Archives de catégorie : Children’s Books

ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME de James Riley

Storybook characters collide in this first book in a new trilogy of twisted fairy tales from New York Times bestselling author James Riley, set in the world of his popular Half Upon a Time series—perfect for fans of Fablehaven and Chris Colfer’s A Tale of Magic series!

ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME
by James Riley
‎Aladdin, 2022 – 2023
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Book 1: ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME (April 2022)

Five and a half feet might seem pretty tall for a twelve-year-old, but it’s not when your parents are giants. Lena has kept the fact that she’s a tiny giant secret, using magic to grow when out in the giant village. But hiding who she is has always felt wrong, even though she knows the other giants might not accept her. Fortunately, Lena has friends down in the Cursed City who understand that looking different doesn’t make her less of a giant.
Someone who knows not to judge by appearances is Jin, a young genie currently serving one thousand and thirty-eight years of genie training that requires him to fulfill the wish of whoever holds his magical ring. In Jin’s case, it’s the power-hungry Golden King. At least the king only has two wishes left, one of which is for Jin to go to the Cursed City and capture its protector, the Last Knight—one of Lena’s closest friends.
What Lena and Jin don’t know is how close the Golden King’s plans are to coming together, between his dark magic and his horrible Faceless knights. If Jin does find the Last Knight and bring him to the Golden King, why, that could doom the entire fairy-tale world.
…This sounds like it’ll end badly, doesn’t it?

Book 2: TALL TALES (September 2022)

Lena might finally be accepted by the other giants after helping to defeat the Golden King and his faceless army in the Cursed City, but that doesn’t mean life has become any easier for her. The power-hungry Golden King wants revenge and has begun spreading shadow magic out over the kingdoms, taking over the minds of anyone it touches, and instilling fear and hatred as it goes.
The fairy queens, the most magical beings in the kingdoms, say their sacred book, Tales of All Things, claims that there is one person who can defeat the Golden King and his dark spells: Lena. But only if she first proves herself worthy by completing three challenges.
All Lena ever wanted was to prove she is really a giant. Now she has to be so much more. Can she and her genie friend, Jin, save the human world that doesn’t trust them, or will they fall prey to shadow magic, and doom everything?

Book 3: HAPPILY EVER AFTER (May 2023)

Who doesn’t love a good Happily Ever After? The Cursed City is now the Blessed City, with its residents’ curses removed. Lena is now fully human, as are the rest of the giants, and together they live in peace with all the other humans in the city, all their differences now gone. And sure, Jin might have disappeared, but really, genie magic only caused trouble.

At least, that’s what the magic spell in Lena’s head is telling her. But somewhere inside, she knows that this new world isn’t right, that no real Happily Ever After would take her giant heritage from her…and that Jin is in danger.

When things are at their darkest, can a single Spark light the way?

James Riley lives in Virginia. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the Half Upon a Time, Story Thieves, Revenge of Magic, and Once Upon Another Time series.

ARYA KHANNA’S BOLLYWOOD MOMENT d’Arushi Avachat

Structured like a Bollywood film (entertaining intermission included!) Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment will make you swoon, laugh, cry, think, nod your head in agreement, and quite possibly: make you get up and dance.

ARYA KHANNA’S BOLLYWOOD MOMENT
by Arushi Avachat
Wednesday Books, January 2024

Shaadi preparations are in full swing, which means lehenga shopping, taste testing, dance rehearsals, and best of all, Arya’s sister, Alina, is home. The Khannas are together again, finally, and Arya wants to enjoy it. So, she stifles her lingering resentment towards Alina, plays mediator during her sister’s fights with their mother, and welcomes her sister’s fiancé with open arms. (Okay, maybe enjoy it is the wrong word.)

Meanwhile, at school, Arya’s senior year dreams are unraveling. In between class and her part-time gig as a bookshop assistant, Arya struggles to navigate the aftermath of a bad breakup between her two best friends and a tense student council partnership with her rival, the obnoxiously attractive Dean Merriweather.

Arya is determined to keep the peace at home and at school, but this shaadi season teaches Arya new realities: Alina won’t always be in the bedroom down the hall, Mamma’s sadness isn’t mendable, friendships must evolve, and life doesn’t always work out like the Bollywood movies Arya loves so dearly. But sometimes, the person you least expect will give you a glimpse of your dream sequence just when you need it most.

Arushi Avachat is a writer from the Bay Area, California. She currently studies English and Political Science at UCLA, where she can be found sipping caramel lattes and pretending to be productive at Kerckhoff Coffee House. She is a contributor to the Young Adult anthology Study Break (Feiwel & Friends, March 2023). Arushi loves dark chocolate, Bollywood dramas, and Jane Austen novels.

ONCE A QUEEN de Sarah Arthur

Do you remember reading fairytales about kings and queens—realms filled with colorful stories of mythical creatures and adventures far from ordinary? Now, imagine if those fairytales were true and your grandmother was once a queen.

ONCE A QUEEN
by Sarah Arthur
WaterBrook, January 2024

Welcome to fourteen-year old Eva Joyce’s world. In 1995, Eva and her mother spend the summer in England with her estranged grandmother. Upon arriving to her grandmother’s mysterious manor, Eva begins to unravel secrets lurking around the gardens and manor – some seemingly connected to the fairytales Eva’s mother use to tell her before bedtime.

She quickly learns she is not the only one who knows the stories of Terival and Mesterra. The groundskeeper and his grandson, Frankie, believe the stories that she thought were only fairytales are real. Eva is skeptical at first, until one night she unexplainably sees a woman and a white stag roaming the foggy gardens just below her bedroom window.

Could the fairytales really be true? Do portals to other worlds exist?

With Frankie’s help, Eva sets out to uncover the truth about her grandmother’s past and the magical realms around them, all while wrestling with the grief of a vanishing childhood—and the fear that growing up means giving up fairy tales forever.

Book 2 coming Spring 2025

Book 3 coming Spring 2026

Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and the author of a dozen books for teens and adults, including the bestselling Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through The Lord of the Rings. She serves as preliminary fiction judge for the CT Book Awards, was a founding board member of the annual C. S. Lewis Festival in Northern Michigan, and codirects the Madeleine L’Engle Writing Retreats.

A BETTER NIGHTMARE de Megan Freeman

A dark and absorbing allegory for the power that young people possess in their bones to change things that feel far bigger than them, A Better Nightmare is a whirlwind adventure — a story of friendship, romance, and a radical crusade for one group of teens to fight for their right to feel.

A BETTER NIGHTMARE
by Megan Freeman
Chicken House/Scholastic, March 2025
(via Northbank Talent Management)

If the entire world believes in a lie, does that make it the truth?

Emily Emerson is nearly sixteen, finally a senior at the Wildsmoor Facility. But so is Meera, isn’t she? Meera, who is nineteen and has been a senior for as long as Emily can remember? Here, the students live each day as shadows, one day blurring into the next, hardly aware of life passing them by while the symptoms of the Grimm Cross Syndrome that afflicts them all is trained out of them. Rules. Order. Repetition. Medication.

Emily was eight when she started showing signs of the disease. Odd dreams, hallucinations – impossible things that happened around her. Unconscious thoughts that could be set free into the world—flowers that covered the house, thick like a forest and sowed with nothing more than her unconscious thoughts. It was beautiful until it turned evil, when Emily did her first bad thing and found herself here. Now, she’ll do anything to get better and get back to her life. She’ll be more quiet and obedient than everyone else.

Until she meets Emir.

Emir isn’t like the other kids at Wildsmoor. He’s quicker and livelier. He says things that he shouldn’t – dangerous things. Emir is electric, magnetic in more ways than Emily can know.

When Emir introduces her to The Cure, a secret society for kids who believe that The Grimm isn’t a disease at all, but a gift, Emily starts to wake up, and so do her strange abilities. The outcome is a dream come true. But sometimes the best dreams and the worst nightmares have the same people in them.

Megan Freeman writes young adult fiction and loves all things magic and mythology. She juggles writing with her day job working for a children’s mental health charity, promoting wellbeing through surf therapy. Megan hails from the far west of Cornwall, and when she’s not working or writing, loves tramping around the moorland and swimming or surfing in the sea.

DETECTIVE DUCK: THE CASE OF THE STRANGE SPLASH de Henry Winkler, Lin Oliver, and Dan Santat

The first book in a smart and funny new chapter book series from bestselling creators Henry Winkler, Lin Oliver, and Dan Santat.

DETECTIVE DUCK: THE CASE OF THE STRANGE SPLASH
(Detective Duck #1)
by Henry Winkler, Lin Oliver, and Dan Santat
Amulet/Abrams, October 2023

Willow Feathers McBeaver, aka Detective Duck, is a crime-solving (and very precocious) little duck. She and her animal pals live on Dogwood Pond, a beautiful pond in New England adjacent to Lazy Days, a human campground. Dogwood Pond has always been a pristine spot with clear water, abundant wildlife, and shady willow trees, but now it is encountering puzzling problems—mysteries that arise from human-caused disruptions in nature, such as water pollution, refuse, warming climate, and human encroachment.

Fortunately, Detective Duck is on the job, solving these puzzling mysteries before they get out of hand and destroy their habitat! Armed with her ever-present satchel for collecting clues, her logical mind, and endless curiosity, she boldly goes where no pond creature has before, determined to unravel the mysteries and solve any environmental problem that besets her beloved Dogwood Pond!

BOOK 2 coming FALL 2024

Henry Winkler is an Emmy Award–winning actor, writer, director, and producer who has created some of the most iconic TV roles, including Arthur “the Fonz” Fonzarelli on Happy Days and Gene Cousineau on Barry.

Lin Oliver is a children’s book writer and a writer and producer for both TV and film. She is currently the executive director of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). They both live in Los Angeles.

Dan Santat is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 100 books for children, including Are We There Yet, After the Fall, and The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, for which he won the Caldecott Medal. He lives in Southern California with his wife, two kids, and many, many pets.