KIDS

Twelve-year-old Kyana bakes up a plan to keep her inner-city magic school open after redistricting and gentrification threaten to close it down.

Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the cranes; but now they have been swept up by by the government's Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico, and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp. Betita finds heart in her imagination and the picture poems her father taught her, but each day threatens to further tear her family apart.

Autistic and nearly nonverbal, twelve-year-old Nova is happy in her new foster home and school, but eagerly anticipates the 1986 Challenger launch, for which her sister, Bridget, promised to return.

Eleven-year-old Sam, who lives with her siblings and mothers in a house on Sunrise Lagoon, tries to come up with a plan to save the family's charter boat business before the summer is over.

Samira knows this is going to be the worst summer ever. Her best friend, Kiera, ditched her for the cool girls. Her parents and older sister are taking a trip to India, so Sammy is staring down endless weeks spent with Imran, her little brother, and her Umma. To top it all off--literally!--her house gets TP'd. The TP'ing upsets Imran, who is convinced that they're being targeted because they're the only brown family on the block. When Sammy attempts to solve the problem, she creates a bigger mess instead. But she also meets new girl Alice, who is determined to figure out who was behind the TP'ing. Suddenly, Sammy's boring summer is full of clue-finding hunts, garage band practices, and getting to know her neighbors like never before. But when Kiera starts stealing Alice away, Sammy must decide if she wants to stand up for herself. One thing is certain: This summer is either going to be the worst (or maybe the best) of Samira's life.

While on a weeks-long visit to her aunt Verity's house, eleven-year-old Elsby discovers there is more to the cats living in the house next door than first meets the eye.

A young girl is accidentally fed moonlight by the witch who raises her and develops extraordinary magical powers. She must use her magic to confront the evil that emerges.

Fifth grade is just not Riley's vibe. Everyone else is squaded up--except Riley. Her best friend moved away. All she wants to do is draw, and her grades show it. One thing that makes her happy is her favorite comedian, Joy Powers. Riley loves to watch her old shows and has memorized her best jokes. So when the class is assigned to write letters to people they admire, of course Riley's picking Joy Powers! Things start to look up when a classmate, Cate, offers to help Riley with the letter, and a new kid, Aaron, actually seems to get her weird sense of humor. But when mean girl Whitney spreads a rumor about her, things begin to click into place for Riley. Her curiosity about Aaron's two dads and her celebrity crush on Joy Powers suddenly make more sense.

A middle-grade nonfiction story of five young cousins who grow closer than sisters as ethnic tensions escalate over three summers in 1980s Bosnia.

Mia is still getting used to living with her mom and stepfather, and to the new role their Jewish identity plays in their home. Feeling out of place at home and at her Jewish day school, Mia finds herself thinking more and more about her Muscogee father, who lives with his new family in Oklahoma. Her mother doesn't want to talk about him, but Mia can't help but feel like she's missing a part of herself without him in her life. Soon, Mia makes a plan to use the gifts from her bat mitzvah to take a bus to Oklahoma--without telling her mom--to visit her dad and find the connection to her Muscogee side she knows is just as important as her Jewish side.