​Nancy Brashear and Carolyn Angus
 
As we finished the weeding of books published in 2023 from our bookshelves to make room for new releases, we became aware of the nonfiction books for older readers we had read but not reviewed that were too good to miss. Here are ten of these books that we would love to see in every middle school and high school library. 

Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. Dashka Slater. (2023). Farrar Straus Giroux.
“Looking back, it’s hard not to wonder how the whole thing could have prevented.” Slater’s first sentence in the prologue sets readers up for contemplating the consequences of their own online activities as they read the true story of the private Instagram account with racist and sexist memes created by a junior at Albany High School in the small town of Albany, California. The nonfiction narrative, presented from multiple perspectives in 15 parts from “Before” to “Making It Through,” chronicles the complexity of effects that the discovery of the social media account in 2017 had on the lives of the girls targeted by the posts and the teenagers who followed them, as well as parents, student body, teachers, administrators, and the community of Albany. More generally, Slater also considers timely issues of accountability and complicity in the internet culture and its effects on the mental health of young people. (note on sourcing, acknowledgments, endnotes) (Gr 9-12) ​

Biology’s Beginnings (Discovering Life’s Story #1). Joy Hakim. (2023). MITeen.
In this first book of her new four-part series, Hakim delves into the history of human discoveries about life science and medicine. Each of the 12 chapters opens with two quotations and features the contributions of key figures from a particular era up to the late 1800s. For example, Chapter 4, “A Philosopher Named Bacon and a Bloody Doctor,” examines the profound effect on the field of life science of two of the “most important thinkers” in Elizabethan England: Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and William Harvey (1578-1657); Chapter 10, “A Big-Time Adventurer and a Quiet Scholar,” considers the collaboration of two German scientists, naturalist and explorer Baron Friedrich von Humboldt (1769-1859) and micropaleontologist Christian Ehrenberg (1795-1876), who explored and gathered specimens in Russia, central Asia, and Siberia in the 19th century when little was known about the microbial world. Hakim’s narrative is complemented by captioned portraits, photographs, diagrams, drawings, and artwork. The second volume of Discovering Life’s Story, The Evolution of an Idea, will be published in April 2024. (further reading, source notes, bibliography, index) (Gr 9-12) 

83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary. Don Brown. (2023). Clarion.
This nonfiction graphic novel war diary opens with a map pinpointing the location of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine and the prologue, “Ukraine, Russia, and the Clatter of History,” setting the scene for a record of the 83-day siege of Mariupol. Brown’s panels of expressive pen-and-ink drawings portray the brave and heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people as well as the horrific death and destruction of the city beginning on February 24 and ending on May 17, 2022, accompanied by spare narrative text, speech bubbles, and primary source quotes. Russia’s invasion of Mariupol, a strategically-located port city on the Sea of Azov, results in 20,000 civilian deaths with 90 percent of the city destroyed. Brown states in the afterword that as of January 2023, Mariupol remains under Russian control. “Cold weather looms. Bombs, rockets, and explosive drones fall across Ukraine. Mariupol awaits liberation. Death is common currency. Peace seems far off.” (source notes, selected bibliography) (Gr 6 Up) 

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam. Thien Pham. (2023). First Second.
Food memories play an important role in Vietnamese American Thien Pham’s graphic memoir. Each of the eight chapters is titled with the name of a dish associated with his family’s experiences as immigrants. He begins with his memory of being a five-year-old child fleeing war-ravaged Vietnam with his family in a small over-crowded boat and eating a rice and fish ball he clutched in his hand during an attack by pirates. The family survives in a refugee camp in Thailand where his mother cooks and sells bánh cuốn while they wait for relocation to the United States where their first American meal upon arrival in San Jose, California, was steak and potatoes. In other chapters, Thien Pham recalls discovering the American food he liked (strawberries and potato chips) or disliked (Salisbury steak in the school cafeteria), until in the final chapter, at the age of 41, he celebrates his new American citizenship by eating a fish and rice dish with his family. (photographs, endnotes) (Gr 6 Up) 

​Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge. Deidre Havrelock & Edward Kay. Illus. by Kalila Fuller. (2023). Christy Octaviano.
For millennia, Indigenous peoples across North America have made important contributions in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and other areas. In an introductory note, Havrelock and Kay share their vision of Indigenous Ingenuity to celebrate traditional North American Indigenous innovation and “to embrace the mindset of reciprocity, responsibility, and relationship.” A conversational text complemented by illustrations, charts, maps, photographs, sidebars, and activities introduces readers to chapters on sustainable land management and ecology; transportation; communications technology; agriculture and food technology; health sciences; textile technology, clothing, and fashion; architecture and civil engineering; hunting and combat technology; mathematics; arts, sports, and recreation; and traditional ecological knowledge for a sustainable future. In the epilogue, the authors end with the thought that the Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge celebrated throughout the book are not only a part of Indigenous history but North American history also. (map of Indigenous peoples’ cultural areas across the continent, cultural areas and peoples referenced, glossary, contemporary Indigenous science organizations, selected bibliography, source notes, index) (Gr 6-8) 

​Mission: Arctic: A Scientific Adventure to a Changing North Pole. Katharina Weiss-Tuider. Trans. by Shelley Tanaka. Illus. by Christian Schneider. (2023). Greystone Kids.
Weiss-Tuider takes readers on the largest expedition ever made to the Arctic, which polar and atmospheric scientist Markus Rex, the expedition leader, calls “the epicenter of climate change” in the foreword, “Frozen in the Ice.” The 2019 MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition aboard the Polarstern, a German icebreaker research vessel, took scientists from all over the world on a 13-month mission that began in September which involved a plan to let the vessel freeze in the sea ice and drift across the Arctic Ocean towards the North Pole to study changes in the Arctic climate system. This well-designed book is organized in three parts: “The Biggest Arctic of All Time,” “Climate Research on the Ice,” and “Our Arctic, Our Future.” Each part includes a series of double spreads packed with an informative text, maps, photographs, labeled drawings, logbook notes, and other insets. (glossary, acknowledgments, photo credits, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

Plague-Busters!: Medicine’s Battles with History’s Deadliest Diseases. Lindsey Fitzharris & Adrian Teal. Illus. by Adrian Teal. (2023). Bloomsbury.
Plague-Busters! is an engrossing (and at times, gross) history of the conquering of six of the world’s deadliest diseases: bubonic plague, smallpox, rabies, tuberculosis, cholera, and scurvy. Fitzharris and Teal share stories of the symptoms, theories on causes, treatments, and medical breakthroughs of these diseases with a dose of witty humor in the text and Teal’s cartoons and caricatures, done in black and white with touches of red. Each entry includes a “Bills of Mortality” section. For example, famous deaths from tuberculosis include 1553: Edward VI, King of England; 1642: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu; 1817: Jane Austen, English author; 1845: President Andrew Jackson; and 1962: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In the afterword, the authors remind readers that new medical discoveries are often built on ideas that have come before and ask: “What will future generations think of us today?” (acknowledgments, selected sources, further reading, index) (Gr 6 Up) 

Shipwrecked!: Diving for Hidden Time Capsules on the Ocean Floor. Martin W. Sandler. (2023). Astra.
Sandler’s engaging narratives of seven historical shipwrecks are accompanied by captioned photographs, maps, archival images, and insets with related information. Each entry expands readers’ knowledge in specific areas of content. For example, the first chapter chronicles the underwater excavations at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck in the first century, which was discovered in 1900 by sponge divers in the channel between the Greek islands of Antikythera and Crete, and is recognized as the “cradle of underwater archaeology.” Among the artifacts collected in what was essentially a salvage operation of ancient Greek works of art was a mysterious device that became known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first computer. In a final chapter, Sandler describes nine additional shipwrecks, including the naval warship USS Monitor, which sank in stormy waters off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on December 31, 1862, that readers might want to explore further. (source notes, select bibliography, image credits) (Gr 6 Up) 

Wangari Speaks Out (Speak Out #3). Wangari Maathai. Commentary by Laia de Ahumada. Trans. by Susan Ouriou. Illus. by Vanina Starkoff. (2023). Groundwood.  
“Sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible.” Wangari Speaks Out presents the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of environmental, social, and political activist Wangari Maathai (1940-2011), the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the prize, in an inviting format with pulled quotes printed in orange in a large font size and a stunning stylized illustration in orange, black, and brown on each double-page spread. Having grown up witnessing Kenyan forests being cleared and replaced by commercial plantations, Wangari was inspired to start the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which began with women planting trees in rural Africa and grew into an environmental and political battle. Since then, the movement has planted over fifty million trees in Kenya to improve the environment and people’s lives. In the second half of the book, de Ahumada provides commentary on key points of Wangari Maathai’s Nobel speech. (source notes) (Gr 6 Up) 

​Nancy Brashear and Carolyn Angus
 
As reviewers, we weed our bookshelves each January to make room for new releases. As book lovers, we add some books to our personal collections and put some aside for grandchildren and special friends. As advocates of reading, we will send the others to schools and libraries, but before we do, here is our list of books published in 2023 that are too good to miss—books we would love to see in the hands of all children and teachers.

​Apart, Together: A Book About Transformation. Linda Booth Sweeney. Illus. by Ariel Rutland. (2023). Balzer + Bray.
Together, Sweeney’s lyrical text and Rutland’s bold, colorful double-spread illustrations present a child-friendly introduction to how separate things can become something new when they come together. Apart, Together begins with simple pairings. For example, “APART, blue is blue and / yellow is yellow, but . . . // TOGETHER, they make green!” The transformations then become more complicated and metaphorical. For example, at soccer practice, “APART, players kick a ball . . . // TOGETHER they score!” (PreS Up) 

​The Bear and the Wildcat. Kazumi Yumoto. Illus. by Komako Sakai. (2023). Gecko. “One morning, Bear was crying. His best friend, a little bird, was dead.” This beautifully crafted picture book tells the story of Bear’s inconsolable grief until he meets a wildcat who understands his loss and helps him remember the special times he shared with the little bird. The wildcat, a traveling violinist, offers him friendship and a hopeful path of recovery with the gift of a tambourine and an invitation to join him in traveling as the Bear and Wildcat Band. (PreK Up) 

​The Bone Wars: The True Story of the Epic Battle to Find Dinosaur Fossils. Jane Kurtz. Illus. by Alexander Vidal. (2023). Beach Lane.
Meeting in 1863, paleontologists O. C. Marsh (1831-1899) and Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897) became friends and collaborators until Marsh pointed out a mistake Cope made in attaching the skull to the tail of a dinosaur he named Elasmosaurus. “And that’s when . . . the Bone Wars began,” the bitter competition between the two fossil hunters to make the next big discovery. (author’s note, illustrator’s note, selected sources, suggested reading) (PrekUp) 

​Champion Chompers, Super Stinkers and Other Poems by Extraordinary Animals. Linda Ashman. Illus. by Aparna Varma. (2023). Kids Can.
A call for animal contestants becomes a guessing game to identify who takes first place. Each recto page features a mask poem and a part of the animal’s body. A page turn reveals the name, a portrait, and a paragraph of facts about the winner. Among the 18 winning contestants are peregrine falcon for fastest flyer, North American beaver for best engineer, and Etruscan shrew for smallest mammal. (protecting endangered animals, about measurements, about mask poems, recommended reading, glossary) (PreK Up) 

​Creep, Leap, Crunch!: A Food Chain Story. Jody Jensen Shaeffer. Illus. by Christopher Silas Neal. (2023). Knopf.
In this cumulative story, grass is nibbled by a cricket that is eaten by a brown deer mouse and so on up a simple food chain of consumers: a red milk snake, red hawk, red fox, and black bear. But some days, each animal alludes its predator, and the story ends with the bear munching “flowers and seeds … / …all that she needs,” and they all live to forage another day. (illustrated glossary) (PreK-Gr 2) 

​Evergreen. Matthew Cordell. (2023). Feiwel and Friends.
Evergreen, a young squirrel who lacks courage, must conquer her fears when she must journey alone through Buckthorn Forest to deliver an empty acorn full of her mother’s healing soup to sick Granny Oak. Along the way, Evergreen hears strange noises, makes some friends, eludes some enemies, and almost loses the soup several times before delivering it safely to Granny Oak. Cordell’s animal fantasy with a lively text and detailed, ink-and-watercolor illustrations, organized in six parts during which Evergreen’s I-can-do-it confidence grows, has a surprise ending. (PreK Up) 

​Friend of Numbers: The Life of Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Priya Narayanan. Illus. by Satwik Gade. (2023). Eerdmans.
Growing up in southern India, Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan (1887-1920) was observant, full of questions, and fascinated with numbers. “They made patterns only he could see.” Traveling to England in 1914 to study mathematics under Professor Godfrey Hardy at Cambridge University, Ramanujan continued to discover more and more complex numerical patterns and gained worldwide recognition as a mathematical genius. (author’s note, patterns in numbers, sample problems, glossary) (PreK Up) 

Friends Beyond Measure: A Story Told with Infographics. Lalena Fisher. (2023). Harper.
Narrator Ana tells about becoming best friends with Harwin on the first day they meet and doing everything together—until Harwin reveals that her family is moving far away, and they must make plans for how to remain best friends forever. Young readers will delight in poring over the charts, diagrams, pictograms, maps, and other infographics in Fisher’s humorously detailed cartoon-like illustrations. (glossary of infographics with activities) (PreK Up)

​Hippos Remain Calm. Sandra Boynton. (2023) Boynton Bookworks.
“Two fine hippos, / cozy at home, // take turns reciting / a morning-time poem” from The Big Book of Hippoetry. They calmly face some surprises during the day including a visit with one lonely friend that turns into a night of partying with a herd of hippos before they head home at dawn to snooze all morning long. For a fun read-aloud session, pair this rhyming picture book with Boynton’s first book, Hippos Go Berserk! (1977). (PreS Up) 

​My Head Has a Bellyache: And More Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups (Mischievous Nonsense #2). Chris Harris. Illus. by Andrea Tsurumi. (2023). Little, Brown.
From front cover to back cover, this companion to I’m Just Not Good at Rhyming (2017) is chock full of nonsense including silly rhymes, concrete poems, haiku, limericks, fractured fables, and other forms of creative wordplay. Harris’s energetic, snarky, and clever words spill across page after page with occasional hilarious footnotes, accompanied by Tsurumi’s cartoon-like illustrations, for a laugh-until-your-belly-hurts reading experience for all. (glossary, indices by title and subject) (PreK Up) 

​My Incredible India. Jasbinder Bilan. Illus. by Nina Chakrabarti. (2023). Candlewick.
When she visits Nanijee (her grandmother), Thara takes one memento from an old trunk and hears a story of Nanijee’s travels all over India.  Each entry in My Incredible India features a boxed section about the special object from the trunk (for example, a small metal tuk-tuk or a model of the Taj Mahal), where it came from, brief paragraphs of related facts, and numerous colorful illustrations with captions. (time line, biographical note on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Indian flag, index, resources) (Gr 3-5) 

​Penny & Pip. Candace Fleming. Illus. by Eric Rohmann. (2023). Caitlyn Dlouhy.
On a class visit to the natural history museum, Penny sees a baby dinosaur hatching from an egg in a corner of a dinosaur exhibit, and the dinosaur sees Penny and follows her around the museum. In the lunchroom, he eats some of her cheese crackers, burps, and squeaks “Pip, pip.” In the Dinosaur Hall full of ancient skeletons, Penny realizes Pip is all alone and devises a clever plan to take him home with her and “into the future . . . together.” (PreK-Gr 2) 

​Robot, Unicorn, Queen: Poems for You and Me. Shannon Bramer. Illus. by Irene Luxbacher. (2023). Groundwood.
Bramer’s new poetry collection, a companion to Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children (2019), explores various childhood experiences. Some of the 22 poems are playful and silly while others delve into thoughts and feelings from a child’s point of view.  Luxbacher embellishes each poem with a stunning illustration created with watercolor, gouache, pencil, found paper, and digital collage. (author’s note) (PreK Up) 

​A Spider Named Itsy. Steve Light. (2023). Candlewick.
With a spare, rhythmic text and playful ink-and-watercolor illustrations, Light elaborates on “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” nursery rhyme. On the fateful day after a tree limb fell and destroyed his web on a watering can, Itsy sets out to construct a new web under the gutter of a house and meets some other insects ascending the crooked waterspout. A heavy rain washes them back down but after the sun comes out, they all climb the spout again, and the story ends with “New web home, newfound friends.” (PreS Up) 

​The Stars and Other Stories (Bear & Bird #2). Jarvis. (2023). Candlewick.
In four short stories, unlikely best friends Bear and Bird quarrel over something silly and decide to get new best friends, have a surprise go awry, nearly lose each other, and discover that looking up at the stars with your “bestest” of friends is perfect. Jarvis’s crayon-like illustrations featuring these two charming characters add warmth and humor to the stories in this series for newly independent readers about the ups and downs of an enduring friendship. (PreK-Gr 2) 

​Stone Age Beasts. Ben Lerwill. Illus. by Grahame Baker-Smith. (2023). Candlewick.  
Following an introduction to the Stone Age, which started nearly three million years ago, Lerwill and Baker-Smith provide profiles of the wooly mammoth, elephant bird, Steller’s sea cow, and 15 other majestic animals that lived alongside humans then. Each double-spread entry includes a spectacular portrait and introductory paragraphs written in a conversational tone, smaller text boxes of other interesting facts, and a side bar with scientific name, weight, date of extinction, range (with map), and a comparison of its size to that of an adult human. (glossary) (Gr 3 Up) 

​The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (Deluxe Anniversary Edition). Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by Timothy Basil Ering. (2023). Candlewick.
This 20th anniversary edition of The Tale of Despereaux includes a new short story, “The Tapestry at Norendy,” the perfect link between DiCamillo’s Newbery Medal-winning fanciful, adventurous tale about a heroic small mouse named Despereaux Tilling and The Norendy Tales, her new series of original fairy tales. The first book in the planned trilogy, The Puppets of Spelhhorst, was published in 2023; book two, The Hotel Balzaar, will be published in October 2024. (Gr 3-5)

​Too Small Tola Gets Tough (Too Small Tola #3). Atinuke. Illus. by Onyinye Iwu. (2023). Chronicle.  
Too Small Tola, who lives with Grandmommy and her older siblings, Moji and Dapo, in “a run-down block of apartments in the megacity of Lagos, in the country of Nigeria,” is worried when even her beloved megacity cannot fight off the deadly virus plaguing the world and goes into lockdown. In three episodic stories, Tola proves that she is small but mighty, as well as clever and resourceful, when she takes on her family’s economic challenges of surviving the pandemic. (PreK Up) 

​We Are Human Animals. Rosie Haine. (2023). Eerdmans.
With a spare text and stunning double-spread illustrations, Haine introduces young readers to a family of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gathers living in what is now France about 25,000 years ago when planet Earth was very different. This accessible story of our Stone Age ancestors ends on a thought-provoking note: “This was tens of thousands of years ago, // The world is very different now, but . . . // We are still human animals.” (author’s note) (PreK Up) 

​What Rosa Brought. Jacob Sager Weinstein. Illus. by Eliza Wheeler. (2023). Katherine Tegen.
Young Rosa lived in Vienna, being cared for by Grandma, while her parents worked in the family’s grocery store. “Then the Nazis, came, and things changed.” With rising anti-Semitism making life dangerous for Jews and new rules that prohibit them from owning stores making survival difficult, the family eventually obtains three visas to America. Rosa wonders what she will bring with her, until Grandma, who will not be going, says Rosa will be taking her love with her. “And that’s what Rosa brought.” (authors note, photographs)  (PreK Up)