Ten Children's Books Tackle Tough Emotions and Big Laughs This November

Ten new children's and young adult titles arrive in November, ranging from a picture book about a hungry Alaskan bear to a YA novel set in an alternate nineteenth-century London. Six of the ten publish in the first week of the month, on November 3.

The list, compiled by reviewers ahead of the holiday season, splits roughly into two camps: books that make children laugh and books that take their difficult feelings seriously. Several attempt both.

What are the picture books?

Neil Sharpson and illustrator Dan Santat, the pair behind last year's Don't Trust Fish, reunite for Help! I'm Being Eaten by a Bear! (Dial, November 3, ages 3–7). A hapless narrator lands in Alaska, meets one of the "five most common Alaskan things" — a large, hungry bear — and finds the airport pamphlet "What to Do if You Meet a Bear" useless. Reviewers praise the pair's comic timing.

Avi Steinberg, a kindergarten teacher and New Yorker cartoonist, offers The Jumble (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 3, ages 4–8), a Freaky Friday-style switch in which a boy named George ends up at doggie daycare while a dog named Romper goes to school.

Gideon Sterer's The Island, illustrated by Julia Sarcone-Roach (Knopf, November 24, ages 4–8), takes a child to the island he always visits when life feels sad and overwhelming — and shows him it holds hopeful magic, not only shadows and beasts.

What about middle grade?

Science writer Eleanor Spicer Rice answers questions such as what sound a fish makes when it farts in Undercover Conversations: Eavesdrop on the Natural World (MIT Kids Press, November 10, ages 7–10), illustrated by Rob Wilson, with interviews with real-life scientists.

Cartoonist Grant Snider's verse novel The Year I Stopped Drawing (Amulet, November 10, ages 8–12) follows seventh grader Adam, whose father struggles with alcohol addiction, whose parents' marriage is failing, and whose identity as an artist is threatened by a talented new girl at school.

Kip Wilson's Backpack, Boy, Berlin (Candlewick, November 3, ages 8–12), illustrated by Matt Schu, is based on real people and events: in 1938 Berlin, ten-year-old Don Heath, Jr., son of an American diplomat, helps tutor Mildred Harnack pass intelligence from the German resistance to the U.S. Embassy.

Jaclyn Moriarty's The Accidental World-Slip of Astrid Verity (Levine Querido, November 3, ages 8–12), the sixth Kingdoms and Empires book but readable as a stand-alone, sends ten-year-old Astrid from her fantasy world into ours, where Sydney kid Echo helps her find her way home.

Jimmy Liao's Our Starry Starry Night (Chronicle, November 3, ages 8 and up), first published in Taiwan in 2009, pairs minimal text with surreal, detailed art to tell of a lonely city girl who befriends an equally isolated boy.

And for teenagers?

Pippa Dunn's speculative debut The Sign of the Raven (Viking, November 10, ages 12 and up) imagines a New British Republic ruled by an autocratic president after Queen Victoria's assassination. Sixteen-year-old messenger Ashlyn Threadneedle navigates the Stream — the world of lucid dreams — and must stop a government plot to seize control of it.

Talia Tucker's Ghosted (Feiwel & Friends, November 10, ages 14–18) mixes humor, horror and romance: ghosted senior Keziah haunts the boy who ghosted her, with help from a girl named Gigi, her own sleep paralysis demon Steve, and feelings she did not plan for.

What does this change for buyers?

The spread of publication dates — November 3, 10 and 24 — gives parents and librarians three separate ordering windows before the holidays. The deeper signal is editorial: major imprints are betting that children want books about addiction, isolation and authoritarianism, not only escapes from them.