The last month of summer brings authors and books galore to the 2024 National Book Festival in downtown Washington, D.C. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Meg Medina and popular actor Max Greenfield promise playful presentations for kids. Young people can look at the children’s books chosen to represent each of the 50 states, listen to story times and lively panels, do crafts and purchase books and get them signed by favorite authors.
Want a peek at what’s to come? Below are a few of the exciting new books by featured authors.
Tots–7 years old
The Truth About the Couch
By Adam Rubin
Illustrated by Liniers
Putnam, 2024, $19.99
Adam Rubin turns his attention from dragon fare to couch behavior in a new book as zany as his beloved Dragons Love Tacos. A besuited fox purports to educate readers about all things sofa. For example, couches are great not just for sitting but for sleeping, celebrity interviews, psychological analysis and pillow sliding (a rare sport, known mostly to the young). He also shares a few secrets, including truths that the “furniture police” wish to stay hidden. Curl up on your couch, open this book and find out!
My Daddy Is a Cowboy
My Daddy Is a CowboyBy Stephanie Seales
Illustrated by C.G. Esperanza
Abrams, 2024, $18.99
On their horses Clover and Power, a girl and her father set off for an early morning ride through the city. In lyrical prose, she describes feeling happy, strong and “high as the clouds” as she observes the streets from Clover’s back, including her favorite panaderia (bakery), the “swirly sherbet colors” of the dawn sky and the smiling folks opening their shops. Through this special “just us time,” she realizes she, too, is a cowboy, like her daddy, carefully tending her horse and sharing her joy with others.
Preteens
The Year of the Buttered Cat
The Year of the Buttered CatBy Susan Haas and Lexi Haas
Little, Brown, 2024, $19.99
The first publisher of this compelling, big-hearted memoir folded two years ago, but mother-daughter writing team and disability educators Susan Haas and Lexi Haas were then able to sell this updated version, with color photos and additional back matter, to Little, Brown. The book alternates chapters between Lexi’s experiences, from her earliest years, as a child with a severe and rare form of cerebral palsy that hampers motor skills but not her brilliant intellect, and her preparation at age 13 for an elective brain surgery that may increase her ability to move and speak. The book reads like a medical mystery as Lexi and her parents try to piece together what exactly happened to her, after her birth, to cause such damage. And it is full of warmth and wit, thanks to Lexi’s smart, lively voice and her take on her three loving, teasing older siblings, the family pets, her service dog and the annoying but necessary medical personnel with their needles and tests.
The Wild Robot Protects
The Wild Robot ProtectsBy Peter Brown
Little, Brown, 2023, $17.99
I’ve been a huge Roz fan since the first book in this bestselling series about a robot shipwrecked on an island populated by friendly wild animals. In this third novel, author/illustrator Peter Brown infuses an enthralling adventure tale with humor and tenderness as Roz seeks to save her furred and feathered buddies from a poison tide impacting their home, a result of damage to the environment. Roz is such a thoughtful, caring and evolving character as a result of the new information she is constantly taking in, that the reader often forgets that she is essentially naught but metal and wires.
Teens
How the Boogeyman Became a Poet
How the Boogeyman Became a PoetBy Tony Keith Jr.
HarperCollins, 2024, $19.99
This memoir in verse zings with bravura language that draws us into the heartfelt story of a young man emerging as his true self in a racist and homophobic world. From running and laughing with friends and “being lightning bolts of busy-bodied Black boys” in Washington, D.C., Keith learns to stay careful and closeted even as he begins to express himself in poetry, dreams of being the first in his family to go to college and becomes aware of his attraction to other boys. Readers will cheer throughout for young Tony but especially when he looks into his car’s rearview mirror and sees “a young Black man with knowledge of himself” and later, for the first time, performs one of his poems at an open mic night. Today, Keith is happily married to his husband and a poet and Ph.D. hip-hop educational leader.
Mary Quattlebaum lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books, most recently Queen Elizabeth II, an early reader biography. She teaches in the graduate program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes frequently for The Washington Post and is a popular school and conference speaker. maryquattlebaum.com
What to Know and Where to Go
Now in its 24th year, the free annual National Book Festival will be held on Saturday, August 24, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (801 Allen Y. Lew Place, NW, close to the Mount Vernon Square Metro). For a list of all festival authors for children and teens and presentation times and locations, check the website.
