JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Adolescence
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The Witch in the Tower
Series: The Three Sisters
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: September 2, 2025
Format: Hardcover
Gorgeous illustrations are the star of this fantastical adventure about hidden magic, growing up, and braving the unknown to find yourself.
Everything is changing for Carmela. Her older sister, Franca, has new, mean friends, and Carmela is feeling lost and lonely. So she decides to go for a walk—to walk until she can’t anymore, then walk a bit more. Her walking takes her to a strange tower, and what she finds there will transform her life forever. In this companion to The Queen in the Cave, her authorial debut, renowned illustrator Júlia Sardà ventures into a mesmerizing world where mermaid grease washes away envy, a giant’s hair helps you face bullies, a circular library holds all your secrets, and a dome of crystal prisms opens a view to the cosmos. Dreamlike and filled with whimsy, the artist’s kaleidoscopic patterns, decorative borders, glowing colors, and layered, elaborately detailed imagery will bewitch young readers as readily as the title character does Carmela—and beckon them to return for many a visit.
Where the Water Takes Us
Price: $9.99
Pub Date: June 3, 2025
Format: Paperback
“Powerful. . . . A lyrical and sensitively rendered coming-of-age tale.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ava’s mom is about to have twins, and the pregnancy isn’t going well. All Ava wants to do is stay by her mother’s side, but instead, she is sent away to stay with her grandparents. Normally, spending time at the lake with Nonna and Nonno is wonderful. But everything is different now. While her mom’s hospital visits are getting serious back home and summer storms rock the island, making the electricity go out at the cabin, Ava grapples with anxiety. An annoyingly cheerful boy named Cody seems determined to pop up everywhere she goes, but Ava can’t be distracted from the feeling that something terrible, something irrevocable, is going to happen to her mom while she is gone.
When a bird dies in front of her, Ava is sure it is a sign that she is cursed—the last thing she, or her family, needs. But if a curse has been placed on her, there must be a way to break it. So Ava makes a deal: If she can take care of two orphaned bird eggs, she will have paid off her debt, and her family will be all right.
With everyone she loves on the line, Ava will do everything in her power to make sure that her mom, her twin baby brothers, her birds, and even Cody all come through the summer safely.
Skylar and the K-Pop Principal
Price: $18.99
Pub Date: February 18, 2025
Format: Hardcover
K-pop fandom and Freaky Friday collide in a hilarious body-swap story that celebrates the fans who drive one of the biggest musical sensations in the world.
Skylar is convinced that life for her as an eleven-year-old is way harder than for any adult, including her cranky principal, Ms. Callus. The only good part about being eleven is being a massive K-pop fan, even if her parents do ban her from all things AZ8, the best K-pop boy band in the world. When a freak accident causes Skylar and Ms. Callus to switch bodies, Skylar finds herself trying to convince the world of AZ8’s supremacy, going viral in a K-pop dance video, and somehow running her school, all while stuck in a seventy-one-year-old’s body. And then she gets the chance to meet AZ8 in real life. With the help of her bestie, Dana, and her own wits and passion, Skylar must decide whether her K-pop dream come true is worth risking being stuck as an old lady forever. A feel-good tale singing with laugh-out-loud moments, Skylar and the K-Pop Principal is a joyful and uplifting story of friendship, fandom, and chasing your dreams.
Bros
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: March 12, 2024
Format: Hardcover
A celebration of childhood from an award-winning author, this upbeat day-in-the-life of a bunch of friends was inspired by the #BlackBoyJoy meme that spurred a movement.
From sunrise to sunset, a group of young Black boys joyously spend the day together as they live their best lives freely in their community. With confidence and a touch of swag, these friends do everything with one another: build a time machine, tend to the community garden, roleplay in the park, read, take a group selfie, and play basketball. With simple, spare text from celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and colorful, playful art from Reggie Brown capturing the pleasures of boyhood and friendship, Bros affirms the truth that Black boys deserve and are worthy of a childhood full of joy and free of risk, just as much as anyone. Timely and buoyant, it’s a story sure to be enjoyed by anyone who knows what it is to be surrounded by friends with a day of adventure ahead of you.
Confessions of a Candy Snatcher
Price: $18.99
Pub Date: August 15, 2023
Format: Hardcover
A night of Halloween fun gone wrong has Jonas wondering if he’s really a wolf in disguise in this fast-paced fiction debut delving into accountability, relationships . . . and zines.
For the past few years, twelve-year-old Jonas and his friends have competed to see how many bags of candy they can grab from unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. No one’s supposed to get hurt, just lose their treats. So Jonas is taken by surprise when one of his smaller targets fights back against his snatching attempt. He’s even more surprised when he starts to receive anonymous notes from someone who knows what happened that night. Jonas already has enough on his plate, between his parents’ ill-defined separation and his own guilt—guilt his friend Concepción challenges him to confront in a zine she’s creating around the prompt “What’s the worst thing you ever did?” It’s a complicated question, one that touches on issues of identity, maturity, physical boundaries, and safety. Featuring zines crafted by award-winning illustrator Theodore Taylor III, Phoebe Sinclair’s debut novel relates an emotive, reflective story about the wonder—and mess—of growing up.
The Sisters of Straygarden Place
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: May 30, 2023
Format: Paperback
“Chewins’s prose is exquisite, her eerie concepts heart-wrenching. . . . Superb, spooky, and unforgettable.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The grass grew taller than the house itself, surrounding it on all sides. It stuffed the keyholes and scraped against the roof. It shook the walls and made paintings shiver.
Seven years ago, the Ballastian sisters’ parents left them in the magical Straygarden Place, a house surrounded by tall silver grass and floating trees. They left behind a warning to never leave the house or go into the grass. “Wait for us,” the note read. “Sleep darkly.” Ever since, the house itself has taken care of Winnow, Mayhap, and Pavonine—feeding them, clothing them, even keeping them company—while the girls have waited and grown up. Until one day, when the eldest, fourteen-year-old Winnow, does the unthinkable and goes outside into the grass, and everything twelve-year-old Mayhap thought she knew starts to unravel. Now in paperback with an updated cover, The Sisters of Straygarden Place uses luscious, vivid prose to transport readers to a house where beloved dogs crawl into their owners’ minds to sleep, sick girls turn silver, and anything can be stolen—even laughter and silence.
Lena, the Sea, and Me
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: May 2, 2023
Format: Paperback
“A captivating celebration of all the sweet (and bittersweet) feelings that come with growing up.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
Trille and Lena may be getting older, but they still find everyday adventure—and trouble—in their coastal village, including sinking every raft they build, getting little sisters stuck up flag poles, and attending those dreaded music lessons. But that’s not all. The arrival of a less-than-encouraging new soccer coach is putting twelve-year-old Lena's goalkeeping career in doubt. And Trille is wondering how to impress the girl who has just joined his class. As the best friends battle the elements and their own emotions, one thing is for sure: they're not giving up, not if Lena has anything to do with it! In Maria Parr’s companion to Adventures with Waffles, the acclaimed author returns to Mathildewick Cove with a rib-tickling story of growing up.
Calling the Moon: 16 Period Stories from BIPOC Authors
Price: $22.99
Pub Date: March 28, 2023
Format: Hardcover
An essential, highly relatable collection of short fiction and poems around the topic of menstruation, written exclusively by authors who are Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color
For Angela, it came on the basketball court—while playing on the boys’ team. For Penny, it came on a lakeside field trip, inspiring some cringeworthy moments of humor. And to Layla’s disappointment, it came at the start of her first fasting Ramadan, mandating that she take a “holiday.” Whether their period's coming spurs silence or celebration, whether they are well prepared for it or totally in the dark, the young people in these sixteen stories find that getting a period brings not only changes to their bodies, but also joy, sorrow, and self-discovery. Featuring BIPOC contributors who are some of today’s most talented authors in middle-grade fiction, Calling the Moon offers coming-of-age stories and poetry as varied as the phases of the moon, from funny to heartbreaking to powerful, all of them reassuring readers that they are not alone in their period journey.
With contributions by:
Hilda Eunice Burgos * Veeda Bybee * Susan Muaddi Darraj * Saadia Faruqi * Nikki Grimes * Leah Henderson * Mason J. * Erin Entrada Kelly * Guadalupe Garcia McCall * Elise McMullen-Ciotti * Yamile Saied Méndez * Emma Otheguy * Aida Salazar * Christina Soontornvat * Padma Venkatraman * Ibi Zoboi
Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy
A Graphic Novel
Price: $14.99
Pub Date: September 27, 2022
Format: Paperback
Drawing on the experiences of his Vietnamese American family and his love of ’80s sci-fi shows, Jonathan Hill crafts a funny, insightful graphic novel about the immigrant experience and the perils of middle school.
Threatened with diminishing resources, Booger Lizk’t and his family flee their lizard community deep below Earth’s crust to survive above among humans. The Lizk’t family of Elberon now passes as the Tomkins family of Eagle Valley. “Tommy Tomkins” wears a human face to school but can’t seem to fit in no matter how he looks. The basketball team becomes a pipe dream when bullies label him a bug eater, and only Dung Tran, an immigrant from Vietnam and fellow outsider, sees Tommy for who he is inside, which is nothing like the outer-space lizard invaders on TV’s hottest series. Can their friendship survive the truth? In his first solo middle-grade book, award-winning creator Jonathan Hill perfectly captures the sometimes dystopian drama of middle school while reminding readers of the universal need for belonging.
The Queen in the Cave
Series: The Three Sisters
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: May 24, 2022
Format: Hardcover
In her debut as author-illustrator, Júlia Sardà spins an enthralling and evocative tale, rich with layers of meaning to be discovered.
One night, Franca has a dream about a marvelous queen who lives in a dark cave, deep in the forest. She cannot sit still until she knows if her dream is true. So with her younger sisters, Carmela and Tomasina, Franca ventures into the forest at the end of their garden. As they travel deeper through nettles and thickets, drawing closer and closer to the cave, the world shifts, and everything shrinks and expands at the same time. Here, they meet beasts and creatures that shock and delight them, and they escape horrible things that frighten them. They learn to be brave, to be bold, to face their darkest fears. And what of the queen? Well, what they find in the cave is perhaps the most unexpected thing of all . . . In Júlia Sardà’s irresistible, mysterious modern fairy tale, each spread is a stunning and wildly imaginative set piece brought to life in sumptuous color and detail.

The Witch in the Tower
Series: The Three Sisters
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: September 2, 2025
Format: Hardcover
Gorgeous illustrations are the star of this fantastical adventure about hidden magic, growing up, and braving the unknown to find yourself.
Everything is changing for Carmela. Her older sister, Franca, has new, mean friends, and Carmela is feeling lost and lonely. So she decides to go for a walk—to walk until she can’t anymore, then walk a bit more. Her walking takes her to a strange tower, and what she finds there will transform her life forever. In this companion to The Queen in the Cave, her authorial debut, renowned illustrator Júlia Sardà ventures into a mesmerizing world where mermaid grease washes away envy, a giant’s hair helps you face bullies, a circular library holds all your secrets, and a dome of crystal prisms opens a view to the cosmos. Dreamlike and filled with whimsy, the artist’s kaleidoscopic patterns, decorative borders, glowing colors, and layered, elaborately detailed imagery will bewitch young readers as readily as the title character does Carmela—and beckon them to return for many a visit.
Where the Water Takes Us
Price: $9.99
Pub Date: June 3, 2025
Format: Paperback
“Powerful. . . . A lyrical and sensitively rendered coming-of-age tale.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ava’s mom is about to have twins, and the pregnancy isn’t going well. All Ava wants to do is stay by her mother’s side, but instead, she is sent away to stay with her grandparents. Normally, spending time at the lake with Nonna and Nonno is wonderful. But everything is different now. While her mom’s hospital visits are getting serious back home and summer storms rock the island, making the electricity go out at the cabin, Ava grapples with anxiety. An annoyingly cheerful boy named Cody seems determined to pop up everywhere she goes, but Ava can’t be distracted from the feeling that something terrible, something irrevocable, is going to happen to her mom while she is gone.
When a bird dies in front of her, Ava is sure it is a sign that she is cursed—the last thing she, or her family, needs. But if a curse has been placed on her, there must be a way to break it. So Ava makes a deal: If she can take care of two orphaned bird eggs, she will have paid off her debt, and her family will be all right.
With everyone she loves on the line, Ava will do everything in her power to make sure that her mom, her twin baby brothers, her birds, and even Cody all come through the summer safely.
Skylar and the K-Pop Principal
Price: $18.99
Pub Date: February 18, 2025
Format: Hardcover
K-pop fandom and Freaky Friday collide in a hilarious body-swap story that celebrates the fans who drive one of the biggest musical sensations in the world.
Skylar is convinced that life for her as an eleven-year-old is way harder than for any adult, including her cranky principal, Ms. Callus. The only good part about being eleven is being a massive K-pop fan, even if her parents do ban her from all things AZ8, the best K-pop boy band in the world. When a freak accident causes Skylar and Ms. Callus to switch bodies, Skylar finds herself trying to convince the world of AZ8’s supremacy, going viral in a K-pop dance video, and somehow running her school, all while stuck in a seventy-one-year-old’s body. And then she gets the chance to meet AZ8 in real life. With the help of her bestie, Dana, and her own wits and passion, Skylar must decide whether her K-pop dream come true is worth risking being stuck as an old lady forever. A feel-good tale singing with laugh-out-loud moments, Skylar and the K-Pop Principal is a joyful and uplifting story of friendship, fandom, and chasing your dreams.
Bros
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: March 12, 2024
Format: Hardcover
A celebration of childhood from an award-winning author, this upbeat day-in-the-life of a bunch of friends was inspired by the #BlackBoyJoy meme that spurred a movement.
From sunrise to sunset, a group of young Black boys joyously spend the day together as they live their best lives freely in their community. With confidence and a touch of swag, these friends do everything with one another: build a time machine, tend to the community garden, roleplay in the park, read, take a group selfie, and play basketball. With simple, spare text from celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and colorful, playful art from Reggie Brown capturing the pleasures of boyhood and friendship, Bros affirms the truth that Black boys deserve and are worthy of a childhood full of joy and free of risk, just as much as anyone. Timely and buoyant, it’s a story sure to be enjoyed by anyone who knows what it is to be surrounded by friends with a day of adventure ahead of you.
Confessions of a Candy Snatcher
Price: $18.99
Pub Date: August 15, 2023
Format: Hardcover
A night of Halloween fun gone wrong has Jonas wondering if he’s really a wolf in disguise in this fast-paced fiction debut delving into accountability, relationships . . . and zines.
For the past few years, twelve-year-old Jonas and his friends have competed to see how many bags of candy they can grab from unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. No one’s supposed to get hurt, just lose their treats. So Jonas is taken by surprise when one of his smaller targets fights back against his snatching attempt. He’s even more surprised when he starts to receive anonymous notes from someone who knows what happened that night. Jonas already has enough on his plate, between his parents’ ill-defined separation and his own guilt—guilt his friend Concepción challenges him to confront in a zine she’s creating around the prompt “What’s the worst thing you ever did?” It’s a complicated question, one that touches on issues of identity, maturity, physical boundaries, and safety. Featuring zines crafted by award-winning illustrator Theodore Taylor III, Phoebe Sinclair’s debut novel relates an emotive, reflective story about the wonder—and mess—of growing up.
The Sisters of Straygarden Place
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: May 30, 2023
Format: Paperback
“Chewins’s prose is exquisite, her eerie concepts heart-wrenching. . . . Superb, spooky, and unforgettable.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The grass grew taller than the house itself, surrounding it on all sides. It stuffed the keyholes and scraped against the roof. It shook the walls and made paintings shiver.
Seven years ago, the Ballastian sisters’ parents left them in the magical Straygarden Place, a house surrounded by tall silver grass and floating trees. They left behind a warning to never leave the house or go into the grass. “Wait for us,” the note read. “Sleep darkly.” Ever since, the house itself has taken care of Winnow, Mayhap, and Pavonine—feeding them, clothing them, even keeping them company—while the girls have waited and grown up. Until one day, when the eldest, fourteen-year-old Winnow, does the unthinkable and goes outside into the grass, and everything twelve-year-old Mayhap thought she knew starts to unravel. Now in paperback with an updated cover, The Sisters of Straygarden Place uses luscious, vivid prose to transport readers to a house where beloved dogs crawl into their owners’ minds to sleep, sick girls turn silver, and anything can be stolen—even laughter and silence.
Lena, the Sea, and Me
Price: $8.99
Pub Date: May 2, 2023
Format: Paperback
“A captivating celebration of all the sweet (and bittersweet) feelings that come with growing up.” —School Library Journal (starred review)
Trille and Lena may be getting older, but they still find everyday adventure—and trouble—in their coastal village, including sinking every raft they build, getting little sisters stuck up flag poles, and attending those dreaded music lessons. But that’s not all. The arrival of a less-than-encouraging new soccer coach is putting twelve-year-old Lena's goalkeeping career in doubt. And Trille is wondering how to impress the girl who has just joined his class. As the best friends battle the elements and their own emotions, one thing is for sure: they're not giving up, not if Lena has anything to do with it! In Maria Parr’s companion to Adventures with Waffles, the acclaimed author returns to Mathildewick Cove with a rib-tickling story of growing up.
Calling the Moon: 16 Period Stories from BIPOC Authors
Price: $22.99
Pub Date: March 28, 2023
Format: Hardcover
An essential, highly relatable collection of short fiction and poems around the topic of menstruation, written exclusively by authors who are Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color
For Angela, it came on the basketball court—while playing on the boys’ team. For Penny, it came on a lakeside field trip, inspiring some cringeworthy moments of humor. And to Layla’s disappointment, it came at the start of her first fasting Ramadan, mandating that she take a “holiday.” Whether their period's coming spurs silence or celebration, whether they are well prepared for it or totally in the dark, the young people in these sixteen stories find that getting a period brings not only changes to their bodies, but also joy, sorrow, and self-discovery. Featuring BIPOC contributors who are some of today’s most talented authors in middle-grade fiction, Calling the Moon offers coming-of-age stories and poetry as varied as the phases of the moon, from funny to heartbreaking to powerful, all of them reassuring readers that they are not alone in their period journey.
With contributions by:
Hilda Eunice Burgos * Veeda Bybee * Susan Muaddi Darraj * Saadia Faruqi * Nikki Grimes * Leah Henderson * Mason J. * Erin Entrada Kelly * Guadalupe Garcia McCall * Elise McMullen-Ciotti * Yamile Saied Méndez * Emma Otheguy * Aida Salazar * Christina Soontornvat * Padma Venkatraman * Ibi Zoboi
Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy
A Graphic Novel
Price: $14.99
Pub Date: September 27, 2022
Format: Paperback
Drawing on the experiences of his Vietnamese American family and his love of ’80s sci-fi shows, Jonathan Hill crafts a funny, insightful graphic novel about the immigrant experience and the perils of middle school.
Threatened with diminishing resources, Booger Lizk’t and his family flee their lizard community deep below Earth’s crust to survive above among humans. The Lizk’t family of Elberon now passes as the Tomkins family of Eagle Valley. “Tommy Tomkins” wears a human face to school but can’t seem to fit in no matter how he looks. The basketball team becomes a pipe dream when bullies label him a bug eater, and only Dung Tran, an immigrant from Vietnam and fellow outsider, sees Tommy for who he is inside, which is nothing like the outer-space lizard invaders on TV’s hottest series. Can their friendship survive the truth? In his first solo middle-grade book, award-winning creator Jonathan Hill perfectly captures the sometimes dystopian drama of middle school while reminding readers of the universal need for belonging.
The Queen in the Cave
Series: The Three Sisters
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: May 24, 2022
Format: Hardcover
In her debut as author-illustrator, Júlia Sardà spins an enthralling and evocative tale, rich with layers of meaning to be discovered.
One night, Franca has a dream about a marvelous queen who lives in a dark cave, deep in the forest. She cannot sit still until she knows if her dream is true. So with her younger sisters, Carmela and Tomasina, Franca ventures into the forest at the end of their garden. As they travel deeper through nettles and thickets, drawing closer and closer to the cave, the world shifts, and everything shrinks and expands at the same time. Here, they meet beasts and creatures that shock and delight them, and they escape horrible things that frighten them. They learn to be brave, to be bold, to face their darkest fears. And what of the queen? Well, what they find in the cave is perhaps the most unexpected thing of all . . . In Júlia Sardà’s irresistible, mysterious modern fairy tale, each spread is a stunning and wildly imaginative set piece brought to life in sumptuous color and detail.