George’s life is loud. On the water, though, with everything hushed above and below, she is steady, silent. Then her estranged dad says he needs to talk, and George’s past begins to wake up, looping around her ankles, trying to drag her under. But there’s no time to sink. George’s best friend, Tess, is about to become, officially, a teen mom, her friend Laz is in despair about the climate crisis, her gramps would literally misplace his teeth if not for her, and her moms fill the house with fuss and chatter. Before long, heat and smoke join the noise as distant wildfires begin to burn. George tries to stay steady. When her father tells her his news and the painful memories roar back to life, George turns to Calliope, the girl who has just cartwheeled into her world and shot it through with colors. And it’s here George would stay quiet and safe, if she could. But then Tess has her baby, and the earth burns hotter, and the past just will not stay put. A novel about the contours of friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, and love, and about our hopeless, hopeful world, Helena Fox’s gorgeous follow up to How It Feels to Float explores the stories we suppress and the stories we speak and the healing that comes when we voice the things we’ve kept quiet for so long.

Two families flee extreme weather in India and come together on a mountaintop.

Two girls forge a forever-friendship by learning each other’s language. The Day Saida Arrived demonstrates the power of language to build bonds beyond borders.

Featured in August 2023’s WOW Dozen on books about Language Learning and Communication.

In 2004, four undocumented Mexican teenagers arrived at the national underwater robotics championship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. No one had ever told Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they would amount to much until two inspiring high school science teachers convinced the boys to enter the competition. Up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, this team of underdogs from Phoenix, Arizona, scraped together spare parts and a few small donations to astound not only the competition’s judges but themselves, too.

Follows a little boy traveling alone in an open landscape, asking questions about loss, love, friendship, language, magic, and what it means to be a human being.

Meet the incredible Brontë family: Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë are no ordinary children. Growing up on the wild, lonely moors of Yorkshire, they have nothing to entertain them but their imaginations and each other. So they invent extraordinary imaginery worlds, full of wars and love stories, soldiers, heroes and villains, ruled over by powerful women. As they grow up, the Brontës discover that the real world isn’t such a great place to be a girl. But they are so determined that their voices be heard, they overcome almost unbeatable odds to be bestselling authors.

When Maud hit puberty she lost her wild magic and her best friend, Odette, rejected her but now Odette has disappeared, her magic leading her down dark paths, and Maud knows that to rescue her former friend she will have to tread the same paths into a wild, dangerous world.

“The first middle-grade book from a picture book master-a harrowing, heartrending, illustrated account of his childhood escape from the terrors of war”–

After her family fled the Mexican Revolution, twelve year old Petra summons all her strength and courage as she faces new opportunities and challenges in America.

A neurodiverse twelve year old girl is shown an amazing new technology that gives her another chance to talk to the best friend she lost. But she soon discovers the corporation behind the science hides dark secrets that only she can expose.