Small Joys for Winter: 10 Great New Children’s Books to Read in February

In the middle of winter, when the world too often seems cold and grim, I search for small joys like it’s my job. If there’s an interesting set of animal footprints in the snow, I’ll track it down. I’ll teach myself a favorite song on the guitar, or I’ll listen to my kids laugh as they get up to something disastrously messy in the next room. I’ll text a friend, and we’ll send each other laugh-crying emojis, because even when the world seems cold and grim, we can find something to laugh about.

And, of course, I’ll read. This month, I’ve been drawn to children’s books that celebrate some of the small joys in kids’ lives: romping through the grass like a horse, playing pretend with a loved one, or watching big trucks come down the street. I’ve also chosen several novels for middle grade and young adult readers that I consider to be small joys in and of themselves.

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Liana Finck, Mixed Feelings
(Rise x Penguin Workshop, January 21)
Recommended for ages 3-5

Any toddler caregiver has probably read a dozen different concept books about feelings, but this one is special. The children in Mixed Feelings aren’t just feeling happy or worried; like humans everywhere, their emotional lives are more complex and specific than that. They feel “like no one ever listens to me,” “mad at so many things… and maybe also a little bit hungry,” and “just in the mood to pretend to be a horse.” New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck brings humor and a respectful understanding of kids’ emotions to this smart and charming picture book.

Shawn Harris, Let’s Be Bees
(Neal Porter Books, February 11)
Recommended for ages 4-8

You can’t read Let’s Be Bees by yourself, at least not properly: Caldecott honoree Shawn Harris’s new picture book is all about the joy of reading aloud with someone you love. On each spread, an adult and child (depicted reading Let’s Be Bees, in a cool meta twist) make sounds together and visually transform into the creatures and objects they’re pretending to be: buzzy bees, rustling trees, wind and rain, butterflies and cacti, rumbling volcanoes, and many more wonderfully noisy things. The book’s interactivity is tremendously kid-friendly, and I think lots of adults will enjoy the rare opportunity to roar like a moose, too.

Jashar Awan, Every Monday Mabel
(Simon & Schuster, February 25)
Recommended for ages 4-8

“Monday is the best day of the week (according to Mabel, at least).” I don’t want to tell you exactly why Mabel loves Mondays so much—the multi-spread reveal in this brilliant picture book is more satisfying than any sentence I could possibly write—but I’ll say that if you have a kid like mine, who runs to the window as soon as he realizes it’s trash pick-up day, you need this book right now. You probably need several copies, in fact, to give as gifts to your kids’ truck-loving friends. With colorful, clever art and text, award-winning author-illustrator Jashar Awan has created a celebration of one of life’s weekly small joys.

Jewell Parker Rhodes, Will’s Race for Home
Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov
(Little, Brown, January 14)
Recommended for ages 8-12

I love books that tell stories I haven’t heard often before, and Will’s Race for Home is that sort of book. It’s a western, set in 1889, about a young Black boy whose family has been sharecropping in Texas. When Will and his father hear that land in Oklahoma is open for settlement, they set out on an adventure to finally “claim [their] own acres” after years of laboring in others’ fields. But nature is dangerous, and people are even more so. Award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes brings her well-crafted prose to every page of Will’s journey, and black-and-white illustrations from Olga and Aleksey Ivanov help readers envision his historical world.

Mary Averling, The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay
(G.P. Putnam’s Sons, February 4)
Recommended for ages 8-12

Mary Averling follows up her middle grade debut, The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, with another engaging and spine-tingling novel for kids who love creepy stories. Twelve-year-old Maudie is a pretty normal kid, except for one minor detail: she’s a ghost. She haunts a vacation cabin in the woods, which is usually sort of fun, because she and her spectral kid companions, Kit and Scratch, try to scare vacationers into running away. But even ghosts are afraid of things—specifically Longfingers, a creature that snatches children and steals souls. When Kit and Scratch go missing, Maudie suspects Longfingers is to blame, and she has to work with the living girl she’s been haunting if she wants to see them again.

Jose Pimienta, Halfway to Somewhere
(Random House Graphic, February 18)
Recommended for ages 8-12

When Ave moves with their mom and brother from Mexicali to Lawrence, Kansas, Ave isn’t at all happy about how their life has changed. First of all, Ave learns that their dad and sister won’t be joining them in Kansas: their parents are getting divorced. On top of that, while Ave’s little brother makes friends quickly and learns English easily, Ave feels self-conscious about their own English and struggles to make connections at middle school. But a few kind classmates help Ave begin to find their own place in Lawrence, and maybe the long walks Ave takes through town aren’t so different from the hikes they used to take in Baja California. In this graphic novel, Jose Pimienta uses beautifully specific landscapes and characters to create a universally appealing emotional story.

Alasdair Beckett-King, Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum (Montgomery Bonbon #1)
Illustrated by Claire Powell
(Candlewick, February 11)
Recommended for ages 9-12

Ten-year-old Bonnie Montgomery hasn’t officially taken on any detective work of her own, because who would let a kid solve murders? When Bonnie puts on her raincoat, beret, and enormous mustache, however, she becomes the renowned consulting detective Montgomery Bonbon. In Murder at the Museum, Bonnie and her loyal assistant, Grampa Banks, investigate a mysterious death and an art theft, but the cast’s silly antics (depicted in fun cartoon-style illustrations) ensure that things never get too grim. Series lovers won’t have to wait long for more stories: the second Montgomery Bonbon book, Death at the Lighthouse, releases simultaneously, with a third, Mystery at the Manor, coming in June.

Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 4)
Recommended for ages 12-18

Long, long ago (in 2003), Libba Bray’s young adult novel A Great and Terrible Beauty left an indelible mark on my reading soul. This year, though I’m no longer a young adult, I’ll be racing to the bookstore for a copy of Under the Same Stars, Bray’s historical mystery that braids together stories of teens from three different time periods: Sophie and Hanna in 1940s Germany, Jenny in 1980s West Germany, and Miles and Chloe in New York City in 2020. Each setting feels vibrant, each character’s unique point of view is genuinely compelling, and I can’t wait to find out what secrets from forty and eighty years in the past are revealed as Miles and Chloe investigate the long-ago disappearance of two teenagers from beneath the mystical Bridegroom’s Oak.

Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin
(Versify, February 11)
Recommended for ages 13-17

(S)Kin, the new novel in verse from acclaimed author Ibi Zoboi, is based on Caribbean folklore and narrated in turns by two teenage girls, each with her own strong voice. Marisol has recently moved to Brooklyn from the Caribbean, and like her mother, she is a soucouyant—a fireball witch who changes into her supernatural form during the new moon, shedding her human skin and drinking human blood. Genevieve, who is struggling with a mysterious skin condition, was raised by her white father but dreams of her Black biological mother and wonders why the dreams always come laced with fire. The girls’ stories soon become entwined, making this crackling novel tough to put down.

Joy McCullough, Everything is Poison
(Dutton, January 14)
Recommended for ages 14-17

In both verse and prose, Joy McCullough’s captivating new novel Everything is Poison transports readers to 17th-century Rome, where Carmela is celebrating her 16th birthday. She’s finally old enough to live her lifelong dream of working in her mother’s apothecary shop, dispensing remedies for all kinds of ailments from toothache to lovesickness. Many of the potions are secret ones, prepared for women who want to end pregnancies or escape from violent husbands. When one of these secret potions delivers an unexpected outcome, Carmela’s mother has to flee, and Carmela must run the shop and tend to the needs of the women in her community.