There’s undeniable entertainment in watching an all-powerful Superman dish out justice to the bad guys. But it can be even more satisfying to see the job done by a hero without laser vision or invincibility or even much in the way of muscles. This is why underdogs work so well in children’s literature, where, to the target readership, everything from a school bully to a burdensome homework assignment can feel as overwhelming as a supervillain.

Is there any more classic underdog than the Victorian orphan? By all rights, Nan Sparrow — the spunky yet snarky protagonist of Jonathan Auxier’s SWEEP (Amulet, 368 pp., $18.99; ages 8 to 12) — shouldn’t even be alive, let alone leading a chimney sweep uprising. As if growing up female in 19th-century London weren’t hard enough on its own, Nan’s job keeps her perpetually filthy, malnourished, deprived of affection and forced to squeeze into lung-blackening spaces tight enough to give a hamster claustrophobia. (In what is sure to be a blow to Mary Poppins fans, the author’s afterword explains how real-life sweeps had it even worse than those in the book.)

Yet Nan perseveres. Granted, she’s got the help of a magical soot golem. If you’ve ever wondered what Frosty the Snowman would be like if he were made of cinders and had awesome fire powers, that’s Charlie the golem: a gift bequeathed to Nan by the kindly sweep who raised her among England’s rooftops. Nan believes Charlie is meant to be her protector, but the creature is himself a childlike naïf who needs Nan as much as she needs him, especially in a society that refuses to see him as anything but a monster.

Many of the most entertaining and touching scenes involve Nan schooling Charlie on everything from the alphabet to the weather. (“I broke the snow!” Charlie cries when the flakes melt against his hot cinder hands.) When juxtaposed with flashbacks of the old Sweep raising Nan, these bits add a layer of beautifully bittersweet parenthood allegory to a tale that is both uplifting and heartbreaking. When Charlie has an “Of Mice and Men” moment, accidentally crushing a baby bird, readers are torn between sympathy, frustration and fear for the future of this oddly beautiful little family. But as one character wisely says about caring for others, “If you’re not afraid, you’re not doing it right.”

Daniel José Older also uses the 1800s orphan theme in DACTYL HILL SQUAD (Scholastic, 256 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), but he ups the threat level significantly by placing his parentless protagonists square in the middle of the American Civil War. This is an alternate history, however, taking place in a world where dinosaurs escaped extinction. Triceratops pull wagons down cobblestone streets, iguanodons lift lamplighters to gas-powered lanterns, microdactyls deliver messages like toothier carrier pigeons, and, on a much less whimsical note, gun-toting gangs of hooded men spread terror from the saddled backs of raptors and ankylosaurs.

Older fascinatingly blends thunder-lizard thrills with lesser-known but important aspects of American history. He starts the action (and then never really stops it) with a real-life incident: the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum during the Draft Riots of 1863, when mobs of white New Yorkers, angered by their conscription into the Union Army, turned violently against their black neighbors. Suddenly homeless, the children face perils including the Kidnapping Club, a Jurassified version of a real gang who abducted free black people to sell into slavery. Aided by a pair of African-American Shakespearean actors (whose theater has also been torched), the young friends seek safe haven in the minority community of Dactyl Hill.

Readers will adore Magdalys Roca, who becomes the de facto leader of the orphans, thanks to her unique ability to telepathically communicate with the dinosaurs. Far from a natural hero, Magdalys displays a realistic mix of terror and gumption in the face of the monsters around her, reptilian and human. Where else will her adventures carry her? There’s another installment of this mind-bendingly original series coming, sure to be eagerly awaited.

K. E. Ormsbee’s THE HOUSE IN POPLAR WOOD (Chronicle, 344 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12) gives us three underdogs for the price of one. And while none may be full-on orphans, they’ve all got serious family issues. First, we have the Vickery twins, Lee and Felix, whose parents were bamboozled into signing a Faustian contract that has forever separated them. Now Mr. and Mrs. Vickery serve as apprentices to Death and Memory, respectively (yes, the literal personifications of those concepts — and they are capital-C Creepy), and although they live under the same roof, they remain eternally invisible to each other. Same goes for the brothers. Each is assigned to one parent, and they only see each other outside the house. It’s a rough way to grow up.

Until our third underdog comes into their lives — the rule-flouting iconoclast Gretchen Whipple, the black sheep of her own family, which has been embroiled in a generations-long Hatfield-and-McCoy-esque feud with the Vickerys. Gretchen goads the twins into helping her solve a murder mystery in which the prime suspect is Death itself. The boys are skeptical (“What do you mean? Death kills everyone”), but eventually realize that if they can prove Death has broken the rules and taken people before their appointed times, they might be able to nullify the diabolical contract that divides their family.

Atmospheric and gripping, the book offers a boldly original take on the Grim Reaper concept, but never sacrifices entertainment for metaphysics (even while raising some thought-provoking questions). Ormsbee does a masterly job of juggling perspectives, keeping all the children distinct and fascinating in their own ways, while never losing the page-whipping pace of her well-crafted plot.

THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE (Candlewick, 544 pp., $24.99; ages 10 and up), by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, presents us with two “heroes” who are as un-Superman as one could get. One — Werfel, the goblin archivist — is more akin to Kal-El’s scientist dad on Krypton, who knew what was going on but got ignored by his people and, well, we know how that turned out. The counterpart to Werfel is the titular Spurge, a scholarly envoy from the elf kingdom sent to deliver a peace offering to their age-old foes in hopes of a truce between the nations. In reality, Spurge has agreed to be a spy for his people — a hapless, naïve, socially awkward spy, but a spy nonetheless. When Werfel — a lovable dork who adheres to the goblin credo that “hospitality was holy” — attempts to introduce the elf to goblin culture, things don’t go as planned.

The story is not only presented from two distinct viewpoints, it uses two distinct methods. In a brilliant storytelling device, Werfel’s side of the tale comes to us in prose, while Spurge’s comes in pictures — the elf’s own mental images, which he secretly transmits to his superiors via magic spell. It’s an ingenious way of showing how fear and xenophobia can affect someone’s impressions of the unfamiliar. A traditional goblin dance, for instance, takes on the aura of a violent ritual in Spurge’s mind’s eye, and a parade of children looks like a wild army. Even Werfel himself, who tells readers he is shorter than his elfish guest, appears as a hulking monster in the illustrations. Yelchin’s art, evocative of kookily surreal medieval woodcuts, is perfectly suited to the task.

The book, which is on this year’s National Book Award long list, is at times both moving and hilarious. Spurge is not just an unlikely hero — it’s hard to know if he’s a hero at all. But that only makes the finale of this political satire all the more surprising. Even more than if Clark Kent had been sent to spy for the elves.

The post Children’ Fantasy Novels That Make Heroes Out of Underdogs appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

We’ve made it through winter, and as a reward, there are dozens of fantastic new books awaiting us this spring — truly, you could find a new appealing book for every flowering tree on your block.

These next few months are packed with thrilling debuts and welcome returns — a delicious mix of literary fiction, juicy romances, clever speculative fiction, and eerie murder mysteries. There are wise, spooky stories from House of Cotton by Monica Brashears to Greek Lessons by Han Kang, super fun romps from Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy to Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum, and a few stand-out, personal nonfiction entries: Heidi Julavits’ Directions to Myself, Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy, and Samantha Leach’s The Elissas. Fans of feminist, speculative fiction will devour My Murder by Katie Williams and Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs. Anyone interested in stories about sex work can turn to Emma Cline’s novel The Guest or Sophia Giovannitti’s memoir Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex. A handful of novels mix queer longing with the surreal (The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher, Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis, and All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky), and for those who love a good skewering, there are at least two media-industry satires (Yellowface by R. F. Kuang and Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst) and at least one extraordinary art critique (Monsters by Claire Dederer).

Book lovers are blessed with many months’ worth of reading in this promising new set.

1

House of Cotton

April 4

Mythic, agile, and alluring all at once, this novel begins when a broke and lonesome 19-year-old, Magnolia, accepts an oily stranger’s curious but lucrative job offer: to “model” as recently deceased women at his family’s funeral home, in an attempt to give closure to their families. The slippery relationship between the living and the dead only gets more haunted from here. Brashears writes about Black Appalachia with a provocative incandescence.

2

Natural Beauty

April 4

In Ling Ling Huang’s confident debut, the author taps into her own experience as a professional violinist to write about a young musician who dreams of playing piano with the world’s most elite orchestras — only to find herself shunted into a job at a swanky beauty store.

3

A Living Remedy

April 4

Nicole Chung returns with a memoir about family, loss, and love. Set mostly during the early days of the COVID pandemic, A Living Remedy addresses the heartbreak of sick parents, healthcare insecurity, and the faltering American middle-class. Chung writes with empathy and righteous rage about the most painful of subjects: “Sickness and grief throw wealthy and poor families alike into upheaval, but they do not transcend the gulfs between us, as some claim — if anything, they often magnify them.”

4

Enter Ghost

April 4

Titled after a stage direction in Hamlet — “enter GHOST” — Hammad’s second novel begins when Sonia, a Palestinian actor living in London, finally returns home for a long-delayed family visit and to act in a West Bank production of the play. Sonia is tough and sophisticated (she plans a matching blue lingerie set for the border control she knows will unfairly strip-search her at the Israeli border), and Hammad’s prose is just as exquisite and wise as her main character.

5

Romantic Comedy

April 4

This plucky, effervescent novel delivers on its titular promise: Romantic Comedy is indeed romantic and funny. The story is centered around an SNL-stand-in sketch show TNO (short for The Night Owls) and one of its staff writers: the cynical, clever, and barbed Sally Milz. She composes a sketch about how the men of TNO often date gorgeous, famous women, but she’s never seen one of the women writers date any hunky dude celebrities. Will the next TNO host/musical guest — a charmingly cheesy, long-haired singer — change this pattern?

6

Fire Rush

April 4

Set in the early ‘80s reggae club scene on the outskirts of London, Fire Rush centers on Yamaye, a young woman who finds solace in the pulsing beats of dance halls. When a series of violent incidents threaten her community, Yamaye journeys to the Bristol underground and to Jamaica, where she finally faces her past. From the get, Fire Rush is rhythmic and riveting.

7

Old Flame

April 11

Hinging around an unplanned pregnancy, Old Flame is (of course) about big decisions, but it’s also about the little ones. Prentiss creates a portrait flush with life — a life of persistent ambitions, friendships and motherhood, the promise of new beginnings, and the whiplash of old returns. Old Flame is a novel about how we organize our lives and keep true to ourselves.

8

Adelaide

April 18

In this romance, an American woman moves to “dreamy London,” where she falls in love with an Englishman who’s horrible at texting. Will his in-person charms be enough to salvage their relationship? Not likely!

9

Greek Lessons

April 18

In Greek Lessons, two characters connect over their losses: one has lost his vision, the other her capacity for language. They’re haunted — as Kang writes of the speechless Greek teacher, “words and sentences track her like ghosts” — but together they manage to create something new. Spare and deceptively tranquil, Greek Lessons maintains its startling precision throughout.

10

The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America

April 18

The Forgotten Girls is a memoir about how place shapes people. As children, Potts and her best friend — two smart, book-hungry girls — would look at a map and promise to escape their very religious, tumultuous Ozarks community; as adults, only one of them would make it out of their town.

11

The Skin and Its Girl

April 25

On the first page of this book, a baby is born with vivid, cobalt blue skin. Across the world from the baby’s home in the Pacific Northwest, her family’s legacy — a centuries-old soap factory — is destroyed by an airstrike in Palestine. Poetic, queer, and highly inventive, The Skin and Its Girl is an enchanting, memorable story.

12

Rosewater

April 25

When the main character is a poet, you know you’re in for a lyrical, keenly-observed novel. In Rosewater, that character is Elsie: she’s a queer, funny, and very tired poet-slash-bartender who’s sleeping with her coworker. When Elsie is unexpectedly evicted from her apartment, she reconnects with her childhood friend, Juliet, and finds that all her yearning might just lead her back to where she started.

13

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

April 25

The rare polemic that’s full of greedy love for the good stuff in this world, Monsters is an expansion of Dederer’s instant classic Paris Review essay from 2017, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men.” With a larger canvas, she lets both her cast of monsters and our culpability grow, and manages to one-up herself over and over again. Cooly pensive on an overheated subject, Dederer writes powerfully about art’s ability to move us, teach us, and entrap us.

14

Homebodies

May 2

This media industry satire stars a fantastic protagonist: Mickey Hayward, a queer Black writer who has bravery and wit in spades. His story, as the title Homebodies suggests, is intimate and personable — and it also includes a riveting scandal.

15

Oh My Mother!: A Memoir in Nine Adventures

May 9

Connie Wang’s memoir examines her relationship with her “stubborn and charismatic” mother, as the pair go on an Eat, Pray, Love-style joyride around the world. From taking edibles in Amsterdam, to visiting “restaurants the size of department stores” in Jinan China, to shuffling through Versailles to visiting a Magic Mike strip spectacular in Las Vegas, this mother-daughter duo are an irresistible pair.

16

The Guest

May 16

This book is chilling and dangerous-feeling, like a gust of wind from a car driving a little too close to you. In The Guest, a calculating but myopic young grifter has several days to kill in the Hamptons before her much older lover’s summer party. Her main tasks are (1) finding a place to sleep and (2) running from the consequences of her actions. As she paints a vicious portrait of avoidance, Cline reveals herself as a master illustrator of the poor decision: “A bad idea had its own relentless logic, a momentum that was queasy but also correct.”

17

Berlin

May 16

In Berlin, a brilliant young liar named Daphne moves from England to Berlin to study German, fib about her philosophy degree, and indulge in the fantastic tumult of her extraordinary mind. The protagonist contends with creepy stalkers, big pangs of loneliness, chaotic nascent friendships, the emotional ravages of eating disorders, and good old existential angst. And still, the novel fizzes with insight and excruciatingly funny jokes!

18

The Postcard

May 16

The Postcard opens with the arrival of — your instincts are right — a postcard. It’s vulnerable and daring form of communication: “bare like those teenage girls who run around with exposed arms and no coat in the wintertime.” And from there, this French novel continues to supply nimble and unexpected truths.

19

Dykette

May 16

A face-off between three queer couples in a contained country home? There’s a whiff of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in this wry, horny battle-of-the-lovers, and also the sensation of piecing together some gossip on Instagram. Dykette makes a strong case for mixing goofiness with sexiness in contemporary fiction.

20

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

May 16

In her debut memoir, Jane Wong recalls coming of age in the late 1980s on the Jersey Shore, frying crab rangoon and playing in the walk-in fridge in her family’s Chinese restaurant. In this “love song of the Asian American working class,” Wong writes with candor, vexation, and compassion, reminiscing about food (oranges “the size of small planets”), family (“a waltz of kin”), youth (Bath & Body Works glitter hand gel, a “chandelier of blinding beauty”), and Atlantic City (“steel blue, the color of whales they’ll never see”).

21

Girl Juice

May 23

This graphic novel is led by Bunny— a bossy, funny, sex-brained hero who lives by the motto, to stay hot and simple forever. She and her three housemates are like a filthier, gig-economy-era Sex and the City foursome. Naturally, there are antics at every turn.

22

Yellowface

May 23

Fantasy writer R. F. Kuang comes for the publishing world in this satire. Yellowface begins with two literary pals from Yale who’ve achieved starkly different levels of success: Chinese-American Athena Lui publishes best-sellers that Netflix thirsts over, while “basic white girl” June Hayward can barely swing a deal for her debut novel. When Athena dies, with June as the only witness, she makes a plan to pass off Athena’s new script (about Chinese laborers in WWI) as her own and pretends to be an Asian-American woman. Haunting, twisty, and audacious!

23

Bad Summer People

May 23

Gossipy, summer fun has landed on the salty beaches of Fire Island. Starting in the manner of a The White Lotus season with a body washed ashore by the ocean, Bad Summer People proceeds to introduce a set of moneyed, manipulative white folks, whose lives are immediately upended. But don’t worry: their affairs and machinations continue apace. Spritzed with flinty observations of beach-goers “methodically sipping their wines,” Rosenblum’s created a delicious, dishy trip of a novel.

Editor’s note: Rosenblum is the chief content officer of BDG, which owns Bustle.

24

The Late Americans

May 23

In The Late Americans, Taylor explores the blush-inducing intricacies of social interactions. Over the course of a year, Taylor follows a wide cast of characters (meatpacking workers, mathematicians, poets, and landlords) as they court, provoke, confront, and encircle each other. It’s a dextrous illustration of complex people with even more complex desires.

25

Ink Blood Sister Scribe

May 30

As its punchy title suggests, Törzs’ speculative fiction is confident and powerful. Ink Blood Sister Scribe centers two half-sisters who continue their family’s tradition of guarding a collection of ancient, magic texts. It’s an enchanting book about enchanted books.

26

Horse Barbie

May 30

This memoir’s title, Horse Barbie, comes from the nickname Rocero’s beauty pageant competitors bestowed on her during adolescence — a name inspired by her long neck and hair, dark skin, and striking physique. Rocero’s story covers her childhood in the Philippines, her days as a nationally-adored trans model, her closeted modeling career in the U.S. — and her coming out and subsequent trans advocacy. She writes with vivid, swift prose about a thrilling, brave life.

27

Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex

May 30

This memoir about a young artist looking for a solution to her “near categorical hatred of work” begins with the author trying sex work, and couching it as part of her artistic practice. As Giovannitti writes: “Making art can justify a recklessness that making money doesn’t.” Giovannitti writes with candor and complexity about a life at the center of two of her greatest cultural preoccupations: sex and capitalism.

28

Pageboy

June 6

Spanning summer nights at queer bars to icky red carpet glamor, Pageboy details Page’s coming into queerness and his trans identity, plumbing the depths of performance, authenticity, and personal truth.

29

Everything’s Fine

June 6

When Jess starts as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, she’s overlooked, underestimated, and made to feel existentially lonely as the only Black woman on the floor. Unexpectedly, she finds support from her white, conservative college enemy: Josh. As their romance takes shape, Jess comes into a political awakening.

30

My Murder

June 6

Speculative, comic fiction built around a feminist critique of the control of women’s bodies: what a mix! In My Murder, Lou is brought back to life by a government project after dying at the hands of a serial killer. Now, in addition to continuing her marriage and caring for her child, Lou still has to figure out the mystery of her murder. It’s a lot to put on one person, even if she is a clone!

31

The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia

June 6

In this heartbreaking nonfiction project, Leach tries to understand the death of her childhood friend Elissa, who was sent to an institution for troubled teens during her high school years. The story expands to include Elissa’s two friends, Alyssa and Alissa, who would also later die by suicide. Leach’s “attempt to make sense of the senseless” is a personal, carefully-crafted examination, and it doesn’t flinch as it approaches the distressed heart of American culture.

Editor’s note: Leach is Bustle’s entertainment editor-at-large.

32

Loot

June 13

A talented young carpenter is hired to carve a huge tiger automaton at a palace, to celebrate India’s return from British captivity. Heists, the legacy of colonialism, and the creative maturity of an artist: Loot has it all.

33

The Mythmakers

June 13

In Keziah Weir’s controlled, tense debut novel, a floundering young journalist reads an excerpt from a book by a successful novelist — and it’s about her! The Mythmakers follows her as she untangles her long-ago meeting with the author and tries to understand his life, asking all the while, “who gets to tell a story?”

34

Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years

June 27

This is a memoir about navigation in every sense. When rape allegations surface on the college campus where she teaches, Julavits investigates how to raise her young son to be the best possible young man. Julavits pairs this exploration with memories of herself as a youth, sailing on the jagged coast of Maine. As always, Julavits writes with sparkling insight and stunning clarity.

35

Ripe

July 11

Sarah Rose Etter’s Ripe begins with an evisceration of contemporary San Francisco, laid to waste by the tech industry. The protagonist is just a year into a coveted job at a startup and already dependent on cocaine and extreme compartmentalization. She’s also continually haunted by a black hole — a sucking void that hovers next to her whenever the “melancholy gets too great.” This surreal book makes images as real as anything else; as Etter writes: “There is safety in metaphors. The truth is far more terrifying.”

36

All-Night Pharmacy

July 11

All-Night Pharmacy reads like an endless Los Angeles party: aglow with fervency and bursting with drugs, sex, desperate actors, energy healers, strippers, and eccentrics. At its heart, the book is a twinned character portrait of two sisters on the edge of adulthood. It’s stylish and smart — its gloss only hints to its depth, like the uncanny glisten of a see-through acrylic nail.

Get Even More From Bustle — Sign Up For The Newsletter

From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person who’s on TikTok, even if you aren’t.

The post 36 Finest New Books Of Spring & Summer time 2023, From Novels To Memoirs appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.