Spotlight Titles
Refreshed monthly, the reviews below are representative of what you can expect in a typical issue of the Bulletin. Visit this link to subscribe for more reviews.
Picture Books
Lyall, Casey Whale, That Was Unexpected; illus. by Kathryn Durst. Tundra, 2026 [48p]
Trade ed. ISBN 9781774883617 $18.99
E-book ed. ISBN 9781774883624 $10.99
Reviewed from digital galleys R* 4-7 yrs
Seasoned mariner Maude departs from the docks with her yellow-slicker jacketed dog Claude for another unsurprising day on the ocean. But the shadow looming just under their boat has other ideas, and as its maw takes up a full spread, the creature swallows Maude, Claude, and their vessel whole in one gulp. What is a broad like Maude and a salty dog like Claude to do? Captain and canine keep cool: they decide to throw themselves a farewell party from the belly of the whale. Elegantly placing a respective hand and paw over their chests and looking to the narrator/reader, they request a eulogy that has a bit of pizzazz: “Farewell, Maude, a grand old dame. Farewell Claude, sixth of his name. Farewell, trusty little boat.” Our not-yet-departed heroes take turns hamming up mourning one another, when a WHOOSH! of an incoming blast of water blows back Maude’s pigtails and Claude’s ears alike, bringing new fishy guests to the farewell party in certain need of extolling. “From the top,” an impatient Maude grumps at the narrator, as numerous guests wash aboard the ship and are woven into the merrily morbid sea shanty. Rendered in a blustery Northern Atlantic palette featuring pops of high saturation with a mix of gouache, charcoal, and digital media, Durst’s illustrations elevate a unique plot and comedic writing into an instant Wellermen for the wains. Maude and Claude’s deadpan reactions and mirroring, stout, grounded character designs make for inspired comedic contrast to the flailing kooky sea life and rushing waters. This readaloud will unite any group of kids into a boisterous ship’s crew with its rowdy repetition and intertextual dialogue, and sailors less self-possessed than Maude will also be glad to know this twosome survives to sail the seas again. WMC
Fiction
McCallum, Kristen Free Girls. Flatiron, 2026 [288p]
Trade ed. ISBN 9781250320261 $19.99
E-book ed. ISBN 9781250320278 $11.99
Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12
Sixteen-year-old Jasmine spent the last year in an all-girls detention center for a stupid mistake, and she’s ready for a fresh start upon her release. Unfortunately, her mom already began that new life without her—getting married, moving to a different town, and inheriting a stepdaughter, Kayla. Now, Jasmine’s been thrown in the deep end, struggling to stay afloat in a situation she didn’t expect. At her mom’s request, Jasmine keeps her incarceration a secret, and eventually she starts to feel like her life is looking up; she’s making friends, getting along with Kayla, and things are going well with her crush, Deanna. When a girl from the detention center reaches out after she’s released, Jasmine must figure out which direction to take her second chance. As the focus shifts between Jasmine’s time at the detention center and her new life, the audience sees the unfortunate ease with which a teen can get swept up into a system that doesn’t have their best interest at heart, especially when parental relationships are strained. Jasmine and her mom are at odds both before and during her incarceration—Jasmine yearns for her mom to just believe in her, but they’re constantly talking past each other, making their fraught relationship increasingly strenuous, and Jasmine believes her mom saved “the best version of herself for a family that would appreciate it.” The harsh reality of the detention center is painfully apparent, especially in the adults who believe “there are no good apples in a barrel of rotten ones” and who treat the girls as if rehabilitation was never the goal, especially for Black girls like Jasmine. McCallum’s debut novel offers up a beautiful and unflinching story about reputation, tenuous mother daughter relationships, and beginning again. JMM
Nonfiction
McCullough, Joy Suffer a Witch: A Memoir. Dutton, 2026 [336p]
Trade ed. ISBN 9780593855904 $30.00
E-book ed. ISBN 9780593855928 $11.99
Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 11-12
In this searing gut-punch of a memoir, McCullough, author of the brilliant Enter the Body (BCCB 3/23), recounts the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of a trusted youth pastor in her Presbyterian youth group in high school. The daughter of a preacher, Joy grew up with a fundamental trust in the church, so when the new leader of her Bible study took a special interest in her, she saw him as a confidant and friend, someone who would listen to her anxieties about her body, her friends, and school without judgment. Along the way, however, he began to prey on her insecurities, sexually abusing her over a period of three years while convincing her what they had was romantic. It was only after she broke from their relationship that she was finally able to see how he had been grooming her, how her family and the church had failed her, and how much work she’d had to do just to be okay. McCullough’s verse is both elegant and brutal, with moments of lyrical, conceptual imagery alternating with raw, visceral descriptions of what she endured, physically and emotionally. While the overall trajectory is structured sequentially over her high school years in the ’90s, poems are interrupted with letters written to various women throughout history who have been maligned, assaulted, and abused—Eve, the women of Salem, Joan of Arc, to name a few—placing her own trauma within the context of patriarchal violence. References to rough drafts and her editors humanize the author herself, destroying any buffer between art and artist; the vulnerability here is almost unbearable, as readers watch Joy as a teen disappear into herself and then see McCullough as a writer wrestle with exactly how she wants to make herself seen again. An exercise in healing through creativity, this isn’t an easy read, but it’s certainly a compelling and ultimately beautiful one. KQG
