Coming-of-age tales

Hour of the Bees

Lindsay Eagar

Twelve-year-old Carol is stuck spending her summer in a New Mexico desert while her friends attend pool parties—but secrets unfold as her family moves her dementia-ridden grandfather out of the only home he has known. She begins to care less about junior-high trivialities as she grows more fascinated with her family roots and her grandfather’s stories that center on a certain magical tree that grants immortality. In this first novel, Eagar mingles magic and reality as her protagonist discovers “It doesn’t matter how long I live. It matters what I do with the time I’m given.”

All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook

Leslie Connor

A special arrangement at a coed jail has allowed Perry T. Cook to spend 11 years living with his incarcerated mother—until an ambitious new district attorney forces him to leave. Complications ensue as the boy moves in with the attorney’s family and conspires to see his mother, uncovering secrets about her past and other prisoners’ crimes. This book contains mild profanity; but prisoners generally acknowledge their wrongdoing, and Connor presents minimum-security prison life without violence. Connor alternates between Cook’s and his mother’s perspectives, showing their resilience while offering a unique look at life for children of incarcerated parents.

Booked

Kwame Alexander

Nick Hall obsesses over soccer and an eighth-grade crush but resents his father’s lectures about the importance of reading and vocabulary, even as his knack for words earns him longed-for attention. An injury sidelines Nick, and his parents deal a worse blow: They are divorcing, and his mom has taken an out-of-state job. Disillusioned and angry, Nick finds his way with help from others. A follow-up to Alexander’s Newbery Medal winner The Crossover—a WORLD Children’s Book of the Year runner-up—this book contains mild profanity and lacks its predecessor’s strong family ties.

Raymie Nightingale

Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Clarke’s summer involves a far-fetched plan to win back her father’s attention after he leaves her mother and her for another woman. She finds friendship and adventure with two other girls, also fatherless, and the three rescue each other in unexpected ways. Strength: Two-time Newbery winner DiCamillo delivers rich characters who share each other’s loss and loneliness while learning the value of camaraderie and sacrifice. Weakness: She offers readers little assurance beyond friendship, leaving Raymie wondering where her beloved elderly friend has gone after death and pondering other questions: “What will become of us?” and “Why does the world exist?”

Afterword

Young teens with an interest in comprehensive World War II history—and the maturity to understand its complexities—will appreciate Caren Stelson’s Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story (Carolrhoda Books, 2016).

On Aug. 9, 1945, 6-year-old Sachiko Yasui was playing house and making mud dumplings with her friends when an atomic bomb exploded just a half-mile away in Nagasaki, Japan. The bomb halted World War II but wrought devastating and lasting damage on civilians and surrounding areas, with full effects no one anticipated: Sachiko lost her entire family in the explosion or soon after as radiation took its toll.

Stelson compellingly intertwines war history and Sachiko’s personal account as a hibakusha, the name given to Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors. Sachiko’s experiences lead her to become a strict pacifist, though, and Stelson carries this view into her analysis of racism and wartime and post-war decisions, including the use of nuclear weapons, leaving young readers with questions parents should be prepared to engage. —M.J.