A few books for your wish list

FOR CHILDREN’S AUTHORS, it seems, there’s no time like the past. Books for the youngest readers reach back into old favorites from Mother Goose, middle-grade fiction delves into Victorian and Cold War adventure, and one of the hottest young-adult books reaches way back into the 1990s. So this year, don’t be afraid to go retro and wrap up a good, old-fashioned story for the young reader in your life. Here, the season’s best:

Early readers

“Grandpa Green” by Lane Smith. Roaring Brook Press. $16.99.

Great-Grandpa was born long ago, “before computers or cell phones or television,” but somehow managed to have an eventful life anyway. Lane Smith’s book takes a deceptively simple walk through his garden of memories, following a great-grandson past fanciful topiary scenes from Grandpa’s life – chickens and eggs, a tin man and scarecrow, firing artillery and parachuting soldiers.

“The Pet Shop Revolution” by Ana Juan. Arthur A. Levine Books. $17.99.

The logical side of my brain wanted to argue with “The Pet Shop Revolution” – no, there wouldn’t be flamingos in the old-fashioned pet store, and that childhood fantasy of freeing the animals wouldn’t work in the real world. But this ravishingly illustrated book is all about the dreamy logic of children: There’s a weirdly mustachioed villain, an earnest heroine with Princess Leia hair, and a crew of lonely animals looking for love.

“E-mergency!” by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer. Chronicle. $16.99.

A world without E is unthinkable. Or, at least, unpronounceable. But the alphabet is a tight-knit group of letters, so they do their best when E is injured and unable to perform her extraordinarily important duties. Both the brisk cartoon illustrations and the text are full of wordplay, visual gags and jokes about phonics. (Yes, there is such a thing: Y says, “Why isn’t E even crying?” and O answers: “Sometimes she’s a silent E.”) 

“Nursery Rhyme Comics.” Various authors; editor, Chris Duffy. First Second. $18.99.

Like the Owl and the Pussycat, the comic and the nursery rhyme make a wonderful couple. In this brilliant collection of 50 rhymes illustrated by 50 cartoonists, Mike Mignola (of “Hellboy” fame) gives “Solomon Grundy” an eerie look; Roz Chast finds a Crooked Man living a happily off-kilter life; and Dave Roman sends in the clones for “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.”

Middle-grade readers

“Secrets at Sea” by Richard Peck, illustrated by Kelly Murphy. Dial. $16.99.

Who knew mice were such social climbers? Big sister Helena understands it’s her job to look out for her siblings, but it turns out to be far more trying than she expected when her family’s fate involves Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, high-society matchmaking, a trans-Atlantic voyage, a secret romance, a brush with royalty – and, of course, a cat on the prowl.

“The Apothecary” by Maile Meloy, illustrated by Ian Schoenherr. Putnam. $16.99.

Beware the veritas herb, which can force you to blurt out the most precious of secrets – spy plots, secret formulas, school-girl crushes. In “The Apothecary,” real life is complicated enough: It’s 1952, and Janie’s parents, blacklisted writers seeking a way to keep working, move the family from California to London. But then Janie stumbles upon something amazing – a secret network of apothecaries, exploring the no-man’s-land between science and magic, and a recipe book full of formulas that could save the world, or perhaps destroy it.

“Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans” by Kadir Nelson. Balzer + Bray. $19.99.

Kadir Nelson, who found power and poetry in the story of baseball’s Negro League players, “We Are the Ship,” returns with an even more ambitious book that embraces African American history from the earliest settlements to the latest presidential election. The text – presented as an elderly woman telling her family’s history – is approachable but not simplistic, and married with Nelson’s distinctive, expressive portraits, it does an impressive job arguing that the never-ending struggle for justice and equality is America’s “heart and soul.”

Young adults

“The Future of Us” by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. Razorbill. $18.99.

It’s 1996, and Josh and Emma turn on a new computer to find – through some intervention of fate – that they can peek into their future by looking at something called Facebook. Each action Emma and Josh take seems to change their future, and their tinkering takes on an unsettling edge when they realize how far into the future those ripples spread. The book’s one real flaw is that Emma and Josh are so blinkered, their only curiosity seems to be about themselves, with not even a hint of speculation about what else the future might hold – apocalypse? Hovercars? Alien invasion? Then again, that may be what rings truest. Sometimes, the inability to get out of your own head and heart is an essential part of the teenage experience.

“Life: An Exploded Diagram” by Mal Peet. Candlewick Press. $17.99.

Like Josh and Emma, Clem and Frankie would happily shut out the rest of the world. But these secret teenage sweethearts in Cold War England – one wealthy, one poor – are agonizingly aware of class tensions, family discord, school misery and the looming threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The story pounds with the passion and urgency of young love, but there’s an undercurrent of longing and sadness, too, as the adult Clem looks back on those days when it felt as if life were going to end before it had even really begun.

“The Scorpio Races” by Maggie Stiefvater. Scholastic Press. $17.99.

Puck Connolly’s fingers are permanently dirt-stained and her attitude is permanently sarcastic, but it’s hard not to love her and the island she calls home. “The Scorpio Races” draws this world – part old-fashioned English isle, part fantasy land – with great care and a surprising jolt of realism. At the heart of the story is a deadly horse race that Puck absolutely must win, and her uncomfortable relationship with the odds-on favorite, who begins as a rival and becomes something else. From the great first line to the satisfying, it-had-to-be-so ending, it’s a breathless race of book.

Happy holidays and happy reading, everyone!

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