Embedded Files
2025-2026
Patrice Gopo, picture book author
Patrice Gopo, picture book author
Patrice Gopo is the child of Jamaican immigrants and was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. She is an award-winning essayist and the author of multiple picture books, including Ripening Time and All the Places We Call Home. Patrice lives with her family in North Carolina, where one taste of fried plantains immediately takes her back to some of the sweetest moments in her childhood.
RIPENING TIME
Celebrate the power of food to create delicious, lasting memories with this poetic and playful exploration of the joy of waiting for, and finally sharing, fried plantains.
Much like there is sweet treasure hidden beneath the skin of a plantain, this beautifully written and evocative story reaches far beyond the act of preparing a favorite food. Ripening Time celebrates the way food and family entwine to connect us across generations—and serves as a touching reminder that some of the sweetest rewards in life are worth the wait.
Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, picture book author
Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, picture book author
Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen is an award-winning children’s book author whose books include Roxie Loves Adventure, Chicks Rule, Duck Duck Moose, Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, and the Purrmaids chapter book series. She has visited schools and libraries for the past 20 years, talking to kids about writing, reading, and finding their voices.
Sudipta lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband, three children, and two adorable pugs.
CATS IN CONSTRUCTION HATS
Colorful cats in construction hats are on the job to build a house in this adorable, bouncy, rhyming picture book! Kids will delight in learning about colors while giggling at the hilarious antics of these forklift driving kitties.
Six colorful cats work together to build a house…with just a little help (and mischief) from some tiny rat friends. Little readers will delight in following along with the simple rhyming text, big construction vehicles, and the failures and triumphs that come with a big project! Bulldozers, cement trucks, excavators, and even a giant crane feature in this story, but each read through also offers smaller details to discover!
Colleen A.F. Venable & Honie Beam, ES graphic novel author & illustrator
Colleen A.F. Venable & Honie Beam, ES graphic novel author & illustrator
⬅️Colleen AF Venable is the author of the National Book Award Longlisted Kiss Number 8, a graphic novel co-created with Ellen T. Crenshaw. Her other books include the Katie the Catsitter series with Stephanie Yue, Mervin the Sloth is About to Do the Best Thing in The World with Ruth Chan, The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom with Lian Cho, and the Guinea Pig, Pet Shop Private Eye series, also with Stephanie Yue and nominated for the Best Publication for Kids Eisner.
➡️As a kid, I dreamed of being “an artist, an author, and
➡️As a kid, I dreamed of being “an artist, an author, and
a smoothie maker.” So I left my sunny SoCal hometown to study Sequential Illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art. With a few smoothie-related jobs in between, I’m now a freelance book and graphic novel illustrator! My favorite projects often involve humor, magic, and (most of all) mischief. I now live in Greenville, SC alongside my two very silly kitties, Oliver and Theodore.
a smoothie maker.” So I left my sunny SoCal hometown to study Sequential Illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art. With a few smoothie-related jobs in between, I’m now a freelance book and graphic novel illustrator! My favorite projects often involve humor, magic, and (most of all) mischief. I now live in Greenville, SC alongside my two very silly kitties, Oliver and Theodore.
JUNIE B JONES AND THE STUPID SMELLY BUS
It’s Junie B.’s first day of kindergarten! But she’s afraid of the school bus. Can she overcome her fears, or will she be stuck at school forever?
Meet the teacher day? Check! Fun, new classroom? Check! Shiny new first day of school shoes? Check! Meet Junie B. Jones! The B stands for Beatrice. Except she doesn’t like Beatrice. She just likes B. and that’s all. Junie B. is almost six. Almost six is when you go to kindergarten. And TODAY is Junie B.’s first day of school! Only guess what? Junie B. does NOT want to ride the school bus home. It smells on the bus. Plus also, what if there are meanies on the bus who might pour chocolate milk on your head?! In fact, what if Junie B.’s so scared of the bus that when it’s time to go home…she doesn’t?!
After more than thirty years as a beloved favorite, the world’s funniest kindergartner is coming to graphic novels with full-color adaptations that bring Junie B. to life for a new generation of readers and give kids even more ways to laugh—and read—with Junie B. Jones!
Jose Pimienta, MS graphic novel author
Jose Pimienta, MS graphic novel author
Jose Pimienta resides in Burbank, California where they draw comics, storyboards and sketches for visual development. They have worked with Random House Graphic, Iron Circus Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Disney Digital Network, and more.
During their upbringing in the city of Mexicali, Mexico Jo was heavily influenced by animation, music and short stories. After high school, they ventured towards the state of Georgia where they studied at Savannah College of Art and Design.
HALFWAY TO SOMEWHERE
New school, new country, but only half a family?! Embark on a coming of age journey with a middle school teen navigating their parent’s divorce while moving to a new country in this stunning graphic novel.
Ave thought moving to Kansas would be boring and flat after enjoying the mountains and trails in Mexico, but at least they would have their family with them. Unfortunately, while Ave, their mom, and their younger brother are relocating to the US, Ave’s father and older sister will be staying in Mexico…permanently. Their parents are getting a divorce.
As if learning a whole new language wasn’t hard enough, and now a Middle-Schooler has to figure out a new family dynamic…and what this means for them as they start middle school with no friends.
Jose Pimienta’s stunningly illustrated and thought provoking middle graphic novel is about exploring identity, understanding family, making friends with a language barrier, and above all else, learning what truly makes a place a home.
Candance Fleming, YA author
Candance Fleming, YA author
Candace Fleming awarded herself the Newbery Medal in fifth grade after scraping the gold sticker off the class copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond and pasting it onto her first novel — a ten-page, ten-chapter mystery called Who Done It? She’s been collecting awards (her own, not Elizabeth George Speare’s) ever since.
Today, Candace Fleming is the author of more than fifty books for children and young adults, including the 2021 Sibert Medal-winning Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, as well as the 2021 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award-winning The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh. A recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, she is also the two-time winner of both the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, and the Sibert Honor. Her most recent titles are The Enigma Girls and Narwhal, Unicorn of the Arctic.
DEATH IN THE JUNGLE
How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history.
Using riveting first-person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming reveals the makings of a monster: from Jones’s humble origins as a child of the Depression… to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers … to his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed “Jonestown” … to his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control.
And Fleming heart-stoppingly depicts Jones’s final act, persuading his followers to swallow fatal doses of cyanide — to “drink the kool-aid,” as it became known — as a test of their ultimate devotion.
Here is a sweeping story that traces, step by step, the ways in which one man slowly indoctrinated, then murdered, 900 innocent, well-meaning people. And how a few members, Jones’ own son included, stood up to him … but not before it was too late.
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