10 to Note: Spring Preview 2024

It’s unfair. Straight-up unfair. Unfair to try to pick just 10 books to highlight that are coming out this spring. There are so many great-looking books.

So I’m going to pick just 10 books arriving in March, April, and May, because that’s what I do here. But just know that there are a whole lot more good ones than I could fit in this post.

Interested in owning the books below? I created a list of all the books mentioned in this post in Bookshop – an online shop that supports brick-and-mortar independent bookstores. I apparently might get a few cents as well, but that’s not why I’m doing it – I just figured it might be helpful to share a good place to purchase them.

Picture Books

Spider in the Well by Jess Hannigan

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins) | March 19 | Grades K-3

This book is like a checklist of things I love: Bold artwork? Check. Dry humor? Check. Clever storytelling? Yep. This wishing-well story gone awry is Jess Hannigan’s debut picture book. Consider me first in line to read it with kids.

The Truth About the Couch by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Liniers

 G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House) | April 23 | Grades K-3

I love books that go “Hey, kids, you think you know about (blank), but here’s the real story.” Kids love those kinds of books too. This one, about the secret life of couches, is written by the – yes, I’m just going to go ahead and say it – humor master Adam Rubin (Dragons Love Tacos), and is illustrated by the fantastic, Lio Messi-loving Argentinian cartoonist Liniers. Sooo . . . I’m in.

Early Reader

Orris & Timble: The Beginning by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Carmen Mok

Candlewick Press | April 30 | Grades 1-3

Forget The Singularity, I’m more interested in the DiCamillo-arity. That’s the point where Kate DiCamillo releases so many great books in so many different formats (middle grade fiction, picture book, chapter book, early reader, etc.) that there will be no need for any other books. Every other author will hang it up and Kate DiCamillo with be Earth’s lone author. Actually, that might be pretty great.

Anyway! With Orris & Timble, DiCamillo returns to the early reader-ish realm for the first time since Bink & Gollie. Expect another wonderfully unlikely friendship, beautifully told.

Chapter Book

Bunny and Clyde by Megan McDonald, illustrated by Scott Nash

Candlewick Press | March 12 | Grades 1-2

If you have the main characters stealing toilet paper on the cover of a book, you’re going to get some kids intrigued. When the book is written by Judy Moody creator Megan McDonald, you’re going to get this school librarian intrigued. The fact that it is heavily illustrated by Scott Nash is icing on the cake.

Middle Grade

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All  by Chanel Miller

Philomel Books (Penguin Random House) | April 23 | Grades 2-6

How’s this for a great premise: Magnolia Wu’s family owns a laundromat, and it’s her mission to return each and every lost sock to it’s owner. Magnolia and a friend hit the pavement to make things right, one sock at a time. This illustrated novel can’t arrive soon enough.

Three Summers: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Summer Crushes, and Growing Up on the Eve of War by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess with Laura L. Sullivan

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Macmillan) | April 9 | Grades 4 and Up

The author tells the story of three summers spent with five cousins in the years leading up to the Bosnian War. Not an event or time period you see much of in children’s books. I’m wondering if this would appeal to The War That Saved My Life or Allan Gratz fans.

Nonfiction

Erno Rubik and His Magic Cube by Kerry Aradhya, illustrated by Kara Kramer

Peachtree | May 14 | Grades 1-4

Look, I’m a sucker for a great consumer product backstory. Your Whoosh. Your Marvelous Thing That Came From a Spring. Hey, I really want to see that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos movie. So yes, this book is interesting to be because it’s about a consumer product (the Rubik’s Cube). But it’s doubly interesting to me because it’s about a consumer product that has confounded me my entire life. Was I the kind of kid who pulled off the Rubik’s cube stickers and rearranged them so I could “solve” the puzzle? Yes! The Rubik’s is a mystery to me, and I bet this nonfiction book will at least allow me to understand it a bit better.

Graphic Novels

Timid by Jonathan Todd

Graphix (Scholastic) | April 2 | Grades 3-7

It will probably shock you to know that I’m a pretty shy person. Yes, a shy librarian – super weird, right??? Sarcasm aside, it’s true. This semiautobiographical graphic novel about a kid trying to find his voice in a new school looks to speak to my shy kid heart.

Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol

First Second | May 7 | Grades 4-8

I’ve already talked about this book on The Yarn podcast, but I’m sharing it here as well because I firmly believe if you are truly excited about something, you say it both audibly and textually. Just something I believe. So let me write words now about how Vera Brosgol made one of my favorite graphic novels of the last decade (Be Prepared) and is now back with this fairy tale flip. I can’t wait to read it.

YA

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Candlewick Press | March 19 | Grades 5 and Up

Whenever I want to dip a toe into the YA realm, I turn into Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (“Your world frightens and confuses me.”), but there’s no way I’m not going to talk about Louder Than Hunger by John Schu. It’s a harrowing fictionalized memoir-in-verse about anorexia, OCD, and finding a way to a better place. I cried reading this heartbreaking book that ends on a note of hope. Louder Than Hunger will change and save lives.

Filed under: Previews