Join us to learn about our forthcoming fiction novels from Lerner Publishing Group!
Enly and the Buskin' Blues Hoping to earn money for band camp tuition, twelve-year-old Enly Wu Lewis starts busking. His mission quickly turns into a series of misadventures that change how he sees his family, his dreams, and himself.
Indigo and Ida Indigo, an eighth-grade investigative reporter, is torn between fighting a racist school policy and keeping her friends—until she discovers a series of letters written by Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells.
The Weight of Everything When Sarah's mom dies in an accident, Sarah must balance her new role as the family caretaker with her own needs: to grieve, to create art, and to open herself up to love.
The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Eighteen-year-old Del is in a healthier place more than a year after a suicide attempt, but her aunt's terminal cancer diagnosis forces her to confront the demons she's been keeping at bay.
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Music credits "Farm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
uh so uh on our middle grade list this season we've got Emily and the buskin blues uh by returning author Jenny Liu she's written two ya novels for us 2018's girls on the line and 2020s like spilled water both lovely thoughtful taught quite serious books so I was actually rather surprised when the next manuscript her agent submitted to me was a Whimsical middle grade novel about a boy who's trying to earn enough money for music camp and encounters a series of low to medium Stakes Misadventures along the way turns out Jenny is a uh a wonderful writer of of humor with a real gift for capturing the blend of absurdity and uh poignancy that are often part of a middle grader's life so our hero and Lee is an aspiring musician uh his dad was a musician his dad is dead there's a lot of emotional uh background uh feeding into his his hope of of learning to play music better but the expensive music camps that he wants to go to over the summer is not in his mom's budget so he decides he's going to earn the money himself by busking he's gonna play music out on the sidewalk for tips his town is becoming this trendy tourist attraction so there are a lot of street performers downtown anyway and Emily figures it can't be that hard um complications that arise include but are not limited to the only instrument he can afford is a melodica a pretty obscure and goofy looking instrument that he only sort of knows how to play somebody leaves a winning scratch off lottery ticket in his tip box but as a minor he can't cash it without an adult and then the lottery ticket gets stolen by some older kids and he needs help from some unexpected sources to get it back it's a really delightful story it does address some Hefty themes like income insecurity and inequality gentrification grief but it does so with a very light touch and it's mostly a warm-hearted little Adventure about a kid with a dream uh next on our middle grade list is indigo and Ida by debut author Heather Murphy caps it's about an eighth grader named Indigo who's an aspiring reporter and who happens upon a copy of the autobiography of Ida B Wells who was a pioneering journalist and civil rights activist in the later 1800s and early 1900s inside this book are letters that Ida wrote to an unknown correspondent that give a very personal look into her life and her work and indigo finds this really fascinating especially since Ida was black and indigo is biracial so with this role model in the back of her mind Indigo decides she's going to investigate a school policy that she believes to be unfair and if she looks into it she realizes it's actually worse than she thought the administration is not disciplining all the kids at the school the same way in practice the punishments for black and brown students are much harsher than those are for white students but when Indigo brings attention to this her classmates feel like she's being too aggressive too angry too negative She's accused of being attention seeking or of having an ax to grind with the principal and even her friends think she's either imagining things or blowing things out of proportion so she feels like she's alienating her friends and also nothing she's doing seems to be making a difference anyway but luckily she has Ida to turn to the story is very careful not to turn Ida B Wells into a stereotypical wise magical black woman uh but she was in fact a real person who lived a life of uh incredible courage and integrity and indigo is able to draw strength from the stories in Ida's letters and the battles that Ida fought I think this is a strong debut from a promising new author who also happens to be a former journalist herself uh the autobiography of Ida B Wells is real uh the letters in the book are fictional but are based heavily on Ida's real life on our lab list okay coldest winter I ever spent uh this is by Angie kobus um it's about 18 year old Delilah who goes by Dell who has had a history of depression anxiety substance abuse and a suicide attempt when we meet her she's about a year and a half out from that attempt she's doing much better mental health-wise she's living with her aunt in San Francisco she's on the right medication has a support system and she's volunteering at a local uh suicide Crisis Line uh trying to kind of Pay It Forward by helping other people who are struggling with suicidal ideation so basically she's doing great until her aunt is diagnosed with terminal cancer she and her aunt are super close and Dell is determined that they're gonna fight it they're gonna beat it somehow and her aunt is like well no it's stage four and the treatment hasn't worked so I I'm gonna die um not only that uh but because they're looking at a matter of months at this point and Fran wants to consider what's called death With Dignity which means ending her life on her own terms under medical supervision Dell is not a fan of this plan at all but she still has her own baggage and her own struggles that she's going to have to face for herself before she can really confront what is happening with air Fran this is a book that's very much about the preciousness of Life the fact that every person is irreplaceable uh and also at the same time the fact that death is an inevitable part of life which is something that teens have to face as much as anybody else so if it sounds heavy yeah it is uh but it's also hopeful and it's a hopefulness that feels really earned for this character by the end of the book the author is a mental health Advocate and has been a suicide Crisis Line volunteer herself so she's approached these issues really carefully and sensitively and our other new Y.A novel is the weight of everything by Marcia argeta Nicholson who's also the author of Where I Belong which won a portable prey honor this year this book is not a sequel to where I belong but it's written in much the same Spirit the main character Sarah is a junior in high school and her mom died six months ago her dad has not been coping well he's drinking too much he's totally withdrawing emotionally and she has a little brother who needs looking after so Sarah has dropped out of her fancy Fine Arts boarding school and come home to San Antonio to take care of them which is really overwhelming for a teenager who is also going to public school for the first time in years and is dealing with her own grief um having to having to pay the bills having to get food on the table having to make sure her brother is is safe and where he needs to be at all times it's it's a lot um there are bright spots though uh for one thing she meets a very cute very sweet boy named David uh for another thing she has to do a school project that leads her to do some research on her mother's Guatemalan Heritage Sarah's dad is of what European descent and her mom is of Mexican and Guatemalan descent and she's never really felt especially in touch with or frankly that interested in her mom's family history until now so this is a way for her to feel closer to her mom and it turns into a way for her to get back in touch with herself as an artist and to start thinking about how she can use art as a tool to explore her roots and to express what's important to her and ultimately she has to kind of reclaim for herself her dad does need help but it's his responsibility to get it and she can't be the one to fix everything she needs to be able to be a teenager to go on dates with the boy she likes um and come to terms with the loss that she's suffered without carrying the rest of her family on her back the whole time so this is a really compassionate story and really understated about some of the Big Ideas it's engaging with it sort of hits you a day or two after you've read it just how powerful it is because in the moment you're just along for the ride with Sarah you're rooting for her hoping she and David will get together um and I'd say that this is one of the few live novels that gets an unambiguously happy ending which I think is one of the many charms of Marsha's work