So you think you know the story about the little girl in a red cape who visits her grandmother? Well, you haven’t met this Little Red (Peachtree, $16.95)! Bethan Woollvin presents a plucky girl who is not afraid of the wolf she meets on her journey to Grandma’s house, not even when she finds him badly disguised in Grandma’s bed. Astute children will recognize the sly humor in this cunning retelling. The repeated reminder that this girl is different is enhanced by illustrations with bold lines in black and gray on white pages punctuated, of course, by equally bold and brash red. Ages 3-6.
The past is never really gone, although it may be hidden— especially from young people. When Déja Barnes begins the fifth grade in her new Brooklyn school, she begins a journey of discovery and friendship. Déja’s authentic voice reveals how she and her family became homeless, and how she is only now learning of the tangible impact of 9/11 on her family, as she slowly accepts the friendships of classmates who have very different backgrounds. Jewell Parker Rhodes brings a difficult history and its continued influence into focus in Towers Falling (Little Brown, $16.99), an important journey for young people who were not yet born in 2001. Ages 9-12.
Imaginative Soledad (Sol) and her younger sister Dominga (Ming) live with their stepmother, Vea, after the girls’ father returns to the Philippines from their new home in the United States. Sol says they live with a woman who “always talks in thorns.” Storytelling prowess helps Sol deal with the brutal heat of a Louisiana summer, a hardscrabble life, and Vea’s harshness. Friendship and a growing recognition that things— and people— are often more complex than they appear allow Sol to mature and ultimately help her younger sister. In a straightforward, often lyrical narration, Erin Entrada Kelly introduces readers to The Land of Forgotten Girls (Greenwillow, $16.99) in this touching coming-of-age story. Ages 10-13.
