Kids & YA Newsletter: May 2025

Once upon a time, in the center of a big city, there was a very special museum. The Museum of the Art of Baking was a truly wonderful place to visit; it was an even more enchanting place in which to live. PHYLLO AND PUFF is the sweet, charming and educational story of the night two confections on permanent display in the museum—a piece of baklava (made from phyllo dough) and a napoleon (made from puff pastry)—come to life and become friends. The museum itself is a rich subject for color illustration, while the dialogue between Phyllo and Puff offers an artist the opportunity to zoom in on these two delightful characters in all their golden, crispy, flaky deliciousness. While Phyllo and Puff get acquainted, readers learn about where phyllo and puff pastry come from, how long they’ve been around, how they’re alike, and how they’re different. By the end of this origin story, readers will be eager to follow the congenial pair as they set out to explore the world around them together. Perfect for ages 4–7. Margot Mustich is a chef and baker, and the author of When Grandmas Cook (duopress/Sourcebooks, 2024). (Please note, Stacey Glick is the agent on this project.)

MIDDLE GRADE

Isn’t it time we took a whole new look at fishes? They are the least understood and most exploited group of vertebrates on Earth. And in the past 20 years have seen a revolution in our understanding of these animals. WEIRD, WILD, & WONDERFUL FISHES OF THE SEA by Jonathan Balcombe, a PhD biologist and author of the New York Times bestselling What a Fish Knows (translated into 17 foreign languages), presents the latest scientific revelations about a diverse collection of over 33,000 thinking, feeling, socially-sophisticated species. Delivered in a light-hearted voice sprinkled with humor and brought to life by the vivid illustrations of Tom LaBaff, WEIRD, WILD & WONDERFUL FISHES OF THE SEA delivers a phantasmagoria of fantastic fish phenomena. If you doubt that a fish can demonstrate tool use, planning, artistry, virtue, culture, deception, collaboration, apprenticeship, mental mapping, ballistics, bird-catching, spa-treatments, mucus-nipping, flatulent communication, outwitting chimpanzees, and much more—doubt no more! Aimed at young readers, this book will nevertheless appeal to all age groups. And it has a deeper, more serious mission. Worldwide, our aquatic cousins are in trouble. We haul up several hundred billion of them from their homes every year, and scientists estimate that we’ve lost half of all marine life since 1970. WEIRD, WILD, & WONDERFUL FISHES OF THE SEA does more than inform young readers—it encourages a sense of connection. (Please note, Stacey Glick is the agent on this project.) 

 
BEYOND COOL: THE RADICAL PEACE SYMBOL AND ITS FIGHT FOR A BETTER WORLD is the new middle grade nonfiction narrative by National Book Award finalist Michael G. Long (More Than a Dream, Fight AIDS!). Drawing from fresh interviews, oral histories, and archived records, Long offers a narrative history of the peace symbol’s little-known origin and its colorful evolution. With a focus on young people, the book shows that while the peace symbol seems ubiquitous, it’s also a radical protest image that activists have wielded in social movements from the Cold War era to the present day. Featuring visually stunning illustrations and photographs, and vividly told in exciting prose, BEYOND COOL leaves no doubt that however friendly it appears, the peace symbol is no smiley face. (Please note, John Rudolph is the agent for this project.) 
 

Tehlor Mejia spent years preparing for the day his son got their first period. He removed all the “girl boss” marketing slogans from the period kit, had months of “anatomy doesn’t determine gender identity” talks, bought the most inclusive puberty books out there. Still, as he walked his son through the process of using a pad for the first time, it was clear that gender dysphoria was sneaking in. So as a good parent (and storyteller), he did the only thing he could: he pivoted. “If you think about it,” he told his son casually, “it’s more like becoming a werewolf than anything. You’ll grow new hairy patches. Once a month you’ll get snarly and snappy when someone annoys you. And you’ll have to do your best to manage all the blood.” And it worked. Since then, the werewolf metaphor has stuck around, working as a handy, gender-inclusive way of discussing puberty and battling shame and dysphoria with healthy doses of humor and empathy. A NEW WEREWOLF’S GUIDE TO BLEEDING (OR NOT!) is a guide to the joys and sorrows of that special age where teens and tweens become a little feral, start eating all the salty snacks in the house, snarl when given direct instructions, and sometimes wake up covered in blood! WEREWOLF’S GUIDE will be the first puberty how-to book that not only includes, but centers trans and gender non-conforming kids—who have been at best sidelined, and at worst, utterly excluded from puberty literature to date. (Please note, Jim McCarthy is the agent on this project.) 

YOUNG ADULT

Mark knows it’s technically kidnapping. But when his father rolls up in an unfamiliar truck, Mark doesn’t hesitate to climb in. He’d rather live with his father than under the religious thumb of his mother and her new pastor boyfriend, Ted. As usual, Mark’s father has a plan, and like most of his plans, it’s exciting but a little bit crazy: live off the grid in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in a cabin he owns that no one, not even his ex-wife, knows about. It’ll be an adventure, and the mountains will certainly be more fun than the suburbs of Chicago, even if Dad sometimes sees things that aren’t there. But living in the mountains isn’t as easy as it sounds. Vicious winters, wild animals, and dwindling supplies make it hard enough, but when his father breaks his leg, Mark has to shoulder all the responsibility. Especially when his father’s hallucinations and paranoia surge with the isolation. And he’s not the only one whose mind might be going, because Mark’s started seeing ghosts. He’s pretty sure they’re hallucinations, but that’s hardly a comfort. If Mark can’t survive the winter, no one will ever find their bodies in the deep mountain snow. JACKALOPE is Patrick Dunn’s extraordinary debut novel. Blending the unreliable narration of The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester and the raw survival tension of What the Woods Took, JACKALOPE is a psychological thriller about family, isolation, and the breakdown of reality. (Please note, Jim McCarthy is the agent on this project.)