Clad in a street-cool outfit (blue sweatpants, black T-shirt beneath a sleeveless undershirt, and a plaid shirt knotted at the waist), a golden retriever–ish pooch struts confidently center stage, demonstrating a series of dance moves. A white dog with floppy ears and tan spots, wearing leggings and shorts, waits in the wings gazing admiringly. Perfectly […]
The self-declared “worst” kid in his gifted circle of friends—the one with seemingly no talent for anything except getting into trouble—has spent his final year at Jerome Marco K-8 collecting disaster stories with his Team Bomb Shelter crew: martial arts cousin Adam, science whiz Rover, statistics prodigy Sean, wheelchair-using brainy beauty Helen, bighearted athlete Charlie, […]
“This was the first photograph I ever saw of Susie. It hung in the bedroom of her little flat in Maida Vale in London, and I fell in love with it. Of course, I also fell in love with Susie herself, and thirty years later we are still as devoted to each other as two […]
When Anna Kamoria was attending her North Carolina high school, she also trained in sword fighting and martial arts with her mother Adelyna’s “handsome, stoic” friend Derrick, and she felt different from her classmates “in a way that made it hard to relate to others.” One night, her mother was murdered by unknown assailants and […]
Julie wakes one morning to the “BANG / CRASH / BOOOOM” of the Chinese opera “thundering from the TV” while Poh Poh practices her sword dancing. Julie has so many questions. Over egg tarts in Chinatown, Poh Poh spins stories of growing up in China, where Cantonese opera performers frequented her father’s tea house. When […]
Sixteen-year-old Nópika “Nokes” Lasley is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and aspires to play hockey in the Olympics. Her mother, who died when Nokes was 5, was “a mix of Native American and First Nations descent,” but her white father has raised her apart from her mother’s relatives, insisting that she embrace whiteness. When her […]
Poet Aptowicz turns to the history of her native Pennsylvania with the story of William Parker, enslaved in neighboring Maryland. After having been forced to fight other enslaved men in bare-knuckle contests, a teenage William came to blows with his own enslaver. He fled, making his way to a little Quaker community across the state […]
It’s 1926, and China is in a precarious state, with Chiang Kai-shek fighting various warlords for the future of the country. The setting, Hankow, sits at the junction of the Yangtze and Han Rivers: It’s a vibrant mix of American, British, Japanese, and of course Chinese people. Young Marine 2nd Lt. Jack Gaines is part […]
A narrating chameleon who has quite a high opinion of himself doesn’t appreciate his camouflage capability: “I am a KING! But how can I command a king’s respect…when color-changing skin makes me so tricky to detect?!” The chameleon proceeds to regale readers with a series of springy rhymes that offer hints about his location in […]
Ten-year-old Kabir doesn’t fit the boxes everyone else does; he draws crayon monsters in his science textbook and keeps a list of things he’s not allowed to make up that includes imaginary friends, voices of aliens who live on the roof, and shadows. After a fight and a public rebuff from a popular older boy, […]