The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark by Deborah Diesen; ill. by Dan Hanna

 Rhyming text about a clam who loses her pearl in the ocean.  Mr. Fish tries to help her find the pearl but there is one problem:  he is afraid of the dark and the further he swims down the ocean, the darker it gets.  Will he be able to save the day and brave the dark to find Ms. Clam’s pearl?  Read this whimsical book to find out.

-Julie B. 

Terry’s Many Hats by Terry Crews with Laura Baker; ill by Tanisha Cherislin

Terry has big dreams and a lot of hats to go with his them including a football helmet, a painter’s beret, and a scientist’s hat, among others.  When everyone tells Terry he can only do one thing, Terry proves them wrong.  Read this book to find out what Terry does!

-Julie B. 

Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

"They are pure men because at any moment, human folly can kill them, can subject them to violence all while sheltering behind one of the many perverted masks it dons to express itself: culture, religion, power, wealth, fame..."

Probably one of my favorite books of 2026, "Pure Men" is an analysis of the homophobia deeply engrained in the city of Dakar, Senegal. This fictional story follows Ndéné, a university literature professor who becomes entranced with a recent video of a violence towards the corpse of a góor-jigéen, otherwise known as a gay man. 

The story deep dives into the dehumanizing treatment of gay men and its roots. It shows how homophobia plants itself in every part of society down to the individuals own personal decisions. It becomes internalized, to where a gay man might not even realize they are upholding the very values that kill those within his own community. This hatred is fostered towards men who are a natural part of humanity, men who want nothing more than to express themselves, men who are harming nobody else by doing so, men who are--by comparison to the societies they live in--pure.

Story aside, the novel is written with incredibly magnetic prose, easily shaping beautiful characters while giving us a vivid look of what is happening inside of both their heads and the protagonist's. The was the fastest book I've read all year, and I would read it again. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested diving into the discussion of homophobia. Just be mindful: this book can be triggering due to the violence and hatred displayed. Please let me know if you've read it because I'd love to discuss!

- Leo

A Good Day for a Hat by T. Nat Fuller; ill by Rob Hodgson

Mr. Brown (the bear) has many, many hats for all occasions.  Today he seems to need them all because as he steps outside the scene changes from rain to snow to a marching band, a magic show, a rodeo and many other occasions.  He finally decides to be prepared for anything and wears all his hats.  The last occasion is the best of all, his birthday, and his friends have the best birthday hat for him.

-Julie B. 

One Leg on Earth by 'Pemi Aguda

  

"One Leg on Earth" is a novel centered around a girl who has freshly moved from her home town to the larger city of Lagos, Nigeria after having earned an internship at the construction center for a new development called "Omi City". She is quite anti-social, struggling to find the way to connect to others and be grounded in her own life. Everything takes a turn when she becomes pregnant.... at the same time as pregnant women are mysteriously being overcome with the urge to take their own life.

    The book follows her as she navigates these complex emotions of where she has found herself. In its journey, it touches on themes of connection, community, belonging, culture, and parenthood. It is intriguing to explore what it is like to be in a new city, searching for people to call home.

    While I find myself typically drawn to these types of books, I found it difficult to be engaged. I love the premise, but I struggle with the prose, often skimming over the page. It would have been better fleshed out as a short story, as it may have fallen victim to the length of a full novel. The main character also feels a little unbelievable in her thoughts and actions on certain occasions, making it hard to understand and relate to her. However, this is personal preference.While this is my perspective, I encourage readers to form their own opinions about the book. Feel free to check it out and share your thoughts!


- Leo

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Last winter, after the third or fourth time a friend of mine shared some influencer’s post to their story in hopes of winning the giveaway the influencer was running (hence the need to share the post to their story), I had the thought that social media influencers are, in many ways, no different than pastors preaching the prosperity gospel. Instead of asking for money, they ask for our attention and time, and so many of us willingly give it up in an attempt at reaching… something. I’m not sure what, as it depends on your flavor of influencer, but we wouldn’t be so captured if we didn’t think we could get something out of it, even if it's only a chance to peek into the windows of a (supposed) dream life. Which is why I think the premise of Yesteryear is so intriguing.

In Yesteryear, Natalie Heller Mills turns her nascent dream of a farm and a family into reality through the help of social media (and a $5 million check from her father-in-law). Her children wear the perfect palette of neutrals woven out of natural fibers, eat a healthy diet of food grown and raised on their own land, all of it far away from any liberal influences. It’s everything a good Christian woman could ever want, and it's what she peddles each day from her social media accounts. Who cares if she doesn’t know the first thing about farming? Who cares if her husband, the coddled youngest son of a career politician destined to be president someday (in his mind, at least), spends most of his time spiraling slowly down a right-wing rabbit hole of online misinformation and conspiracy theories? She’s Natalie Heller Mills, and she’s self-proclaimed as “perfect at being alive.” But when she wakes up in the past, with a husband who isn’t quite her husband, and children who aren’t quite her children, she finds herself put to the greatest test of her life.

It would be easy to reduce Yesteryear down to being simply a satire of a specific breed of social media influencing (namely, tradwives), and while it is that, it’s also in some respects a demented coming of age tale of a woman who managed to make one defining decision for herself and her future, but immediately bailed out the moment it didn’t align with her expectations. Natalie is not a likable character, and it’s hard to find sympathy for her. She is horribly judgmental, and uses her religion not only as a spiritual armor against evil, but as a weapon to be wielded against any person, particularly other women, she deems as less than. Going viral online and suddenly finding herself with millions of followers is just proof of her superiority over all the Angry Women out there who look at her pictures and watch her videos and secretly wish they could be just like her (may the checks that this attention gets her always clear, forever and ever, amen).

Caro Claire Burke does an excellent job in teasing this story out. She sets things up quickly, then alternates chapters of Natalie’s life leading up to the moment of her time travel with her experiences of now living in the past. There’s an eeriness to the chapters that depict Natalie’s farmstead life, particularly in the moments when she interacts with Mary, who is now her eldest daughter in this strange past. Mary has an adult weariness about her, the kind of weariness that only comes with being forced to grow up too soon, to be mother to both your younger siblings and your actual mother. The more time Natalie spends with Mary, she also realizes the toll this has taken on Mary, and finds herself strangely upset over the thought that someday soon, Mary will have to leave home to become a wife and mother too, just like Natalie, with no other option for her life. And this is just a fraction of the themes Burke touches on in this book. I haven’t even gotten into Burke’s use of gender roles, politics, being online, and wealth in crafting this story, and it would take a more experienced reviewer than me to deftly pull those pieces together.

I won’t get into too much detail about the ending. Wanting to know how Natalie ended up in the past kept me reading, and I think Burke’s choices in explaining how this happened were unexpected and far from any theory I may have had leading up to the end. I can understand why some might find the ending unsatisfactory, but I also think the conventional explanations would have been taking the easy way out, so I was pleased with the direction Burke took.

Yesteryear is a book that will leave an impression on you, and will have you begging your friends to read it too so you have someone to discuss it with. And if you feel inclined to share this review on your social media pages, feel free! Unfortunately, I have nothing for you to win as an incentive to do so. But I thank you for your attention anyway. Don't forget to follow us online!

Also, if Caro Claire Burke wanted to write a version of this story from the perspective of Natalie’s husband, Caleb, I would 100% read that. He may be a manchild, but I strangely found myself more sympathetic towards him than Natalie. Now that I've read Marianne's excellent review, I perhaps need to ruminate on why I feel that way...