From award-winning creator Sergio Ruzzier, an oddball “squirrel” forges his own path in this comical tale about being yourself.
NO! SAID CUSTARD THE SQUIRREL
by Sergio Ruzzier
Abrams Appleseed, Septembre 2022
Custard the Squirrel, aren’t you a duck?
Will you please quack?
Will you do anything you don’t want to do?
“NO!” said Custard the Squirrel.
From the brilliant mind of author-illustrator Sergio Ruzzier comes this delightfully wacky story about rejecting others’ expectations of who you should be and being unapologetically, authentically you. Simple, universal, and hilarious, this rollicking read-aloud is an ode to free spirits everywhere.
Sergio Ruzzier is a Sendak Fellow who has written and illustrated many critically acclaimed children’s books. Born in Milan, Italy, he now divides his time between Brooklyn and the Apennine Mountains in Italy.
After the dramatic and deadly events of HAVEN’S SECRET, twin sisters Parker and Ellie McFadden are eager to grow their newfound magical abilities and step into their roles as co–protectors of their corner of the world. The Danger is only growing stronger, and Parker and Ellie will need every bit of training and help they can muster. But when Aunt Sadie, their mother’s long-lost sister, shows up on their doorstep, the girls learn more about their lineage and capabilities than they could have ever bargained for—if they can take the enigmatic Sadie at her word. This exciting follow-up to HAVEN’S SECRET is a page-turner from start to finish, raising the stakes for an even more action-packed and heartfelt adventure.
DEMON COPPERHEAD is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. A modern retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, which transposes that epic novel, chapter by chapter, to a modern place and time: the American south.
Fourteen-year-old Brooke Tyler has spent her whole life waiting for a boy to choose her. Matt is about to go to university, scared to leave behind everything he knows. When both are cast as romantic leads in Romeo and Juliet, they fulfil the roles of forbidden lovers both on and off the stage. Brooke is sure that her fairy tale is coming true – and best of all, Matt is older.
Deportation is a system that pervades every aspect of American life, yet remains largely invisible. In popular discourse, it is treated as a discrete event affecting one person at a single time; in fact, the devastating ripple effect of deportation has a closer analogue in the destabilization felt by millions of Black American households when their sons and fathers are swept into our mass incarceration system. The households of deported immigrants, as well as those who live with the daily fear of expulsion, have been grappling with a similar reality on a massive and underrecognized scale.