On this round-up list, we celebrate family love and science!
Let’s start with picture books:
How to Reach the Moon by Nicolás Schuff (Author), Ana Sender (Illustrator), Lawrence Schimel (Translator)
I am so glad to be able to showcase books in translation in this space. The original Spanish edition: Cómo llegar a la luna, of How To Reach the Moon, was a 2022 New York Public Library Best Book in Spanish.
It is easy to see why: the great friendship between Emilio and Abuelo (grandpa) is such a joy, and their mutual understanding can help them even reach the moon itself.
Emilio enjoys his vacation in the forest at his abuelo’s house. They dine outside by the light of a lantern every night, and tell stories.
On a clear full moon night, Abuelo suggests they meet her. But how? How is it to travel across the forest, looking at night creatures, and where does the journey end?
A loving tribute to adventures and nighttime outside screens, the ending will make you want to reach the moon, as grandfather and grandson did.
Nicolás Schuff is an Argentinian author of numerous picture books for children. He has worked as a librarian, led literature workshops for schoolchildren, and runs the podcast El pájaro fantasma (The Ghost Bird).
Follow him on Instagram at @pajarofantasma.
How to Reach the Moon is on sale since April 15, 2025.
Publisher: Amazon Crossing Kids
Pages: 40/ Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9781662522963
Up next, the next three books are about father-son loving relationships:
Riding Through Rice Fields. A Trip to the Philippines by Michelle Sterling (Author), Bianca Austria (Illustrator)
Mateo and his dad have lonely lives in the city. Always the dull sameness, and little to talk about at dinner time. However, their arrival in the Philippines will be a turning point: lots of family and the wish of Mateo’s father to visit the village of his birth by bicycle, in an altogether different kind of adventure!
By catching fish, hunting for coconuts and getting lost, and having to sleep under the stars, their trip is something Mateo will never forget. He will always remember fondly when looking at rice fields.
Learning about bayanihan—people in the community coming together to help someone in need- is something they will also bring back to their lives in the city: A better community, a stronger bond, and the thirst for adventure in both of their eyes.
Riding Through Rice Fields is on sale since March 04, 2025.
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Pages: 32/ Hardback
ISBN: 9780593623077
Night Light by Michael Emberley (Author)
I distinctly remember reading and loving an Argentinian version of Bradbury’s Switch on the night when I was little. In this story, a girl made of night teaches a kid (who is afraid of the dark) to love darkness, because only in darkness can one see the stars.
In this comic book for young readers, the loving father wants to appease his son’s fear of a blackout (as we are never truly in the dark these days), by gathering stars for his room. Real stars!
However, the moon is crying, all lonely and dark in the sky without her friends, so the kid decides to give the stars back, and chooses instead to go to sleep under them on the rooftop, together with his dad.
The drawings are warm and fuzzy, and the layout really can be read almost without words, something comics for early readers are truly fantastic at.
Night Light is on sale since April 15, 2025.
Published by Holiday House
Hardback | Pages: 40
ISBN: 9780823458165
Brave by Weshoyot Alvitre (Author)
In Bolivia, long black hair has become a bit of a statement in young indigenous populations. Warriors had long hair. This is also true for Native Americans, as a father proudly tells his kid, who is having a hard time at school because of it.
Dad brushes the knots from his son’s long hair and braids it. His braid might earn him a tease at school, but carries in itself a defiant history. His dad and granddad were forced to cut it down, even though it represents virility and bravery (or maybe because of it).
This is a book about honoring tradition and facing others who see you as different.
Brave is on sale since April 15, 2025.
Published by Kokila
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9780593531600
Up next, this silly story about a tantrum:
It Started with a P by Brittany Pomales (Author), Andrew Joyner (Illustrator)
The pampered King Liam has a very bad temper. When he is having a tantrum, everybody tries to Please him. And he feels an epic tantrum coming, regarding his birthday.
In a nightmare, he feels that something will ruin it, and will start with a P, so he bans everything starting with that Particular letter: pepperoni pizza, piñatas, pants, parrots; you get the idea.
But… people also start with a P (and Party…) when he sends away all of the people, he finds himself, left alone. On his birthday. What was the Problem?
It Started with a P is on sale since April 08, 2025.
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9780593690833
Up next, this loving poem deserves to be read or sung aloud:
Black Boy, Rise by Brynne Barnes (Author), Bryan Collier (Illustrator)
As a poem that starts slow and grows into a crescendo to burst into what feels like a joyful song, it is very difficult to tell you that there is a plot in it. This is a song, not a plot; this is a poem, not a story, and should be approached and appreciated as such.
Meant to be read aloud, sharing it with an audience, this is a picture book to cherish.
Both the words and the watercolors are beautiful, vibrant, and resonating, a song of love for black boys everywhere.
Black Boy, Rise is available since April 01, 2025.
Publisher: Chronicle Books
48 Pages/ Hardback
EAN/UPC 9781797200736
Now, let’s see some bold illustrations:
Pilgrim Codex by Vivian Mansour (Author), Emmanuel Valtierra (Illustrator)
This unique picture book is illustrated under the influence of the marvelous Mesoamerican Codex, its mythology and symbolism.
Here, the Vargas Ramírez family explains, through powerful imagery, their journey towards the North. A route many have bravely taken, sometimes never to reach their destination.
They start in a place north of Tenochtitlan called Iztapalapa, Land of Clay Upon Water. Heading north, for another life, a better one, friends, kids, mothers, and sons start their journey and find adverse places, such as Land of the Frogs or The Place Where Feet Cry and, of course, The River Where the Waters Tangle. Not everybody will make it.
If you believe that, because for three generationsyou have been in the same place, that you belong to one location, you are very much mistaken. People travel, people marry, and they will always be on the lookout for a better chance, a better place.
Pilgrim Codex is available since February 11, 2025.
Publisher: Levine Querido
Hardback| Pages: 40
ISBN: 9781338897326
Now for two non-fiction books that are told in a fictional way:
My Presentation Today Is about the Anaconda by Bibi Dumon Tak (Author), Annemarie Van Haeringen (Illustrator), Nancy Forest-Flier (Translator)
This is a book I would have read in an afternoon, forgetting about snacks, or TV, or play time, from cover to cover, and I might even have started all over again once it was finished.
The premise is marvelous:
“Hello, I’m the earthworm, and today I’m giving my talk about the anaconda.”
Why read another book about animals made by humans? Those are repetitive and boring! What about animals doing their homework and bringing their presentation about other animals to class? Now that’s entertaining.
The cleaner fish will talk about his friend, the shark, and his sharp teeth. The zebra will get to tell you about all the black-and-white animals in the world. The mole knows everything there is to know about the daddy longlegs. The southern cassowary and the fox, the birds that can sing and the ones that can’t, how to pronounce larynx, and other fun and weird facts occupy twenty presentations from another twenty animals. They are plain hilarious but also scientifically accurate.
Annemarie van Haeringen portrays some of them in a loose, colorful style that complements the book.
Bibi Dumon Tak writes nonfiction, or as she calls it, the truth in stories. Most of those stories are about animals. And all those stories are true. They are about cows that have escaped from slaughter; about animals that help people in times of war; about birds, arctic animals, uncuddly animals, cloven-hoofed animals, city animals. She has no preferences. As long as it can crawl, fly, swim, or run; as long as it has fur, scales, spines, or feathers. As long as they aren’t people. Dumon Tak has won the Gouden Griffel, the highest honor for children’s books in the Netherlands, as well as the Theo Thijssen Prize, the highest honor for authors. Two books of hers, Soldier Bear and Mikis and the Donkey, have won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award.
My Presentation Today Is about the Anaconda is available since February 04, 2025
Publisher: Levine Querido
Hardback| Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781646145102
Now for three graphic novels:
The Big Tournament: Book 1 (Magda, Intergalactic Chef) by Nicolas Wouters (Author), Mathilde Van Gheluwe (Illustrator)
Azuki is a tiny moon with incredible plant life. Magda lives there with her grandparents, and the twelve-year-old wants to participate in the Intergalactic Cooking Tournament.
Kids from all over the galaxy will gather to showcase their planets’ delicacies. The price is the Nector, a resource that can help save dying planets.
Of course, there is a conspiracy, a plot to steal the coveted prize and control de galaxy! Can Magda stop it?
The Big Tournament: Book 1 has been available since April 1st, 2025.
Publisher: Graphic Universe ™
Publication date: April 1, 2025
Pages 160
ISBN-13: 979-8765643228
Up next, this scientific graphic novel follows a Bifidobacteria as it travels through one human body to another:
Follow Your Gut. A Story from the Microbes That Make You by Ailsa Wild (Author), Lisa Stinson (With), Ben Hutchings (Illustrator,) Briony Barr (Created by,) Gregory Crocetti
This is a scientific take on the biology behind the bacteria that colonize our gut.
We are, after all, filled with beneficial strains of different bacteria. This particular Bifidobacterium, Biffy for short, is forced to travel and leave the gut it has always known to help another place to thrive, the gut of a tiny human (a newborn).
The first three years of the life of this baby will have strange effects on Biffy, as the human microbe symbiosis is vital for our gut health.
This is a scientific take with lots of complicated names and implications, I would argue it is intended for teens and up, as Biffy doesn’t have eyes or can be easily distinguished from his fellow bacteria.
Interesting nevertheless!
Follow Your Gut is available since April 08, 2025.
Publisher: April 08, 2025
Paperback / softback | Pages: 240
EAN/UPC 9781957363844
Finally, this is a graphic novel I would argue is not for kids, even though the narrator is one:
Okchundang Candy by Jung-Soon Go (Author), Aerin Park (Translator)
Jung-Soon Go is remembering a happy time, when there were no cares for her as a child and both of his grandparents were still alive.
“I still remember that house filled with summer…”.
I would argue that American kids don’t know what they are missing, living as they live, stranded from their loved ones, shipped to day care and afternoon care instead of being cared for by loving old people. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, the story is very different.
And the relationship between Jung-Soon Go’s Grandfather with her Grandmother is a very special one. Because they were orphaned by the war, they clung to each other as a couple and as friends. On every Jesa day, during the ancestral ritual, he would gently place the okchundang candy in her mouth, a big smile spreading across her face as it melted on her tongue.
And change comes to all of us, people die, people grow sick, and they grow apart.
That is what happens with her grandparents, inevitably. But happiness is not meant to be forever, it is what happens to help us through sorrow. Maybe this melancholy take will resonate more with the parents than with the kids. The illustrations are pastel soft and filled with memories.
Okchundang Candy is available since March 04, 2025
Publisher: Levine Querido
Hardback| Pages: 128
EAN/UPC 9781646145140
Title: 62 characters or less is the desired length constraint, for readability.
