Starred Review

Nowhere Girl: Life as a Member of ADHD's Lost Generation

by Carla Ciccone

When writer Carla Ciccone was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at 39, she went through a range of emotions: fear, anger, disappointment, self-recognition. She catalogs this in Nowhere Girl: Life as a Member of ADHD's Lost Generation, skillfully placing her own experience in a larger historical, scientific, and cultural context. Ciccone's smart, compelling memoir is sure to appeal to anyone living with ADHD--whether themselves or someone they love.

Ciccone highlights how many of

A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out

by Nicholas Day, illus. by Yas Imamura

Nicholas Day, the Sibert Medal-winning author of The Mona Lisa Vanishes, explores the catastrophic, worldwide results of the 19th-century Tambora volcano eruption in his middle-grade nonfiction book A World Without Summer, illustrated by Yas Imamura (Love in the Library).

Mount Tambora on Indonesia's Sumbawa Island had been inactive for 400 years before April 1815, when "it began to rumble." On April 10, "Tambora blew itself apart.... It was as if the earth had been turned inside out and its glowing center

Audition for the Fox

by Martin Cahill

Martin Cahill's Audition for the Fox is a brief, lyrical story about the power that exists where the powerful never think to look and fighting for justice even when it seems hopeless.

After 96 auditions where she failed to gain the patronage of one of the 99 Pillars of Heaven, Nesi is desperate enough to turn to the trickster god, T'sidaan the Fox. The Fox sends their would-be acolyte 300 years into the past, during an era of the brutal Zeminis occupation of Nesi's homeland, Oranoya, and tasks her with igniting

Candace, the Universe, and Everything

by Sherri L. Smith

Sherri L. Smith (Pearl; Orleans) delivers a stellar work of middle-grade science fiction in Candace, the Universe, and Everything, about three generations of Black girls bound by a wormhole in their shared locker.

It's the first day of eighth grade, and a bird has just flown out of 13-year-old Candace's locker. Later, Candace finds a purple notebook on the top shelf of the locker that had not been there earlier; "Tracey Auburn, Fall '88" is written in the front cover. Tracey, a 53-year-old college professor,

Waseem

by Lilas Taha

Waseem perceptively centers a Palestinian community's resilience in a Lebanese refugee camp. Author Lilas Taha infuses surprisingly poignant charm, reclaiming joy even if "it made little sense in this miserable world."

"I shall tell you lies," the titular Waseem opens. He's the firstborn son who should have been named Saleem, meaning " 'physically healthy'... [but] the kindhearted neighborhood midwife wanted to spare [him] ridicule." Born with "a number of handicaps"--he can't walk, he limits his speech to

Circle of Days

by Ken Follett

Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth) is sure to delight his dedicated following and add new readers with Circle of Days, a thoroughly researched, engrossing, and richly imagined novel about the creation of Stonehenge.

Follett, whose research included access to recent archeological studies, reimagines late-Neolithic Britain as divided into communities of farmers, herders, and woodlanders. Overseeing all of these groups are the priestesses, who use their understanding of mathematics and the wooden "Monument"

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Shelf Discovery

The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival

by Anne Sebba

Anne Sebba's meticulously researched account of the women who survived Auschwitz by performing music in an orchestra is unflinching and powerful.

Starred Review

by Carla Ciccone

by Nicholas Day, illus. by Yas Imamura

by Martin Cahill

by Sherri L. Smith

by Lilas Taha

by Ken Follett

Welcome

Shelf Discovery

by Anne Sebba

by Ian McEwan

by Fabio Morábito, trans. by Curtis Bauer

by Clare Mackintosh

by Alison Pouliot, illus. by Stuart Patience

by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

by Jennifer Niven

by Alexandra Brown Chang

by Julia Kelly

by Silas House

by Patricia Lockwood

by Ken Jaworowski

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by Kitty Zeldis

by Fumiko Takano, trans. by Alexa Frank

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