12 of the Best New Children’s Books Out April 2023

This poignant novel-in-verse explores the realities of being an autistic girl in middle school. Selah is used to suppressing her emotions and putting on her normal person mask every day for school. She knows not to talk about dragons too much and thinks she has everything under control. Then one day she hits one of her friends, and everything comes crashing down. The school threatens to expel her, and her friends no longer want to be around her. After going to a ComicCon and learning more about autism, she brings some fidgets and earplugs to school to help her cope with school anxiety, but some of her teachers don’t understand and take them away. The author, who is also autistic, provides lots of valuable information in the back. This is a really fantastic book about the autistic experience for both kids on the spectrum and those who aren’t.

Eighth grade aspiring investigative journalist Indigo is typically a rule-abiding student. However, when she hears about unfair bathroom policies in her school’s detention, she decides she needs to investigate. She spray-paints graffiti at the school so she can be sent to detention, and there she discovers an even more troubling pattern: Black and Brown students are significantly more likely to be sent to detention than white students. Her investigations into unfair and racist school policies alienates Indigo from her friends. Meanwhile, she checks out a book by Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells and discovers letters written by Ida inside it. Indigo’s investigations and Ida’s letters are entwined in this powerful middle grade novel.

I adore the premise of this middle grade novel: time traveling to Korea by eating home-cooked meals! Maya’s father died when she was young, and she lives with her mother and grandmother — Halmunee — who has recently moved in because she’s having difficulties with memory loss. Maya’s mother refuses to talk about her past in Korea, particularly when it involves Maya’s father. While Maya is a bit disconcerted by having Halmunee live with them, she loves cooking with her grandmother, learning Korean recipes, and listening to her grandmother’s stories about the past. Then one day something magical happens: when Maya takes a bit of one of Halmunee’s recipes, she’s transported into Halmunee’s past to a time when she had previously eaten that food. In the past, Maya learns more about her Korean heritage and about her father, and why everyone is so secretive about him. Interspersed in the story are recipes for the Korean dishes in the novel!

This fascinating novel opens in Liubashevka, Ukraine, in 1905, where 11-year-old Shoshana and her mother and sisters live while her father and brother prepare a homestead in North Dakota. Life is getting increasingly difficult for Jews in Ukraine, so Shoshana and her family emigrate to North Dakota to join her father and brother, hoping to find a new and safer home. However, life on the frontier is hard, and several kids in Shoshana’s school make fun of her for being Jewish. She thinks it’s okay to participate in the town’s Christian activities to fit in, but her sister Libke disagrees and thinks they need to be proud of their Jewish culture. It’s a beautifully written novel that also touches on the forced removal of Native Americans. It would be a good replacement for Little House on the Prairie.

I started listening to this book on audio over the weekend, expecting something like a Latine Goosebumps with La Llorana based on the cover alone. While that’s not wholly inaccurate, I’m finding it so much more lovely and magical than I expected. When Felice was an infant, her mother and two older brothers drowned in the river running by the town Tres Leches. Her Uncle Clem saved Felice and raised her, moving to Corpus Christi to separate himself from the heartbreaking tragedy. Since then, Felice has been scared of water, not just rivers, but of rain, too. When Uncle Clem’s friend convinces him to return to Tres Leches and continue his abandoned work as a cracksman, Felice discovers that her mother’s ghost haunts the river in Tres Leches, calling to children who get too near, trying to find her lost children. Meanwhile, a mayoral race is centering making the river safe for recreational use once more. I’m about halfway through this right now, and I can’t wait to finish it!