9 Of The Best New Children’s Books Out February 2024

In this heartwarming picture book, a young girl describes the languages her family speaks. Her mother speaks Malayalam, the language of Kerala, where the girl’s mother lived until ten years ago and where the girl was born. Her mother also learned English in Kerala. The girl speaks Malayalam at home and English at school and with her friends. When she visits her family in Kerala, she learns that some can speak even more than two languages. Her mother teaches her that learning and practicing languages is good for the brain. The warm-toned illustrations emulate a woven tapestry, mirroring how the languages are woven together, and the smiling, loving family feels like a hug. This is a beautiful book about languages, immigration, and family.

Emma’s home is filled with constant noise, both inside and outside. She longs for peace and quiet and feels inspired when she reads about blue whales. She creates a boat and whale and sails inside the whale’s mouth and into its stomach (her bedroom), where she can finally find a quiet space for her to read. But then Owen swims into the whale’s mouth and disturbs her silence. When the two make a deal, Emma realizes that she can be a storyteller, reader, and friend and that maybe the bustle of others isn’t always a bad thing. This whimsical picture book is full of imaginative illustrations that are so evocative of childhood.

This infuriating picture book biography tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, a Jewish scientist in the 1950s who discovered the structure of DNA, though fellow male scientists would steal her work and later win a Nobel Prize for it. She would never know. Stone opens the book with an admission that Franklin’s story does not have a happy ending. Yet stories like hers are important to learn about because there are always many people who contribute to important work. Stone then describes Franklin’s childhood and how she became fascinated with photographs and working in the darkroom. She excelled at math and science, eventually going to college and working to create gas masks. She started working as a scientist at King’s College in X-ray crystallography and studying DNA. She often faced discrimination at King’s College for being a woman, though James Watson and Francis Crick took her advice and would eventually use her research to create a model of DNA. This is a beautifully illustrated picture book biography exploring science history and feminism.

This quiet and beautiful middle grade novel follows 12-year-old Franny Petroski, whose mother left when she was four. Her grandmother, Nana, has raised her, and the two rent an apartment above a coffee shop. Franny loves making art with found objects, and their home is filled with her creations. When Nana breaks her leg taking out the trash, the two move to a one-story rental, and Franny’s uncle comes to live with them. Her uncle reveals things about Franny’s mother that she never knew, like how she was bipolar, and things become fraught at home. Meanwhile, she’s also having trouble with her friends at school. It’s a really lovely, character-driven novel.