One of the things I like most about my city neighborhood is the fact that so many of the people who live here come from different countries around the world. At the playground on a Saturday morning, you might hear a dozen different languages being spoken, each parent saying their own version of Please don’t climb up that slide. I love taking my kids to the excellent restaurants our neighbors have opened, and I love filling our family’s bookshelves with stories that reflect our community’s various cultures and traditions.
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I’ve got plenty of new children’s books to add to those shelves this month, including some titles that have crossed international borders to reach American readers. There’s a Greek picture book set in France, a spooky novel from the Netherlands, humor from Great Britain, nonfiction from Canada, and an American short story collection about kids from many different countries who find friendship and community in the apartment building they share. No matter where you live in the world, I hope you’ll enjoy these ten new titles.
Allen Say, Tonbo
(Clarion, October 22)
Recommended for ages 4-8
Allen Say has been creating beautiful books for over fifty years; his picture book Grandfather’s Journey won the Caldecott Medal in 1993. Tonbo, publishing this month, is a quietly magical treat for fans old and new. The story is narrated by an elderly man who goes for a morning walk and catches sight of a paper airplane. He calls the plane Tonbo, or “dragonfly,” and follows it into a town, where he soon realizes that he’s moving gradually into the past. By the time he finds the plane in a garden that reminds him of his childhood home, the narrator has become a young boy. Tonbo is great for sharing with little ones, but I recommend reading it on your own, too: the experience is like stepping into an exquisitely painted dream.
Alkisti Halikia, Step Into My Shoes
Illustrated by Fantini Tikkou, translated by Konstantine Matsoukas
(Lantana, October 1)
Recommended for ages 4-9
Every day in her town on the outskirts of Paris, Matou walks past a mosque on her way home from school. She sees all sorts of shoes lined up outside: “ankle boots, rain boots, heels, even flip-flops!” And, best of all, a pair of sneakers with orange laces just like the ones Matou has been dreaming of. She decides to try the shoes on, just for a moment, and imagine what the different shoes’ owners might be like. Originally published in Greek, this picture book is a thoughtful, kid-sized reflection on empathy, featuring eye-catching art and an irresistible narrative voice.
Annie Barrows, Stella & Marigold (Stella & Marigold #1)
Illustrated by Sophie Blackall
(Chronicle, October 1)
Recommended for ages 6-9
Your young readers might already be familiar with Annie Barrows and Sophie Blackall, the celebrated author-illustrator team behind the Ivy + Bean chapter book series. Barrows and Blackall have joined forces again for a new series about another character duo: seven-year-old Stella and her four-year-old sister, Marigold. This quirky and good-humored first entry follows the girls on their various adventures—getting lost in the meerkat exhibit at the zoo, pretending to be besieged by wolves, and much more—while capturing the everyday ups and downs of sibling relationships. Kids who like their fiction served up with a hearty helping of illustration will especially enjoy Stella and Marigold’s antics.
Richard Ayoade, The Fairy Tale Fan Club: Legendary Letters Collected by C.C. Cecily
Illustrated by David Roberts
(Walker Books US, October 1)
Recommended for ages 8-12
British comedian Richard Ayoade puts a wonderfully silly spin on familiar stories in The Fairy Tale Fan Club, which purports to be a collection of letters from children to their favorite fairy tale characters, each paired with the character’s response. In short chapters, denizens of Fairy Land like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood address readers’ questions and concerns about their stories: Why did Sleeping Beauty marry a prince she’d barely met? Is Humpty Dumpty an egg or a human? And what’s Rumpelstiltskin’s last name? (“Nice try,” Rumpelstiltskin replies.) Loads of witty illustrations by David Roberts add to the fun. My middle grade reader devoured this one faster than a wolf gobbling up a granny.
Ellen Oh (editor), On the Block: Stories of Home
(Crown, October 22)
Recommended for ages 8-12
On the Block: Stories of Home is the latest collection from We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit that champions diversity in the children’s publishing industry and in books for young readers. Interwoven short stories introduce readers to kids living in the Entrada, an apartment building that’s home to many different kinds of immigrant families. Lila has just moved to the Entrada from Trinidad and isn’t sure how she’ll like her new home; Ro makes a papier mâché lion’s head to prove she’s strong enough to join her Chinese school’s lion dance class; Hao’s grandparents’ apartment is possibly haunted by the ghost of a young artist who lived in the building decades earlier. Edited by We Need Diverse Books founder Ellen Oh, On the Block showcases work from an all-star crew that includes Meg Medina, Jasmine Warga, Sayantani DasGupta, and Tracey Baptiste.
Candace Savage, How to Know a Crow: The Biography of a Brainy Bird
Illustrated by Rachel Hudson
(Greystone Kids, October 15)
Recommended for ages 9-12
I love finding nonfiction books that get me excited about a topic I knew nothing about before, and How to Know a Crow is absolutely one of those books. It tells the story of one crow, Oki, from the moment she hatches until the day she becomes a mother of baby crows herself. The narrative of Oki’s life and adventures is supported by fantastic illustrations and a plethora of crow-related factoids, maps, diagrams, and activity suggestions. (There’s even a comic strip about crow rivalries, “Game of Crows.”) This cleverly designed book should stimulate readers’ scientific curiosity—and their imaginations, too.
Jodi Meadows, Bye Forever, I Guess
(Holiday House, October 22)
Recommended for ages 10-14
Ingrid feels invisible in her eighth-grade class, and that’s pretty much fine with her. She doesn’t want to be noticed, she doesn’t want to mend her relationship with her former friend Rachel, and she especially doesn’t want to talk to anyone (like the cute new boy, Oliver) when it’s so hard to make the words come out right. Life is much easier online, where she runs a popular social media account and chats easily with long-distance gaming friends she’s never met. She even has a text-based crush on a boy she knows only as Traveler—but is he actually a kid at her school? A spin on You’ve Got Mail for modern tweens, Jodi Meadows’ middle grade debut is funny, insightful, and sweet. I didn’t want to put it down.
Marjolijn Hof, The Curse of Madame Petrova
Illustrated by Annette Fienieg, translated by Bill Nagelkerke
(Levine Querido, October 15)
Recommended for ages 10-14
When twins Silke and Janis were born, the prophetic Madame Petrova predicted that they would one day kill each other. Their cousins are all too eager for the twins to carry out the prophecy, but Silke and Janis refuse to let it happen; they run away into the forest, determined to keep each other alive. As all good readers know, a journey into the woods can be both magical and perilous, and the twins face a number of challenges as they try to change their fate. Translated from the original Dutch, this atmospheric novel feels like a long-lost folktale just right for reading on a chilly autumn night.
Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, The Bletchley Riddle
(Viking, October 8)
Recommended for ages 10 and up
The Bletchley Riddle is a collaboration between two well-loved authors, Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. Sepetys writes fiction, while Sheinkin has previously written nonfiction, but both know how to turn the details of history into a suspenseful and compelling story. In The Bletchley Riddle, they give readers an imagined look at the codebreakers who worked at England’s Bletchley Park decrypting Nazi communications during World War II. The story is narrated in turns by siblings Jakob, a nineteen-year-old cryptanalyst at Bletchley, and Lizzie, a stubborn fourteen-year-old who falls into work as a messenger there. Over the course of the novel, the two encounter real historical codebreakers like Alan Turing and try to solve the mystery of what happened to their missing mother.
Hari Conner, I Shall Never Fall in Love
(HarperAlley, October 29)
Recommended for ages 13 and up
If Jane Austen and Alice Oseman sat down to write a graphic novel together, I Shall Never Fall In Love might be the charming result. (It’s actually written and illustrated by comic creator Hari Conner.) The Georgian-era plot revolves around Eleanor, who’s never met a boy she’d care to marry; Charlotte, Eleanor’s biracial cousin; and their good friend George, who has absolutely no interest in finding a husband. George, who was declared a girl at birth but has “mixed feelings on the matter,” dresses in men’s clothing, runs their family estate, and develops increasingly complicated feelings for Eleanor. All three heroes eventually find their way to romantic endings that are both happy and heartwarming. A useful backmatter gives research-based information about life for queer people and Black people in 1800s England, along with plenty of sources for further reading.
