Osunde’s second book shares some similarities with their acclaimed debut, Vagabonds! (2022). Like its predecessor, this one is billed as a novel but takes the structure of a short story collection, and follows a sprawling cast of queer characters living in Nigeria. The new book opens with a character who proclaims, “For me, blood family doesn’t mean shit….You, reading this, you’re here, alive, because your parents synced and you showed up. That’s it. Even if they planned for a child, it was still a raffle draw. A hand went in a bowl and picked you.” This introduces the novel’s predominant theme of found family—the characters in the book, who orbit around one another, grew up with varying degrees of parental support, but fiercely care for their fellow outcast friends, “messy motherfuckers,” as one of them puts it. There’s Akin, a panromantic and asexual musician who has recently exited a polycule; Maro, mourning the death of his closeted queer father; and Awele, Yemisi, and May, “angry at the world, angry at how angry [she is] as a person, angry at what [she] can’t unsee.” The characters spend their days making art, navigating their relationships, and at times convening in a “truth circle,” which acts as something like a group-therapy session. Osunde’s prose is beautiful, if at times a bit overwrought, and they have clearly put a lot of thought into their characters, whom they treat with tenderness and compassion. But there’s not much in the way of a plot, and the novel tends toward the scattered and shambolic. This is a tone poem of a book, a novel that relies on connections, but never fully connects.

When she was 9 years old in 1957, Beeaff fell in love with her family’s 16-acre tract along the Conestoga River in Southern Ontario, Canada. Now caring for the property with her husband, Beeaff shares the subtle shifts and major changes that occur there from season to season. The book comprises four parts, one for each season, which are then further separated into a handful of days per month. The chapters introduce a variety of different subjects: Historical (Paleo-Indians are believed to have lived in the area beginning from 9,000 B.C.E.); scientific (the end product of “sugaring” (aka maple syrup) has a sugar/water ratio of 2-to-1); and personal (Beeaff’s many childhood memories include one of her father rafting down the river to deliver piles of cut wood). But it’s the lush descriptions and observations of flora and fauna that form the heart of the book. Whether enjoying the silence of a moonlit night or reveling in the sightings of a local beaver (who they name Archibald Beaudelaire XXII, or “Beau” for short), Beeaff homes in on the minutiae of life in the forest by combining memoir-style musings with methodical observations of nature. The eloquent, expressive prose limns the beauty of the changing seasons as they unfold: “Early morning’s solid, ash-bottomed overcast holds the heaviness of winter.” While some narrative threads can wander (a lengthy discussion about the traditional meanings of various gemstones seems out of place, for example), the book as a whole hearkens back to a Walden-like simplicity that feels both refreshing and restorative. Beeaff’s testament to the Canadian woodlands through writing and color photographs reminds readers to step outside and take a breath.

“We are perfectly weird and weirdly perfect,” says Avant-garde. She urges youngsters to challenge the status quo, stand out, and be themselves. That might look like peeling bananas from the bottom up, knowing the name for the smell of the earth after it rains (it’s petrichor), wearing butterfly wings, or simply taking up space. Tidbits of uplifting text bounce across each page, sprinkled with inspiring quotes from powerful figures who have marched to the beat of their own drums, from Dolly Parton to Mae Jemison. Both the quotes and Avant-garde’s prose serve to motivate young readers, though the ideas and themes are meandering, with little narrative throughline. Kids will revel in the book’s fresh, wildly colorful art, though the images aren’t always reflective of the text. Yangni’s layered, dynamic illustrations provide a paint-splotched visual feast. Characters who vary in skin color, body type, ability, and more, and from many walks of life, strut across swirling rainbows and through surreal landscapes, eagerly showing off what makes them different.

Thanks to her great mop of flaming-red hair and some unfortunate incidents on the first day, Theodosia “Bunny” Baxter’s hopes of invisibly blending in at her new middle school may be dashed. But the ensuing notoriety leaves her alternative scheme—being expelled, so she can go to school with her best friend—all the more doable. Or so she thinks. As it turns out, she’s not very good at bad behavior, among the many endearing qualities that will draw readers to her. Bunny fumbles her way toward successfully coping with many things, including bullying, pressure to sign up for an athletic competition, complex feelings about being adopted, and anxiety attacks that manifest in part as serious rashes. Roberts tucks engaging classroom activities into this already thematically robust tale—like the fizzy social dynamics in an experimental initiative-building class called Discoveries, the ins and outs of creating a garden of native plants, and tagging monarch butterflies—as she artfully tracks a profound transformation in her protagonist’s sense of self. The changes may be Bunny’s doing, but she’s helped along by a generously sized cast of almost uniformly supportive adults and peers (plus one great dog). By the book’s buoyant end, even one prickly girl’s repeated insistence that she’s not Bunny’s friend is sounding hollow. Bunny is cued white, and there’s some racial diversity in the supporting cast.