Winner

The First State of Being
by Erin Entrada Kelly
Intermediate, Middle School    Greenwillow    272 pp.
3/24    9780063337312    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780063337336    $9.99

It’s the summer of 1999. Twelve-year-old Delawarean Michael has worries, chief among them the approach of Y2K. What if everything falls apart? Family finances are precarious, so he’s amassing a stash of groceries acquired through shoplifting. Then he meets an odd new kid. Ridge appears disoriented, as well he might, as he has time-traveled there from two hundred years in the future. In transcripts of conversations and documents from that future, we discover that Ridge went rogue and time-traveled without permission, putting himself and possibly the whole history of civilization at risk. There’s a technical blip that might trap the traveler at the end of the twentieth century. A time-travel plot always involves logical conundrums, and Kelly (Those Kids from Fawn Creek, rev. 3/22) neatly grounds the mind-bending what-ifs of cause, effect, and the nature of time with real, present relationships and situations, kids with a secret, and a major problem to solve. It’s a well-crafted adventure surrounding a big philosophical idea with a side of middle-grade romance. The non-dystopian (although still fragile) vision of the future is tantalizing: cures for allergies and the common cold, progress on plastic pollution, women taking the lead in science and technology. (But apparently teens and tweens will still drive their parents up the wall.) SARAH ELLIS

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Honor Books

Across So Many Seas
by Ruth Behar
Intermediate, Middle School    Paulsen/Penguin    272 pp.
2/24    9780593323403    $17.99
e-book ed.  9780593323410    $10.99

This welcome historical novel traces a Sephardic Jewish family whose members travel from one country to another with first-person narrators from four generations and spanning centuries. In 1492, Benvenida and her family leave Toledo, Spain, for what is then Constantinople to escape the Spanish Inquisition. In 1923, Reina sneaks out at night and sings for a group of boys against her father’s wishes and is sent from Turkey to Cuba for an arranged marriage. In 1961, Alegra teaches literacy as a brigadista but then flees Cuba for Miami with Operation Pedro Pan. And in 2003, Paloma and her family travel back to Toledo and learn what they can about their long-ago family history. The family saga provides glimpses of several moments in world history and gives readers opportunities to spot connections among the generations, sometimes knowing details about the past that the characters can only guess at. (An overly earnest tone in narration and dialogue sometimes detracts from the characters’ believability.) A Ladino song and the oud that it is played on add echoes from one section to another. The author’s note provides context and personal connections; back matter also includes source notes with accessible explanations. SHOSHANA FLAX

From the January/February 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

One Big Open Sky
by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Intermediate, Middle School    Holiday    240 pp.
3/24    9780823450169    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823457496    $10.99

In 1879, Lettie’s African American family begins a westward journey from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nebraska, where her father seeks a better life for them. “We can’t live free / on someone else’s land / picking someone else’s crop! / I need something to call my own.” Eleven-year-old Lettie, her parents, and her two younger brothers load all they can into a wagon and join a caravan of ten families journeying on flatboat and on foot. Cline-Ransome’s spare free-verse narrative centers three skillfully developed female voices: Lettie; her mother, Sylvia; and eighteen-year-old Philomena, on her way to her first teaching job in Nebraska. Lettie keeps track of the miles and spending on supplies while Sylvia does her best to keep the children’s spirits uplifted. Philomena joins the family in Missouri, gaining passage in exchange for help with cooking and laundry. The treacherous terrain, extreme weather changes, and unforeseen tragedies are overwhelming at times, but the sense of community among the travelers offers a prevailing sense of hope. This is a captivating story about African American homesteaders and their claims to land promised them after the Civil War. PAULETTA BROWN BRACY

From the March/April 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

The Wrong Way Home
by Kate O’Shaughnessy
Intermediate, Middle School    Knopf    336 pp.
4/24    9780593650738    $17.99
Library ed.  9780593650745    $20.99
e-book ed.  9780593650752    $10.99

Since narrator Fern was six, she and her mother have lived on the Ranch, an isolated “sustainable futurist community” in upstate New York. Now twelve, Fern is completely accustomed to the unquestioned authority of Ranch leader Dr. Ben and his “ideals,” which emphasize a reverence for nature. Readers may begin to realize long before the protagonist does that the Ranch’s way of life has its flaws; as the story opens, a teen community member has died during a rite of passage. But still, when Mom recognizes those extremes and escapes to California with Fern, it’s understandable that Fern finds the outside world scary and, even as she begins to reacclimate, is determined to find a way to go “home.” As in Lasagna Means I Love You (rev. 3/23), O’Shaughnessy presents a high-stakes situation and zeroes in on a child narrator’s believable emotions. That tight focus on the young narrator even when she is misguided or doesn’t have all the facts allows readers to draw their own conclusions based on the gradually increasing information she has—about the events that led her mother to choose the Ranch, and in separating what can sound like positive environmentalist values from the dangerous reality of a cult. SHOSHANA FLAX

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

For more, click on the tag ALA LibLearnX 2025.