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The late Bill Martin Jr’s longtime collaborator, Michael Sampson, has a new picture book written by the two of them — Armadillo Antics is based on a manuscript written before Bill’s death and is illustrated by Argentinian artist Nathalie Beauvois. When I spoke to Michael he was in Poland, having been relocated from Ukraine, where he had been working with teachers and professors of education as a Fulbright Fellow. Let us all join his hope to return there.

The Horn Book Magazine and The Horn Book Guide are the most distinguished journals in the field of children’s and young adult literature and the core of our company. Founded in 1924 by Bertha Mahony to herald the best in children’s literature, more than eighty-five years later, we are still following her lead.

In Last Week, Canadian writer (and Whole Foods clerk) Bill Richardson briefly sketches a child’s last week with their grandmother — and they know it’s the last week because Flippa, the grandmother in this story, has chosen to die via a scheduled, medically assisted suicide rather than suffer any longer from her terminal illness. Illustrated by Emilie Leduc, the short novel is going to present a where-do-I-shelve-it dilemma for many libraries, as so many of the most intriguing books do!

Last seen in this space chatting about Supergirl and Wonder Woman, Lisa Yee returns to talk about Maizy Chen’s Last Chance. Maizy was looking forward to the perfect LA summer; instead, her mother drags her to Last Chance, Minnesota, where Maizy's grandparents own a Chinese restaurant and from where her mother escaped long ago. Family dramedy, family history, and family secrets combine for a very different kind of novel from my old friend Lisa.

From the January/February 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.