Split into three sections, the memoir opens in 1964 when Lucas, 14, learns that her family is suddenly moving to Australia. It was, as Lucas shows, one of a handful of moves brought on by her father’s gambling problem, which eventually divided the family when Lucas and her mother refused to move anywhere else with him. As she got older, she found herself falling victim to a variety of manipulators: the guy from the bar who disappeared after asking her to deposit a $2,000 check that later bounced; the boss who was a con artist; and Mark, the controlling man she married who refused to allow her to pursue an art degree. Things finally started looking up for her after she divorced Mark and met kind, charming Greg, who supported her dreams. But after years of hard work, while she was studying ceramics at UCLA and her future as a studio artist looked promising, the health of her brother Chuck—a gay man who had AIDS—took a turn for the worse, and she stepped away from everything to take care of him. It’s a heart-wrenching story, with the first two sections emphasizing Lucas’ quest for stability and the last section focusing on her healing through art. From 1964 to 1996, the book explores AIDS and being gay in a time when it wasn’t widely accepted. Lucas’ prose is sharp and easy to read: “My empowerment circle is destroyed. Instead of dancing through the flames, I’m being consumed by them.” The middle of the story occasionally lags as an abundance of art-related setbacks feels repetitive and slow the pacing. Still, her relationship with her brother is honest and raw, and though readers know the outcome from the beginning, the ending packs a punch.

This affirming narrative begins in the wake of a Horrible Day. As well-meaning grown-ups suggest just how fortunate the protagonist is to have survived the ordeal, our elementary-aged narrator balks, cloaked in an anxiety that clings like a sticky second skin. The child feels safest with pal Alex, another Horrible Day survivor. Together, they occupy a space free from talk of luck or silver linings, processing the experience without pressure and remembering those lost to the catastrophic violence. When the protagonist hears tell of another Horrible Day, the family attends a protest where they join countless, similarly affected Others, united in the fight for action. In their company, the youngster makes a liberating discovery—that a community wrought from Horrible Days is a community nonetheless and that solidarity can make the days that follow tragedy a little more tenable. Adelman’s text celebrates resilience without diminishing its power with pity nor demanding that young people rush the recovery process, while Corrigan’s cerulean-hued art softens the sharpness of the subject. And though gun violence is heavily implied throughout, the Horrible Day’s precipitating event is never explicitly named, an elision that offers readers breathing room to understand their own formative traumas. An afterword from Sam Fuentes, who survived the 2018 Parkland shooting, offers additional information; the protagonist is brown-skinned, while supporting characters vary in skin tone.

Huy is beyond excited. He’s been waiting for the Mid-Autumn Festival—also known as the Moon Festival—all year. But he wonders: “If the festival is for the moon, why are all the lanterns in the shapes of stars?” So he goes to his Ba (father) for answers. As the two make a lantern together for an upcoming competition—a tradition that reminds Ba of making lanterns with his own father back in Vietnam—Ba reminds Huy of the folktale of Chú Cuội, a woodcutter who floated all the way to the moon. During Tết Trung Thu, children create star lanterns to help him make his way back home. Huy is determined to make a lantern honoring the moon. When it comes time for the contest, Huy realizes that indeed, he has the only moon-themed lantern, and as the others display theirs, a sudden gust of wind blows out everyone’s lights—except Huy’s. He in turn takes the opportunity to relight everyone’s lantern while explaining the meaning behind his design, eventually winning the contest. Vietnamese words and rituals are deftly interwoven throughout Dinh’s straightforward, concise narrative, complemented by the cozy cartoons, illuminated with bold colors and textured with lines and shadow.

Part trivia, part history, and part fun, Volponi’s conversational look at first lines takes a fresh form. While the firsts vary from Taylor Swift’s songs to a poem by Amiri Baraka, the entries are thoughtfully arranged so that each one flows smoothly into the next. This helps combat the disjointed flow of many trivia-style books, encouraging readers to keep going as they absorb fact after fact. Teens may be surprised that they’ve moved from reading about Dr. Seuss to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but (more importantly) they’ll be drawn in to both. The robust bibliography (arranged alphabetically, not by chapter) provides the curious with more places to explore and learn. The sections cover a wide variety of topics, from “Time and Space” (George Lucas, Douglas Adams, H.G. Wells) to “Society and Its Influences” (Frederick Douglass, Eminem, Ray Bradbury), but the majority of the creators mentioned are white and/or male. In the section “Harry Is Still Harry,” Volponi briefly touches on the irony that the Harry Potter series emphasizes acceptance of differences while J.K. Rowling has expressed transphobic sentiments. However, the segment on Sherman Alexie talks about experiencing consequences for one’s actions without mentioning the fallout from the sexual harassment allegations he faced. The frequent open-ended questions appearing throughout are useful, and educators may find this book useful for stimulating reflection and discussion.

Just over halfway through McAndrew’s collection comes a story called “Crime and Punishment,” a title that would accurately describe most of these tales, which often reckon with incarceration, guilt, and the aftereffects of violent acts. Sometimes that reaches baroque heights, as in “The Storyteller,” about a couple named Wayne and Nancy who buy “the house that had been the site of the famous Hobson murders.” The violent acts that took place there don’t return to the surface until the pair has divorced, with the house’s potential for supernatural visitations something Wayne taps into in conversations with his children. The young narrator of the title story sees an arm waving from a nearby prison and starts to wonder what its owner’s story might be: “at bedtime, my imagination unraveled like a scroll of every crime I’d ever heard of.” McAndrew has sympathy for many of his characters; Maria, protagonist of “The Familiar Dark,” has a penchant for casual burglary but winds up helping an older woman, Ania, who’s in the midst of a complicated grieving process. Late in the collection, McAndrew uses questions of crime and guilt to raise the stakes, placing his characters in places where they must try to understand the people in their lives—whether it’s a relative who committed a terrible act in “Letters From Toby” or a man with a penchant for unusual pets living in a halfway house in “How I Came To See the World.” McAndrew doesn’t shrink from asking big moral questions, and his fiction abounds with lived-in touches and a sense of scale.