Taming The Beast
In Alan Gratz’s new middle-grade novel, Flight: A Story of Seeking Refuge, 13-year-old Daniella Lopez and her 9-year-old brother Carlos travel north from their home in Honduras in search of a better life.
Children & YA
I Am in Between
In All the Sunshine in the World, her third middle-grade novel in verse, Nashville poet and educator Caroline Brooks Dubois once again examines the aftermath of tragedy in the life of a young girl. This time, her subject is the sudden, shocking loss of a sibling. The author will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
Dignity in Receiving, Kindness in Giving
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.
Hearing Voices
Seventeen-year-old Stella Bohdan is a medium in 1912 New York City who finds her connection to the spirit world a dubious distinction: “I am never alone, never, and yet I’m the loneliest person I know, dead or alive,” Stella complains in The Spiritualists, the debut YA novel by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb. The author will appear at Bound Booksellers in Franklin on June 6 and Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville on June 11.
A World Full of Sadness and Goodness
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.
Looking Closely at the Weeds
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.
