Author: Margaret Kingsbury

This is the picture book that introduced me to Purple Up! Day. It follows a group of students at a school who decide to help their classmates who have military family members overseas serving. I was in elementary school when my dad served overseas in Desert Storm, and both he and I still remember how the school did a fundraiser and sent him and his entire unit care packages. This lyrical picture book reminded me of that.

I like how this one focuses on a different aspect of military life — being separated from beloved pets. When a young girl’s mother is sent to live overseas for a time, the family has to rehome their much-loved dog. This makes the young girl very sad. This poetic picture book celebrates love, pets, and family, while also grappling with the grief of saying goodbye and having things change.

This immensely relatable and charming middle grade graphic novel is about what happens after a parent is no longer in service. Charlie’s spent her entire life moving from school to school as her dad’s deployments changed. Now he’s retired, and they’re settling down in his hometown. She’s never been at one school for long and feels so much pressure to make friends and make a good impression. Thankfully, a group of Black girls helps her feel right at home, though it takes Charlie a bit to realize that she can just be herself. I’m hoping this is going to be a series!

This funny, illustrated middle grade is about a young Japanese American girl and her military family settling down in Hawaii. Airi Sano is in sixth grade, and she’s never loved school. Her new teacher, Ms. Ashton, is determined to change that. So, Airi decides she’ll prank Ms. Ashton so many times that she’ll be forced to give up on Airi. There are currently two books in this series.

Since today is Eid, it seemed fitting to include an Eid-themed book. This adorable picture book follows Safa as she and her family prepare for Eid al-Fitr. Her mom draws henna patterns on her hands, she helps her dad with the decorations, and she helps welcome guests. She’s looking forward to the presents she will receive, but her family tells her that the most special part of Eid is sharing with neighbors, which is exactly what they then do.

This gentle autobiographical picture book tells the story of three Palestinian diaspora daughters learning about their homeland through their father’s stories. Their father grew up in the Old City of Jerusalem and tells his daughters many vibrant stories about his life there before bed. The book is full of warmth and joy, even amid the father’s sorrow at never being able to return and the daughter’s knowledge that they will never visit. Family photos are included as endpapers.

This middle grade graphic novel is the hilarious sequel to Huda F Are You? Huda and her family are taking a vacation to Disney World. The Muslim community in Dearborn, where they live, is strong, and it’s a culture shock to travel to Florida, where Huda’s hijab is mocked by some white girls her age at the park and where people stare when they pray. Huda does befriend another girl at the amusement park, but in so doing, accidentally loses track of her sisters. This is a fun graphic novel and a great glimpse into life as an Arab American tween girl.

I reviewed this last year, but I wanted to highlight it in this list as well. This is a fantastic middle grade novel told from two perspectives. Kareem lives in Damascus, Syria, and becomes a graffiti artist with a group of other boys to protest against the government. Worried about his safety, Kareem’s parents send him to live with his cousin Samira, who lives in a suburb in Massachusetts. Samira is the only Muslim Arab student at her school and longs to fit in. While initially she’s excited to have Kareem live with her and her family, she soon realizes that his presence sets her even more apart at school.

A young Black girl finds her voice and learns to love nature on a class field trip to a park in this picture book. Tasha is new to her school and hasn’t made friends yet. On the field trip, she listens intently to Ranger Jessie as well as the sounds of nature. She discovers a turtle, explores wildflowers with friends and the ranger, and at the end of the day, she’s able to tell her teacher about everything she loves at the park. And, she has friends! This is a lovely book celebrating nature and Black voices enjoying nature. Floyd Cooper started the illustrations, but after he passed away in 2021, Daria Peoples completed them.

This is a gorgeously illustrated picture book biography of David Attenborough, perhaps the most well-known naturalist. It depicts his life through the lens of how many wild places Earth has lost during his lifetime. It opens with his birth when two-thirds of the planet was covered in wild spaces. The illustration shows a rainforest scene for two-thirds of the page spread, while one-third shows baby David with an older sibling and parents with homes and factories spouting smoke in the background. The book follows Attenborough as he falls in love with nature as a child, attends university, and begins making films about nature. It’s a really beautiful homage to his life and a call to action to preserve wild places.

This is an important middle grade graphic novel about a family whose home and small farm are burned during an Oregon wildfire. The fire was caused by kids shooting fireworks in the forest. They move to Portland, but 8th-grader Juliana is sad about not being able to bring her goats, and she’s experiencing PTSD flashbacks from the fire. She joins a conservation club to make friends, where she learns about climate change.

This is a lovely, illustrated middle grade novel-in-verse from the perspective of a young Rachel Carson. Carson first dreams of becoming a writer and then a scientist. After her sister’s death, she helps take care of her nieces and nephews. From a young age, Carson fell in love with nature, especially the ocean. This follows her life from her tween years to attending college, entwining Carson’s writing and biographical accounts with fiction. It’s a mesmerizing read and a great introduction to Carson and her conservation work. Also check out the new picture book Something About the Sky, which takes selections from an essay Carson wrote about clouds.

This picture book is an absolute joy. It’s a celebration of stimming that centers four neurodivergent children. Asbell directly addresses young readers: “When you’re feeling overwhelmed / And the world’s too much to bear.” He invites readers to stim to relieve stress. One child flutters hands by their ears, another tickles the air in front of them to see the sparkling lights. Some use their feet and entire bodies to dance and move. The illustrations are vibrant and exuberant. It’s a book that invites movement.

This wonderful picture book, which releases April 16th, also celebrates stimming and neurodivergence in general. While the author bases the story on the experiences of her non-speaking autistic son, she is also neurodivergent. Doyon advocates for all ways of communication and experiencing the world to be celebrated, not shunned. It follows a Black son and mother as they go to church, play in fall leaves, and spend a lovely day together. This is Doyon’s love letter to her son. Kaylani Juanita’s illustrations are expressive and depict the child stimming and chewing on sensory toys.

This middle grade novel also releases on April 16th, and it’s going to be one of my favorite books of the year. It’s a fantastic sci-fi middle grade about autistic kids being part of an experiment where The Dot gets put into their brains, tracking their vitals and releasing serotonin when it senses the kids are stressed. Paige was seven when The Dot was surgically placed inside her head, and she was told she was getting her tonsils out. She only finds out about The Dot when she sees an email about her on her dad’s computer. Then she hears that The Dot is being sold to a social media company, and Paige is desperate to get it out of her brain. She contacts other autistic kids who are part of the study for help. Paige is also queer, and there’s lots of good friend drama and first crushes. This book was hard to put down!

Although this book doesn’t release until July 9th, I decided to go ahead and get it on everyone’s radar. It’s a really sweet illustrated novel-in-verse for younger middle grade readers. It’s about a girl with undiagnosed autism and anxiety who wants to befriend a new girl at school. Unfortunately, the new girl leans into being mean and popular at Isabel’s expense. It alternates perspectives between the two girls. It’s a great book for understanding autism and anxiety. There aren’t too many books for younger middle grade readers, so it helps to fill an important gap. It’s very accessible and engaging and will be a great book for initiating important conversations.

This Indigenous poetic picture book, an homage to trees, will be released on Tuesday. It explores the author’s relationships with trees, influenced by her Algonquin ancestors’ beliefs. Each of the 12 poems centers different trees as the seasons pass. As winter turns into spring, a child gazes at a maple. Another child rests beneath a willow tree in the summer. During the winter, two children build a snowman by a pine tree. The soft, painted illustrations are lovely.

This picture book also centers nature, this time animals. Sixteen gentle and beautiful poems explore encounters with animals, from a canoeing child watching herons to hornets gathering around a lemonade pitcher and a cat eyeing a chipmunk in a water drain. Barron’s cut-paper collage illustrations are vibrant, as are Ruddock’s rhythmic poems.

Snider collects poems into comic panels in this imaginative seasonal middle grade collection following two children. In spring, the children write poems about snails, shapes, empty lots, and more. In summer, poems explore festivals, clouds, basketball, and more. These are short, accessible poems with lively illustrations.

Jane Yolen is a well-known children’s poet, and this is her largest anthology to date. It contains more than one hundred of her playful poems accompanied by small, black-and-white illustrations by Cathrin Peterslund. The poems are divided into “In” and “Out” sections surrounding seven themes: At Home, Animals, School, After School, Sports, Career Poems, and Calendar Poems. While listed as middle grade, poetry readers of any age will enjoy these.

This palindrome-filled picture book also celebrates friendship. Hannah speaks only in palindromes. When a new kid asks for her help in finding his lost cat Otto, she happily agrees. A cat with a palindrome name, just like Hannah! The two weave in and out of the neighborhood in their search for the missing cat. When they finally find the cat, however, they realize they’re lost! Thankfully, Hannah’s felicity with palindromes reminds her of a way to find home. All the palindromes in the book are in bold. Laura and I are critique buddies and friends, and I’m so happy that everyone can read her debut now!

This funny picture book celebrates rhymes, storytelling, and siblings. Big brother is writing the perfect rhyming story, but little sister keeps interjecting with her spins on the story that don’t rhyme! The brother gets more and more annoyed as the story gets out of hand. A knight doesn’t fight armadillos! Why would a knight and a detective be on a pirate ship!? However, it turns out little sister knows exactly how the rhyming game works. This would be great to read in classrooms studying rhyming words.

This is a whimsical vocabulary primer for toddlers and preschoolers full of diagrams, comic-style explorations of a word, funny faces, and more. I love the randomness of the words Gomi chooses. This isn’t the typical vocabulary primer that lists colors, feelings, shapes, etc. Gomi chooses many other words to explore in addition to those basic concepts—like different types of flowers, the parts of a cow, all the ways the word ‘fish’ can mean something different—which gives this book a sense of joy and playfulness. It’s pretty long, too, at 64 pages.

Even though this middle grade vocabulary booster doesn’t release until May, it’s such a perfect addition to this list I had to include it. It’s a very clever collection of poems, accompanied by silly illustrations, that define big words. While entries are listed in alphabetical order, they can be read in any order. Hiller opens with “acquiesce,” ends with “zest,” and includes many other words like “garrulous,” “effervescent,” “meander,” “volatile,” and more, 75 in total. I spent a delightful hour or so reading the poems, which so brilliantly define the words.

Marty loves baseball and watches her brother play at every game, strategizing and offering feedback. This earns her the nickname of Smarty Marty. When both the coach and assistant coach need to take a week off, they ask Smarty Marty to serve as a coach for the game that Saturday. At first, the boys on the team don’t want to accept her and follow her instructions. But her superior baseball knowledge soon puts them in line. This picture book is inspired by the first female coach in Major League Baseball history, Alyssa Nakken.

I confess I do not know much about baseball’s history, so pretty much everything in this picture book was new to me! It tells the story of the first time two Native American baseball players played against one another in a World Series, which happened in 1911. Charles Albert Bender, Al, grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota and, at seven, went to an Indian Boarding School with other Ojibwe children from his reservation. He learned to love baseball by watching older boys play during the summer. John Tortes Meyers, Jack, learned to play baseball on his Cahuilla nation’s reservation in Southern California. This picture switches back and forth between their lives until that 1911 game.

This middle grade historical fiction takes place in 1930s North Carolina, where Jim Crow laws led to segregation and racial tensions. Twelve-year-old Cato loves baseball and plays on his town’s Black Little League team. He dreams of joining the Negro League. His team practices on a derelict field while the white kids get a brand-new baseball field. The kids get curious and decide to play on the new field. When they’re caught, the town erupts in racial tensions, and the two teams will have a play-off to decide who can use the new field.

This is not the first time I’ve reviewed this one on here, but it’s a fantastic epistolary middle grade. Vivy Cohen is a Jewish autistic girl who loves baseball. When her mom says she can’t join a baseball team, she writes to her baseball hero, Black Major League star pitcher V.J. Capello, and amazingly, he writes back and coaches her on how to perfect her knuckleball throw. Vivy catches the eye of a little league coach and joins the team, but the other kids on the team aren’t always nice to her.

This interactive board book is so cool! Each page has buttons to press to hear bird calls, from morning doves to blue jays and more. Otter includes more common birds, which is nice because my daughter and I were able to immediately go outside and hear some of the birds from the book. The illustrations are bright and realistic, and facts about each bird are included on each page as well as a poem about birds in each location. This book releases on April 2nd.

I adore Ignotofsky’s intricate illustrations. Her newest picture book delves into birds, from the unique places they build nests to how birds find mates and so much more. My favorite pages are where she diagrams things, like an egg, a bird’s body, and feathers. This is a broad study into many different types of birds, and each page presents new birds with labels. Despite packing a lot of information in, it’s a very accessible nonfiction for picture book readers. Ignotofsky has published two other picture books in the What’s Inside series so far—What’s Inside a Caterpillar Cocoon? and What’s Inside A Flower? Both are fantastic as well.

We have so many robins in our backyard, so this is another picture book my daughter was super excited to read because we could immediately go outside and watch the robins. It opens with a robin chick pecking its way out of an eggshell. The robin is fed by its parents, grows, learns to fly, finds a home and a mate, and more. It’s written in the second person, and separate panels invite the reader to practice different movements with the robin, like pecking, turning, and pushing when the robin chick leaves the egg. This one is also part of a nonfiction picture book series — Meet Your World.

This is a lovely middle grade novel about adoption and protecting wildlife. Coop, who was adopted as an infant, is watching a bird’s nest at his G-Pop’s house when he decides to climb the tree to investigate. The mockingbird parents divebomb him, and he falls, breaking his arm. He still loves watching the birds, and when one is born with only one wing, he decides to keep it. However, after the bird is injured by a hawk, Coop learns that wild birds aren’t allowed by law to be kept as pets. He needs to find a pet sanctuary for the mockingbird. This releases May 14th.

Everyone always dresses their best at Elijah’s church for Easter, and he wants to wear something super snazzy. He visits thrift store after thrift store, but can’t find the perfect outfit. When he meets the Deacon and his wife, they tell him about how when they were children, they weren’t allowed to shop around town. So instead, they made their own Easter clothes with clothes they had at home. That gives Elijah an idea. When he gets home, he scours the house for old pieces of cloth, and with his family’s help, sews the perfect Easter outfit. Back matter includes a history of African Americans dressing up on Easter and Jim Crow Laws.

Toht and Jarvis’s holiday series is always a hit. Just like the previous picture books—Pick a Pine Tree and Pick a Pumpkin — this is a rhyming, lyrical read-aloud. It follows a family as they buy eggs at Patty’s farm, make their own egg dyes, and decorate eggs. In the morning, they dress in their Easter clothes and go on an egg hunt with the neighborhood. It’s a fun, modern classic.

This is another addition to a rhyming holiday series. A young girl is heading to her aunt and uncle’s farm to celebrate Easter. She finds all the baby animals, cuts pussy willows for decoration, helps garden, and more. In the morning, she and the family have cinnamon rolls, and she finds her Easter basket. She attends church and then goes on an Easter egg hunt on the farm. Back matter includes instructions on how to make an Easter tree, natural Easter egg dyes, and eggshell critters. We’ll be doing some of these for Easter this year!

Helen Yoon writes the funniest picture books. This one is the second book in the Is This . . . series, which features silly seasonal antics and sparse text. This one opens with a bear wearing bunny ears hiding eggs. A group of dogs find an egg and wonder what they’re supposed to do with it. They have differing perspectives. Can the bear bunny help them find a resolution?

Jack Wong is still relatively new to picture books. His debut last year — When You Can Swim — was one of my favorite books of the year, and this gorgeous homage to gardening and growing things is just as visually stunning. A young boy wonders how his big sister can know so much as the two take a spring walk, seeing blooming trees and smelling fragrant magnolias, and planting a garden in their yard. He picks out weeds from the vegetable garden, wondering why some plants are weeds and others not, and why some plants are considered vegetables and other edible plants, like wild dandelions, aren’t. His mother cooks fiddleheads for a meal, and the boy goes to sleep that night with many questions. It’s a lovely picture book.

This lyrical and vibrantly illustrated picture book celebrates spring by following three children as they walk through a meadow and a forest. They observe bees (“Little Buzz”), rabbits (“Long Ears”), fawns (“Big Eyes”), and more, encouraging all they see to wake up. The author and illustrator previously collaborated on the bedtime picture book Woodland Dreams. Both have a similar nature theme, lilting verse, and colorful illustrations.

In this early chapter book for transitional readers, Bo and his class need to decide what to plant in the school’s community garden. Initially, the kids fight over what to plant. Bo goes to his grandfather as he works in the barber shop for advice, and a client recommends growing vegetables, which are needed in a shelter the man volunteers at, and Pop-Pop tells him how their ancestors brought okra from Africa. At school, Bo shares what he learned, and the class comes up with a plan for the community garden that they can all agree on. I really love this series for young readers. The chapters are sparsely worded with a lot of illustrations.

This fantastic middle grade novel is about a very important spring event for theater kids — the spring musical. This is set in the same middle school as Melissa and Rick, and Green, a nonbinary student, is also a member of the school’s Rainbow Spectrum club. Green is excited about the spring musical, but less enthused when they learn the school will be performing The Wizard of Oz. They worry casting will follow gender binaries, so the Rainbow Spectrum club writes to the director, who agrees that any student, regardless of gender, can play any part in the play. Green really wants to be the Tin Man, but sadly does not get the part. Meanwhile, Green also worries about their first crush, starting their period, and how to express their gender identity. Thankfully, Green has supportive friends and family.