Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2022 Children’s Books

THE ADVENTURES OF TOLETIS, AMENOPHIS AND FRIENDS de Rafa Ruiz & Elena Hormiga

Translated from Spanish, this is a beautiful story for our times about rewilding and treating our planet with the kindness and care it deserves.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOLETIS, AMENOPHIS AND FRIENDS
by Rafa Ruiz
illustrated by Elena Hormiga
Neem Tree Press, October 2017
(via Randle Editorial & Literary)

The trees and grass are disappearing to make way for a new section of road. Toletis, his dog Amenophis, friends Claudia and Tutan are on a mission to find ingenious ways of replacing them and turning their little valley town, set deep in the mountains, lusciously green again. The odds are stacked against them. Can they succeed… with some very unusual help?

Rafa Ruiz is journalist and author who has a staunch commitment to culture, art and the environment, and the majority of his career has been focused on these three topics. He spent 10 years at Spanish newspaper El Pais and 15 years at their weekly supplement. He has written numerous children’s books and he co-directs the Mad is Mad art gallery in Madrid which gives a space to up-and-coming artists. He is also one of the partner-founders of the Press Association for Environmental Information (APIA).
Elena Hormiga is an illustrator with a sense of humour. Her fun pictures are imbued with irony and metaphor. She studied and worked as an engineer and later turned to illustration. She currently works creating images for stories, articles and posters. She also enjoys writing, cooking and origami.

BOOM BOOM de Jude Idada

Agony and its relief, anxiety and serenity, despair and hope pulsate on the pages and bring into very vivid relief the human capacity to bear pain and overcome it. BOOM BOOM gives Sickle Cell Anaemia immense clarity in an absorbing and engulfing style’ – Judges’ Report, Nigeria Prize for Literature

BOOM BOOM
by Jude Idada
Swift Press, June 2023
(via Randle Editorial & Literary)

Osaik is an eight-year-old boy. He is charming and has an unusual ability to hear things no one else hears. But his world is thrown into disarray when a debilitating disease takes his mother from him. Despite his grief, he has to find a way of saving his little sister, Eghe, from the same disease. Alongside his dad, and Kompa his dog, they begin a race to get her all the help she needs. In this dramatic, fast-paced story of loss, faith, and hope, the limits of love, sacrifice, friendship, loyalty, and family ties are tested as the struggle to save his sister’s life brings Osaik and those around him to a new knowledge of the world they can see, the world they cannot see, and the part of themselves they never knew existed.

Winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature

Jude Idada is an award-winning screenwriter, actor, poet and playwright. BOOM BOOM is the first of his books to be published outside of Nigeria.

LASAGNA MEANS I LOVE YOU de Kate O’Shaughnessy

What are the essential ingredients that make a family? Eleven-year-old Mo is making up her own recipe in this unforgettable story that’s a little sweet, a little sour, and totally delicious.

LASAGNA MEANS I LOVE YOU
by Kate O’Shaughnessy
Knopf BYR, February 2023
(via Park & Fine Literary)

Nan was all the family Mo ever needed. But suddenly she’s gone, and Mo finds herself in foster care after her uncle decides she’s not worth sticking around for.
Nan left her a notebook and advised her to get a hobby, like ferret racing or palm reading. But how could a hobby fix anything in her newly topsy-turvy life?
Then Mo finds a handmade cookbook filled with someone else’s family recipes. Even though Nan never cooked, Mo can’t tear her eyes away. Not so much from the recipes, but the stories attached to them. Though, when she makes herself a pot of soup, it is every bit as comforting as the recipe notes said.
Soon Mo finds herself asking everyone she meets for their family recipes. Teaching herself to make them. Collecting the stories behind them. Building a website to share them. And, okay, secretly hoping that a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.
But when everything starts to unravel again, Mo realizes that if she wants a family recipe—or a real family—she’s going to have to make it up herself.

Kate O’Shaughnessy is a book nerd, animal lover, former chef, and an outdoor enthusiast. When she’s not writing, you can find Kate pottering in her garden, eating good food, hiking with her dog, and chronically mispronouncing words she’s read but never heard said aloud. She lives in California with her family. Kate’s first book was The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane.

LOOKING FOR SMOKE de K.A. Cobell

In her powerful debut novel, author K. A. Cobell (Blackfeet) weaves loss, betrayal, and complex characters into a thriller that will illuminate, surprise, and engage readers until the final word. A must-pick for readers who enjoy books by Angeline Boulley and Karen McManus.

LOOKING FOR SMOKE
by K.A. Cobell
Heartdrum/ HarperCollins, June 2024
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren’s missing sister, Mara thinks she’ll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation.
Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered.
Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them—Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli—have a complicated history with Samantha.
Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.

« A stunning debut, as beautiful as it is bold. Cobell has woven an aching examination of grief in an Indigenous community with a thriller brimming with so many secrets and twists, it’ll leave you breathless. » —Diana Urban, award-winning author of All Your Twisted Secrets

« A gripping debut thriller with dynamic characters who leap off the page and demand to be heard. » — Jessica Goodman, NYT bestselling author of The Counselors and the Legacies 

« Via four alternating POVs informed by the intricacies of reservation life, Cobell highlights the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis and delivers a gut-punch of an ending in this timely debut thriller that is by turns spine-tingling and emotionally raw. » —Publishers Weekly, starred review ★

“… A story that is gritty and tense but also showcases the deep-rooted strength Native American communities have to summon hope in challenging times. » —Booklist

K.A. Cobell, Staa’tssipisstaakii, is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she spends her time writing books, chasing her kids through the never-ending rain, and scouring the inlet beaches for sand dollars and hermit crabs. LOOKING FOR SMOKE is her debut novel.

SPELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT de Kate Williams

The final installment in the hilarious, action-packed Babysitters Coven series that Refinery29 calls « candy for 90’s girls and Gen Z’ers alike, » featuring a coven of witchy babysitters sworn to protect the innocent and defend the world from an onslaught of evil—all before bedtime.

SPELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
(The Babysitters Coven, Book 3)
by Kate Williams
Delacorte Press, Fall 2021
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

Ever since Esme met Cassandra Heaven and discovered the truth about their shared legacy—that they’re Sitters, supernaturally gifted teens tasked with protecting the innocent from evil—her life has been moving at 90 mph. During the day, she chases wild toddlers, and at night, she employs a different skill set for a different kind of demon. Like, literal ones. And sometimes it’s almost fun. Her spells are getting better, her telekinesis is on point, and now that Esme’s dad and her best friend Janis know the truth, she’s no longer lying to the people she loves. She’s also learned that there’s a way to undo her mother’s curse, and with the Synod out of the picture, she might even have a chance to do it.
If she could just figure out how. But she can’t, and even with her mom living at home again, Esme can’t shake the feeling that she’s failing. Throw in the fact that Pig is still gone, Esme’s crush is MIA, and it’s cold, slushy February, and she’s in bummer city.
Esme needs a serious pick-me-up, and Janis has a plan: a Galentine’s stay-cation, with the Sitter friends Esme and Cassandra made at the Summit. Except things are getting weird in Spring River again. Esme and Cassandra just discovered a new band, and not in a good way: these guys reek of Red Magic, and their music sucks. Trouble is brewing, and if Esme’s not careful, this show might be her last—and no one likes a one-hit wonder.

Kate Williams has written for Seventeen, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, Bustle, Vans, Calvin Klein, Urban Outfitters, and many other brands and magazines. She is the author of The Babysitters Coven trilogy: The Babysitters CovenFor Better or Cursed, and Spells Like Teen Spirit. Kate lives in Kansas.