More than 36% of Tennessee families experience food insecurity, yet only a handful of picture books center the issue, and few, if any, depict joy in the same way Savannah Allen’s newest book, The Yellow Postcard, does. Allen will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 21. Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee will be accepting donations at this event.
Rebecca Rose Mooradian’s great-grandmother fled the Armenian Genocide and eventually settled in the United States. Rose by the Sea, Mooradian’s debut picture book, was inspired by her grandmother’s story and combines lyrical lines with beautiful images by Myo Yim to help children understand both troubling history and enduring human goodness.
With simple, poetic lines, The Weedy Garden: A Happy Habitat for Wild Friends invites young readers to imagine they’re the animals in a garden where a weed is not something to be pulled up and eradicated but an essential, life-giving force. Margaret Renkl and Billy Renkl will discuss The Weedy Garden at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis on February 22, Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 24 and 28, David Lusk Gallery in Nashville on February 28, and Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville on March 19.
With her latest Lady Astronaut novel, The Martian Contingency, Mary Robinette Kowal leans into a feminism that embraces multiculturalism, antiracism, and disability theory, confronting historical stereotypes in both playful and serious ways. Kowal will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
In The Pecan Children, the two authors behind the pen name Quinn Connor capture the eerie magic of a small Southern town and the twin sisters at the center of its spell. Robyn Barrow and Alexandra Cronin will appear at Novel in Memphis on June 11.
Heather L. Montgomery explores the weird and wonderful world of animal immunology in her latest book for young readers, Sick! The Twists and Turns Behind Animal Germs.
