LIKE TALES OF YORE

Having tackled dragon lore in her debut, The Story of Owen (and its follow-up, Prairie Fire), E.K. Johnston’s latest YA novel is a Scheherazade-inspired tale called A Thousand Nights (Disney-Hyperion, Oct.), in which a murderous tyrant is brought to heel by a young woman with a magical way with words. From Ronsdale Press in September comes Carol Anne Shaw’s Hannah & the Wild Woods. When Hannah meets a Japanese girl while volunteering to clean up Pacific Rim National Park in the wake of the 2011 tsunami, she has no idea her new friend is really a kitsune, a magical fox, who wants nothing more than to be human. In November, Inhabit Media will publish Way Back Then, a picture book with text by Neil Christopher and illustrations by Germaine Arnaktauyok. Written in both English and Inuktitut, the bedtime book introduces young children to myths and stories from Inuit culture.

(illustration: Akiko Miyakoshi)

Picture books: New Dr. Seuss? Fresh rhymes on the loose! What Pet Should I Get? (Random House) arrives in July. Full Moon at the Napping House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a long-awaited sequel to Audrey and Don Wood’s classic bedtime story, publishes in September. Japanese Nissan Children’s Storybook Award–winner Akiko Miyakoshi creates a beautiful Alice in Wonderland/Little Red Riding Hood mashup in The Tea Party in the Woods (Kids Can, Aug.). Eoin Colfer’s Imaginary Fred (HarperCollins U.K., Oct.) is illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. So is Drew Daywalt’s The Day the Crayons Came Home (Philomel, Aug.), a follow-up to the smash hit, The Day the Crayons Quit. What more do you need? Perhaps Édouard Manceau’s Once Upon a Rainy Day (Owlkids), a Groundhog Day–esque romp.