Verse Novels, Spices, And More Great Kids’ Books!

I listed this as one of my most anticipated 2024 reads in a newsletter last year, and let me say, it did not disappoint. It will be on my list of favorite 2024 releases, without a doubt. It’s a gorgeous verse novel about a 13-year-old boy, Jake, with anorexia, depression, and OCD, which Schu based on his own experiences. Jack just wants to disappear, but the people who love him — like his grandmother, divorced parents, and a friend he makes — want him to stay. His family sends him to an in-patient treatment facility for help, and he spends most of the next year there. This novel recounts his experiences in verse. Reading this basically ripped my heart out. I cried so much!

I don’t see Torrey Maldonado on lists that often, but he’s one of my favorite middle grade authors. This slim and accessible verse novel is a really moving and nuanced take on toxic masculinity. Trev used to create art with his hands, but when his stepfather hits his mother and goes to jail for it, he decides he needs to use his hands to box instead. That way, he can protect his family. But his mom and sister want him to keep making art. I love the community of Black male role models that Trev has surrounding him and offering support.

In this beautiful historical novel-in-verse, Carole Boston Weatherford attempts to trace her ancestry as far back as she can, reimagining her ancestor’s lives through poems. She manages to trace them to a plantation in Maryland and even finds a reference to one of her ancestors in one of Frederick Douglass’s writings. She doesn’t let the lack of archival evidence stop her from imagining what the past looked like. I got to listen to a panel with Weatherford hosted by School Library Journal in February, and I loved listening to her speak about writing this novel. She spoke of her process of listening to her ancestors speaking to her and the necessity of creative license when facts run cold, particularly for historical renderings of African American history. Her son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, illustrates with stunning scratchboard art.

This lovely middle grade novel-in-verse is the first traditionally published book about a tween with cystic fibrosis by an author with cystic fibrosis. Penny has several things complicating her life right now: her best friend is moving away, she needs to write a poem about herself for the school poetry contest, there’s a dolphin stuck in the creek that runs through her backyard, and she’s experiencing a bad CF flare. She and the dolphin bond, but she knows the dolphin needs to find her way back to her pod. Baldwin’s writing is just wonderful. I don’t have CF, but I do have lots of respiratory disorders, and I really identified with Penny.