Kids & YA Newsletter: June 2019

Eighteen-year-old Carmen Aguilar missed graduating from her Miami high school by thaaaaaat much—one credit short. But she can make it up a with summer internship and quickly finds one where, instead of pushing papers, Carmen, the queen of screw-ups, has to dress up as a Disney princess for children's parties and learn extravagant dance routines for other events city-wide. When her company is hired to perform at her spoiled cousin’s extravagant quinceañera, family and friends fear that Carmen will sabotage it. Her cousin Ariana was the reason Carmen’s own coming-of-age celebration was canceled three years earlier, and their families haven’t spoken since. This quince is an olive branch, an attempt to bring the families back together. But it’s up to Carmen whether she’ll take it. Not helping matters? Her new dance partner at work is none other than Mauro Reyes, her most deeply regrettable ex. Carmen is determined to leave the past in the past, even if late-night chats with Mauro stir up old feelings. She’s even ready to try getting along with Ariana. As the quinceañera approaches, Carmen must break the spell of past resentments if she wants her own happily ever after. Told in Carmen’s singularly sarcastic yet vulnerable voice, and set in the sultry heart of Miami, Monica Gomez-Hira’s fantastic debut, ONCE UPON A QUINCEAÑERA is a tale of telenovela twists, family dysfunction, and reluctant romance. It is sure to appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han, as well as the television shows One Day at a Time and Jane the Virgin. (Please note, this project is represented by Jim McCarthy.)

Between her father’s death from the pox, her mother’s unraveling memories, and her absent bully of a twin brother, Kang Bari’s hidden life in the forest is one marked by loss and loneliness. The fact that she’s secretly a bad moon child—born during a forbidden lunar sign—seems small and distant in comparison, even though its discovery could lead to her execution. But when Bari heals a magpie on her seventeenth birthday, she stumbles upon the truth. Bad moon children have access to the magic of the goddesses—at the risk of becoming their vessel. When Bari’s twin tries to access his magic, he is possessed by a powerful pox goddess that leads him to destroy the nearby village and traps their mother as a malevolent spirit. In order to put her mother to rest, Bari will have to undertake a journey to the other side of the country—all while trying to fight off ghosts, monsters, and the death goddess attempting to possess her—and with only two allies: a sarcastic fox-demon that can’t decide between blackmailing her or eating her, and Jeong Mago, a fifteen-year old petty thief that has started to occupy her dreams. BAD MOON CHILD is a dark YA fantasy debut by Maria Dong. Inspired by Korean oral shamanistic tradition and mythology married to the daring dual-narrative structure and lush, poetic prose of Strange the Dreamer, this novel has the historical setting and epic action of Netflix’s Kingdom, while exploring multi-generational trauma, class and power imbalances, body autonomy, and the sacrifices we make for family. (Please note, this project is represented by Amy Elizabeth Bishop.)

When Trina, a high school junior and fantasy/sci-fi fan, is presented with a strange necklace with a sword charm on it, it seems that some of her dreams have come true. Though she has spent her life to date being physically clumsy and ordinary to the point of invisibility and physically clumsy, she is suddenly strong, dexterous, and has strangely heightened sensory awareness. Percy, a boy from school, tells her that she has been selected by the spirit of an ancient warrior angel to protect the world from a monster armed with a terrible weapon, a staff of power from which only she in immune. Though she is skeptical at first, Trina gets hard evidence in the form of a series of strange attacks in which the places she thinks of as safe spaces are turned against her. She becomes a kick-ass fighter in the tradition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eowyn from the Lord of the Rings or any of the Marvel movie superheroes. She battles her way through a series of mini quests before engaging the enemy directly, but her journey is marked by moments which call the logic of her story into question, fracturing the epic narrative and revealing something darker and more ordinary beneath. Gradually we realize that Trina’s fantasy adventure is really a coping mechanism invented to shield herself from the reality of an altogether more mundane and horrifying tragedy. The novel, IMPERVIOUS, grows directly out of the author A.J. Hartley’s recent experience of a mass shooting at the university where he works. (Please note, this project is represented by Stacey Glick.)

Avery Baker and Bobby Wingfield may seem like unlikely best friends to the classmates in rural Mississippi, but the popular athlete and relative outcast are both deeply in the closet, except to each other. When Avery is outed, they find themselves without a home to call their own and run away together to make a new life in New Orleans, not such a simple task for a 16-year-old, even with your best friend at your side. They don’t have the life skills or the family support to navigate the city’s vices…they’ve just got each other. But they’re about to find a new family in a rundown, pink Victorian house at 2211 Vermilion Street, where the eccentric, drag queen landlady acts as mother to a house of wounded misfits and runaways. SOUTHERN DECADENCE is the YA debut of Kit Williamson, the producer, writer, director, and star of the popular series EastSiders. It is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the New Orleans queer party scene, following a group of displaced teenagers in The Big Easy as they attempt to survive, find love and start their adult lives without falling prey to the city’s vices. Reminiscent of a YA Tales of the City, it is sure to appeal to fans of Jeff Zentner and Adam Silvera. (Please note, this project is represented by Jim McCarthy.)

For over one hundred years, the McClutter Cookie Academy has provided an excellent education at no cost—including top-notch medical and dental services, as well as food, clothing, and a nurturing home life in a beautiful, safe environment. On a typical day, students might work on a graphic design project, take a field trip to nearby McClutter Bakery, practice viola in the middle-division orchestra, help tend one of the school gardens, and compete on the lacrosse team, all before going to their close-knit student home for a family-style dinner. It’s a school where students are given every opportunity to achieve their dreams—and that’s just what their founders, famed cookie-baker Alistair McClutter and his wife Mirabella, intended. MADISON’S SUGARCANE HOUSE FIASCO, the whimsical first book in a middle grade series from Emily Wing Smith, follows seventh-grade Madison, who is thrilled to be living with her best friend, Sierra, for the first time this year. But when a third roommate, Celeste, enters the mix, she threatens to come between Madison and Sierra. Madison must try to salvage her year by finding common ground with Celeste, who clearly hates her guts, all while navigating the complicated world that is junior high at a school with endless possibilities. It’s a school where every student comes from somewhere else; where every student has a story. Subsequent books will follow Sierra and Celeste, dealing with different social issues as the girls make their way through the school year. (Please note, this project is represented by Michael Bourret.)

There’s not much Willow Amesbury has done in the last few years without Darien Lewis and Owen Tanner. Since fourth grade, the three of them have been inseparable, and Willow knows for a fact that she would never have gotten through her parent’s divorce without them. Now that they’re starting middle school, Willow’s pretty sure it will be their best year ever. Or maybe it won’t. When Darien’s father dies suddenly over the summer, things start unraveling. Willow does everything she can think of to support him through his loss, but Darien, formerly the funniest, coolest nerd she knows, starts to become sullen and withdrawn. Even more perplexing, Owen, whose OCD-personality usually has him two steps ahead of everyone else, has practically disappeared, not availing himself to Darien at all during such a difficult time. Willow’s not too sure what’s happened, but by the time school starts, neither boy is even looking at the other, and Willow finds herself uncomfortably in the middle. Things get even worse when the three of them are assigned to work on an Invention Project in science class, until things come to an explosive head, and secrets that all three friends have been keeping from each other finally emerge. Alternately narrated by Owen, Darien, and Willow, THE INVENTION OF US by critically acclaimed children's author Cecilia Galante is a middle-grade novel about the confidences we keep, how the shame of hiding them can tear us apart, and how deciding to share them with the ones we love most can finally set us free. (Please note, this project is represented by Stacey Glick.)

In an era when majestic ocean liners traverse the Atlantic and flappers shimmy to the Charleston, twelve-year-old Violette longs to escape her drab life in Pensilva—the last stop on Cornwall’s Riviera train line. Instead she’s being forced to live with her horrid sister Henny. So, when she learns about a competition promising the winner a season on the Enchanted Isles—an island chain fabled for all sorts of fantastical adventure—Violette leaps at this golden ticket and runs away with her best friend. On the main Isle of Evernight, Violette finds a world that comes to life only at night with shops selling imploding stars for half a wish coin and a fortune teller carved from jade. At dawn, the whole isle disappears. But, in spite of the magic surrounding her, Violette is constantly drowning in her friend’s shadow. A failed attempt to prove herself unwittingly releases a curse from the roots of the Evernight tree. As the Enchanted Isles dissolve into chaos and her friend is kidnapped, Violette must summon every ounce of courage to save everything she loves before it’s swept away by evil forces. Fans of the high-stakes magical adventures captured in The Castle in the Mist by Amy Ephron will embrace SEASON OF EVERNIGHT by debut author Rachel Greenlaw. (Please note, this project is represented by Ann Leslie Tuttle.)