12 Of The Best New Children’s Books Out January 2023

7th-grader Henrietta Weldon, or Henri for short, has dyscalculia, a learning disability that makes math especially hard. Previously, Henri attended a private school to get more one-on-one tutoring for her disability. However, her mom is starting a PhD program, and with the family strapped for cash, Henri will now attend public school, where her older brother and sister also attended. She’s excited about going to a new school and soon makes friends. However, Henri’s sister Kat hates her new friends for good reasons, and Henri is finding her new schedule — which includes soccer and poetry — overwhelming. How can Henri balance new friendships, her passions, school, and a sister she fights with constantly? Her mom thinks she should concentrate on school and drop everything else, but Henri disagrees. This is a fantastic new middle grade novel that is funny and super relatable.

This wrenching and beautifully written middle grade novel entwines two timelines. In the present, 13-year-old Matthew begrudgingly moves in with his 100-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the Covid-19 pandemic while his journalist father works in France. While helping his great-grandmother, he discovers more about her past, and the novel switches to the perspectives of three Ukrainian cousins during the 1930s, revealing devastating details about the Holodomor — a Soviet government-created famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. While it sounds like a complicated narrative — with multiple points of view and timelines — Marsh seamlessly integrates the alternating viewpoints and timelines. It’s a moving, relevant story about an important historical event largely unknown in the U.S., inspired by Marsh’s family history.

12-year-old Trevor, or Trev for short, is a talented artist. However, when his stepdad is imprisoned for hitting his mom, Trev decides he needs to be able to use his hands for a different purpose — to protect his mother and sisters. Trev begins taking boxing lessons, but with his emotions spiraling with all the stress he’s under, the physicality of the sport has him reacting in too-violent ways. Maybe he should return to art and help his family and community that way, but how will art protect his loved ones? This brief but packed novel explores toxic masculinity and Blackness in a nuanced, moving way and packs both a literal and metaphorical punch.

This fantasy retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” is perfect for kids who love the movie Brave. When Princess Harbor Rose was born, one of her fairy aunts cursed her. To keep her safe from the prophesied war and death that she’s been cursed with, Harbor’s mother whisks her away to a remote island where more of Harbor’s magical aunts live. No children live on the island, and Harbor has both a magical and lonely childhood. When the prophecy’s time arrives, and the boy Peter — the prophesied hero — arrives, Harbor realizes that to save her people and her family, she’ll need to love herself, curse and all, and become her own hero.

After a school shooting leaves Simon as the only surviving member of his classroom, his family decides to move to a place where no one knows him and where he can have some peace and quiet — the National Quiet Zone in Grin and Bear It, Nebraska. The internet is banned in Grin and Bear It so scientists can better study space, and Simon can return to a somewhat anonymous childhood. Simon wants to start a new life and leave the past behind him, but, of course, there’s no way to leave that kind of trauma behind. His friends Kevin, who is Filipino American, and Agate, who is autistic, try to help Simon. But the three get into mischief when they fake alien signals to fool the scientists. Bow tackles really tough topics in this novel with grace and empathy while also threading in laugh-out-loud humor throughout.