Forty-year-old Jaycee Grayson, fresh from a stint in the Betty Ford rehab center after having been fired from her job at a big-name Hollywood studio, is about to embark on a new adventure. Her older sister Meredith Grayson-O’Cochlain, a high-powered attorney, has negotiated a contract for Jaycee to be the new executive producer and vice president of global entertainment at Wonderful Girls, a successful manufacturer of lifelike dolls that reflect individual personalities and aspirations. The company, run primarily by women, was founded by the now semi-retired Happy Lindstrom. It has recently been sold for a fortune to a Japanese company but still maintains its headquarters in Littleburgh, Wisconsin. “Pulled by this strange and wonderful concept of female unity,” Jaycee heads to Wisconsin, where she discovers a workplace brimming with an intoxicating sweetness that belies the back-stabbing manipulations of Wonderful Girls’ venomous staff. Amply funded by a new termination agreement with the Hollywood studio hammered out by Meredith, Jaycee buys a house in Littleburgh reportedly built by the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright for his mistress. Once she settles in, it does not take long for her to discover that duplicity runs rampant below Wonderful Girls’ saccharine surface; bad-mouthing and sabotage lurk around every corner. Sipos writes with wit, introducing a large cast of quirky characters hiding a trove of backstories and deceptions. The dialogue is filled with sharply focused sarcasm, and Jaycee, who narrates the tale, is a feisty protagonist relentlessly trudging through a chaotic swamp of miscreants. Abel Dreaux, the village police chief, adds a bit of offbeat romance, and the aging Happy Lindstrom proves to be a delightful, surprising powerhouse. The relationship between Jaycee and Meredith provides some needed poignancy, as does the developing friendship between Jaycee and the gently rebellious Mennonite couple that tends to her culinary and gardening needs. Even so, acerbic humor is never more than a paragraph or two away.

When their club decides to have the girls’ team forfeit—even though they qualified for nationals—in favor of funding the boys’ team, white-presenting Barbara, who’s in her final year of secondary school, rallies her fractured teammates to fight back. Their efforts culminate in a high-stakes challenge match against the boys to determine who will get the funding for the championships. The relationships among the characters feel authentically complex, from Barbara’s strained dynamic with her seemingly unsupportive mother to her complicated romance with her boyfriend (brown-skinned soccer player Bilal, who may be selling drugs), and internal conflicts threatening the team’s unity. Through Jawad, a sympathetic restaurant owner who becomes a supportive ally of the Rosigny Roses, Wary demonstrates how sports can forge community bonds that transcend the playing field. The art, executed in felt-tip pen, pulses with energy and emotion, most notably in the recurring motif of turbulent skies rendered in varying bold hues of pinks, oranges, purples, and blues that mirror the story’s tensions. The vivid palette and dynamic illustrations capture both quiet moments of teenage uncertainty and explosive scenes of athletic action, while the diverse team members reflect the multicultural reality of suburban Paris. The translation maintains the story’s distinctly French sensibility without losing its universal appeal.

Trying to forget a violent encounter with a serial killer, Arista settles into her new home in Sedona, Arizona. The New-Agey town seems like a good fit. Interested in magic, she works at a shop called Cosmic Prisms that sells items like crystals and candles. Living with her Aunt Bethie, the co-leader of a coven, Arista learns witchcraft. It’s unclear what supernatural abilities Arista possesses, but she practices reading auras and randomly channels Bethie’s dead grandfather. Still, Arista misses many aspects of her former home in Boulder Creek, California: the pines and redwoods, ex-boyfriend Shane, and her mountain house, built by Bethie’s grandpa. Forever casting a dark shadow over Arista’s life is her Uncle Fergus. Reuniting with the parents who seemingly abandoned her, Arista learns they only wanted to hide her from Fergus’ malevolence. But their sacrifice may have been in vain. Arista’s mother is near death, and Fergus hasn’t given up. Bethie’s coven decides Arista should return to her Boulder Creek house to release the ghost inside her. Meanwhile, Fergus, in possession of Bethie’s family athame (ceremonial blade), pursues his deepest obsession: killing Arista to transfer her magical abilities to himself. Dodd’s second installment of a trilogy opens with a winding drive and crash on a mountain road and maintains a fast and twisty momentum throughout, yet the pace slows down enough for well-rounded character development. Arista, appearing to be positive and upbeat, also exhibits grief, searing anger, and a self-hatred that she sometimes allows “to sink its sharp teeth into her.” The always-intriguing cast includes Arista’s irritating but sassy co-worker Stevie, artist Mr. Tessay, and an eerie child, Soonsil, emitting growls while hugging a plushie. Sedona’s and Boulder Creek’s landscapes are vividly drawn, though it’s clear which one Arista prefers. Sedona’s natural monuments are “overbearing, like emotionless godheads” while Boulder Creek’s “lush evergreen” trees are “majestic…yet so full of life.” The gripping book ends on a cliffhanger, setting up the final installment.

Gramma Tala (from Moana) pushes her titular granddaughter to “listen to the powerful voice inside her.” Grandma Paguro, from Luca—a sea monster, like her grandson—urges Luca to take risks and to find friends who will love and accept him. Grandma Fa (from Mulan) makes her granddaughter laugh when times are tough. Méndez also compares these elders to readers’ own grandmothers; like Abuela Alma from Encanto, for instance, “your grandma will learn what makes you special.” While Disney fans will get the most out of the book, the examples are general enough to make sense even to those unfamiliar with the films—though one section may confuse readers who haven’t seen Coco. Kim’s soft-hued, sunny illustrations refer to scenes from the movies, and although her artwork retains the style of the original animation, overall, it has a visual cohesiveness. Will some grown-ups find it all a tad cheesy? Yes, but little readers will enjoy seeing beloved characters on the page and will warm to the messages of grandmotherly magic. The book features mostly characters of color.

Kahlenberg is well known—and a source of controversy—for having aligned, though a liberal, with conservative thinkers in arguing against the affirmative action of old. The goals of racially based affirmative action are, he writes, “valid”: “It is crucial that in a multicultural democracy, students learn to appreciate and value individuals of all backgrounds.” Yet, as constructed until recently, race-based affirmative action standards at state as well as private schools favored moneyed applicants, as well as legacy admissions. This may yield diversity of a kind, but it deprecates the efforts of economically disadvantaged students of whatever race. With a Duke economist, Kahlenberg gamed the results of class-based admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (where, perhaps surprisingly, there are 16 times more students from wealthy than from poor backgrounds), and the two discovered that the outcomes would be more equitable than race-based admissions: “We found that universities could produce both racial and economic diversity and maintain high academic standards if they invested in this new approach.” The keyword there is “invested,” because with likely fewer legacy and donor funds, it would cost schools more to offer financial aid to the economically disadvantaged than to do things as usual. However, things as usual are changing, anyway: The Supreme Court has ruled against race-based admissions, which, Kahlenberg cogently argues, may usher in a “fairer form of affirmative action.” He adds that this may also benefit progressives, who have been losing ground steadily among the electorate precisely because most Americans simply dislike race-based regulation. He also notes, in passing, that the “academic achievement gap,” measured among other things by SAT scores, is twice as large when gauged by class as by race.