Staff Favorites of 2022

Eleven-year-old injured soccer player Luz has a hard enough time reframing her identity as a computer programmer, but when her Guatemalan half-sister moves in, she learns what it truly means to start over. Includes author's note.

"Anything is possible in the multiverse, including a madcap adventure starring a plucky two-headed chicken. But look out--there's a chicken-hungry moose in pursuit! In this fourth wall-breaking graphic novel, our double-headed hero is chased through dozens of bizarre universes, from an ocean planet with a disturbing mermoose (that you can never unsee) to a world where chickens drive cars, and even to a land covered with . . . pizza sauce? With each...

Eleven-year-old June is determined to beat her anxiety and become the lion she knows she is, instead of the mouse everyone sees, and with the help of Homer Juarez, the poetry-reciting soccer star, she starts a secret library garden and hatches a plan to make her dreams come true.

"Dust Bowl refugee Gloria Mae Willard finds herself uprooted and working on a California peach orchard, where she tries to join the secret, all-boys baseball team that she's desperate to play on"--

"With humor and sympathy, Bob Shea looks at the chaos of life with a baby as amiably narrated by the new arrival. Repeating the mantra (and blithe explanation) "because I am a baby," the tiny narrator leads us through scenes of exhaustion, grumpiness, squishy diapers, spilled milk, cowering kittens, and chubby overfed pups (oopsie!). Playing against the simple, matter-of-fact text are freewheeling illustrations of mess and mayhem, in which the grown-ups'...

"When Mary Kate Murphy joins a special science pilot program focused on climate change, the class opens her eyes to lots of things she never noticed before about her small suburban town- Kids waste tons of food at school without a second thought. Parents leave their cars running in the pick-up lane all the time. People buy lots of clothes they don't really need. Some of her friends who live in the city and are bused to her school don't always feel...

"Bree can't wait for her first day at her new middle school, Enith Brigitha, home to the Mighty Manatees--until she's stuck with the only elective that fits her schedule, the dreaded Swim 101. The thought of swimming makes Bree more than a little queasy, yet she's forced to dive headfirst into one of her greatest fears. Lucky for her, Etta, an elderly occupant of her apartment building and former swim team captain, is willing to help"--

When Dat starts school in a country where he does not speak the language, everything around him sound like gibberish until a new friend helps him make sense of his new world.

Junior may not be as big or strong as his famous cousin Kong, but when his beloved cat gets stuck in a tree, Junior conquers his fear of heights and saves the day.

"A young graffiti artist learns to fight smart against the gentrification threatening her neighborhood"--