages 8–11. Agent: Allison Remcheck, Stimola Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

A trio of spy sisters leap into action to rescue their parents and save the world in this fun action-adventure series launch. Only three people stand between pale-skinned supervillain Snake Ten-Fangs and his bid for world domination: 13-year-old leader Kay-7, formerly fearless 10-year-old Scar, and six-year-old linguist Mia. On their handler Dr. Nobody’s orders, the three travel to India to protect the maharajah’s family—and a mysterious Green Carpet, which holds the key to world peace—from Ten-Fangs. To the sisters’ horror, however, they arrive too late to thwart the evil-doer’s scheme. Already shaken by their failure, the girls are further stunned to learn that their martial arts teacher Sensei Takahashi, their neuroscientist and geneticist aunt Beatriz, and their parents have been abducted. Now, Kay-7, Scar, and Mia must use their considerable spycraft skills to recover their loved ones and stop Ten-Fangs’s nefarious plot. An irreverent blend of daredevil antics, gadgets galore, and straight-faced send-ups to classic spy and thriller tropes promise excitement from beginning to end and beyond. Astute readers will revel in Markham’s wry humor, clever wordplay, and boldly determined heroines. Animated spot illustrations from Bruner (Only You Can Save Christmas!) depict characters with varying skin tones. Ages 7–10. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Seemingly pint-size worries—spiders, night sounds—make a child literally shrink in this polished picture book from Snyder (The Book of Candles), writing in blank verse tercets, and Pham (The Man Who Didn’t Like Animals), working in jewel-toned gouache. Young Violet, depicted with pale skin and flowing brown hair, lives a seemingly blissful life in a cliffside castle with golden-headed Bird, who provides emotional constancy. But when Bird’s “CHIRRUP, CHIRRUP” awakens her one night, he’s nowhere to be seen, and Violet ventures into darkness, her fright rendering her “a thimble of a girl.” Finding Bird wounded and in peril triggers a new emotion—“a flash of fire,/ a thrumming heart”—and with it a transformation. The book’s orientation turns vertical and the artwork goes phosphorescent as, in a fury, “Violet GREW./ Quick as a lick, she was a cat, a bear!/ Violet was the tallest tree in the forest.” Danger routed, she self-soothes (“She imagined warm toast/ with a pat of butter/ until she was herself again”) and carries Bird home. Violet hasn’t banished fear permanently, but she now knows it’s all right for it to ebb and flow, vividly assuring readers that being brave doesn’t mean eliminating fear. Ages 5–8. Author’s agent: Tina Dubois, ICM Partners. Illustrator’s agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Feeling like “tangled-up electrical wires” after her sullen older brother Shen barely acknowledges her at school pickup, young Yuki impulsively throws a pair of house keys down a manhole, launching the fantastical journey at the core of this deeply empathic picture book. Yuki heads underground to find the keys, descending a precarious ladder into a world where difficult emotions take physical forms. Within the underground realm, depicted in surreal mixed-media illustrations, she meets Her Muddy Majesty, a towering blob who grows with the presence of negativity, and the Boogers, small yucky beings who “love making people feel terrible.” Yuki almost persuades herself that she belongs there, until she spots an object of Shen’s in a repository of belongings discarded in moments of anger. And when Shen finds her and gently shakes her from her reverie, something shifts. They emerge together, head home to clean up—and somehow, Yuki feels cared for inside, too. In this Labyrinth-like work, Alemagna (Pepper and Me) uses fantasy not to escape negative feelings but to make them tangible—and offer hope that tangled wires can finally be smoothed. Ages 5–8. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Via artwork that evokes the peppy boldness of vintage screen-printed posters and a horizontal format that turns “learning to be a big kid!” into a full stage-show, Awan (Every Monday Mabel) zeroes in on a common milestone on the wobbly path to maturation. A determined child, sporting a teal hoodie that frames their orange skin and black hair, navigates the pride and peril of wearing their first pair of “big-kid shoes”—red sneakers with laces. Trouble is, those laces keep coming undone, and bought with “room to grow,” the untied kicks are inclined to slip off. But the young narrator refuses to dwell on frustration, breaking the fourth wall with indomitable enthusiasm to demonstrate lace-tying and offer steadiness in the face of setbacks: “It’s okay—I’m still learning.” Memories of earlier victories— managing to swing without a push, conquering the tall slide, tackling the merry-go-round with ease—bolster the child’s self-assurance in this confidence-boosting work about the monumental nature of early accomplishments. Ages 4–8. Agent: Erica Rand Silverman, Stimola Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Kohuth (Something on the Hill) and Derby (Wheetle) offer up a hymn to the dark’s graces in this conceptual work. Loose, expressive multimedia illustrations portray children of various skin tones reveling in a woodsy, hilly landscape as the sun heads out of view. Magnification shifts throughout, from a cinematic opening spread in which a trio lolls under a massive tree on a hot day (“The dark is for calming”) to a depiction of a child ecstatically drumming with a thunderhead (“The dark is for storming”) to an intimate chrysalis close-up (“The dark is for growing”). When the moon rises, the children become audience members “in the theater of night,” where “crickets take up their bows,/ frogs their banjos and flutes./ Coyotes sing.” In this work about wrapping oneself in “the dark... like a blanket,” the subject isn’t absence but presence—its own world of possibilities waiting to be embraced and savored. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Teresa Kietlinski, Bookmark Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Serafina, the gray feline star of this picture book series starter from Burgess (Fireworks) and Rosenthal (Sweet Babe!), makes it clear from the jump that she “hates/ loathes/ DESPISES/ WATER.” She’s an outlier in her family: in addition to staying in on rainy days, Serafina drinks water from a ladder-height loop straw, rejects baths, and refuses to participate in a beach vacation. When her exasperated parents attempt to drag her to swimming lessons, she unleashes a full repertoire of avoidance tactics. But when Serafina’s rabbit stuffy Noodles is inadvertently pushed into the drink, the puss jumps in without thinking, and after the initial shock subsides, experiences “an intriguing floaty feeling” and a full transformation to veritable cat-fish. An abundance of comically arch turns of phrase (“Serafina finds herself dangerously close to a disgusting pit of seething water”) and pastel-toned digital images make this a buoyant initial outing. Alongside sweetly goofy characters engaging in sly anthropomorphic comedy, readers should be eager to take the next plunge. Ages 3–7. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Ruthie—a round marshmallow of a pooch who wears a red collar—declares himself “a prince” on the opening page of this quirky picture book, and the moniker doesn’t seem like much of an exaggeration. With naive-style illustrations and hand-lettered text, Shapiro (Roy Is Not a Dog) portrays Ruthie’s über-indulgent life with “the Queen,” a pale-skinned human who “takes me on walks through the royal gardens, feeds me butterberry pancakes and puts sparkly butterflies in my gorgeous hair.” But Ruthie, convinced that beyond the garden wall await even more loyal subjects ready to honor him with a parade, a statue, or a boat, makes a break for it—only to discover that the outside world is muddy, stinky, and populated with friendly creatures who are utterly unaware of his apparently royal status. A caring owl comforts the distraught Ruthie and offers him a ride home, where the reunion gives both the Prince and the Queen a fresh perspective that leads to less isolation for both. Shapiro gently deflates Ruthie’s ego while plumping up his friendship possibilities, showing how learning to tone down one’s self-importance can lead to genuine connection. Ages 3–7. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink