Anita L. Burkam

May 15, 2024 | hbook.com | Jerry Dear |Kristine Techavanich |Sylvia Vardell |Anita L. Burkam

49 Days by Agnes Lee; illus. by the authorMiddle School, High School    Levine/Levine Querido    352 pp. 3/24    9781646143740    $24.99Paper ed. 9781646143757    $18.99The Buddhist belief that the soul goes through “a state between life and rebirth” for forty-nine days before crossing over provides the intriguing structure for Lee’s debut graphic novel. The story straddles the worlds of the living and the dead, beginning with a Korean American girl named Kit awakening by a shore.

May 15, 2024 | hbook.com | Kristine Techavanich |Sylvia Vardell |Jerry Dear |Anita L. Burkam

Sunny Parker Is Here to Stay by Margaret FinneganIntermediate    Atheneum    288 pp. 4/24    9781665930086    $17.99e-book ed. 9781665930109    $10.99Eleven-year-old Sunny Parker lives with her father, the manager and handyman of Del Mar Garden Apartments, an affordable housing complex. She had anticipated that the summer before middle school would be boring but is propelled into activism when she realizes that protests against a new housing project oppose the people in her own community.

May 15, 2024 | hbook.com | Anita L. Burkam |Kristine Techavanich |Sylvia Vardell |Jerry Dear

Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger; illus. by Rovina CaiMiddle School, High School    Levine/Levine Querido    400 pp. 4/24    9781646143795    $19.99Cryptids and Fae abound in the slightly off-kilter version of 1970s Texas that serves as the setting for this prequel to Elatsoe (rev. 9/20). Seventeen-year-old Shane and her mother, Lorenza, work with their bloodhounds (and one ghost hound) to track lost people.

May 15, 2024 | hbook.com | Sylvia Vardell |Kristine Techavanich |Jerry Dear |Anita L. Burkam

Force of Nature: A Novel of Rachel Carson by Ann E. Burg; illus. by Sophie BlackallIntermediate, Middle School    Scholastic    304 pp. 3/24    9781338883381    $19.99e-book ed. 9781338883404    $19.99In this first-person novel in verse, Burg (Serafina’s Promise, rev. 9/13) imagines the life of the groundbreaking environmentalist from age eleven through adulthood.

May 14, 2024 | hbook.com | Amanda Toledo |Adrienne L. Pettinelli |Anita L. Burkam

So Let Them Burn [Divine Traitors]by Kamilah ColeHigh School    Little, Brown    400 pp. 1/24    9780316534635    $19.99e-book ed. 9780316534840    $12.99Seventeen-year-old Faron is the Childe Empyrean, blessed five years ago to wield the power of her island’s gods. Now that San Irie’s war against the colonizing Langlish and their dragons is won, Faron uses that ability to show off with classmates.