Six Starred Reviews! Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book of 2019 A 2019 New York Public Library Best Book for Kids Imagination meets reality in this poetic and tender ode to childhood, illustrated by Caldecott Honor winner, John Rocco. Every year, a boy and his family go camping at Mountain Pond. Usually, they see things like an eagle fishing for his dinner, a salamander with red spots on its back, and chipmunks that come to steal food while the family sits by the campfire. But this year is different. This year, the boy is going into first grade, and his mother is encouraging him to do things on his own, just like his older brother. And the most different thing of all . . . this year, a tiger comes to the woods. With lyrical prose and dazzling art, Pulitzer Prize finalist Susan Choi and Caldecott-honor winning artist John Rocco have created a moving and joyful ode to growing up.

When you're so skinny people call you Skeleton Boy, how do you find strength for the fight of your life? Vonlai knows that soldiers who guard the Mekong River shoot at anything that moves, but in oppressive Communist Laos, there's nothing left for him, his spirited sister, Dalah, and his desperate parents. Their only hope is a refugee camp in Thailand—on the other side of the river. When they reach the camp, their struggles are far from over. Na Pho is a forgotten place where life consists of squalid huts, stifling heat, and rationed food. Still, Vonlai tries to carry on as if everything is normal. He pays attention in school, a dusty barrack overcrowded with kids too hungry to learn. And, to forget his empty stomach, he plays soccer in a field full of rocks. But when someone inside the camp threatens his family, Vonlai calls on a forbidden skill to protect their future—a future he's sure is full of promise, if only they can make it out of Na Pho alive. In her compelling debut, Laura Manivong has written an evocative story that is vividly real, strongly affecting, and, at its heart, about hope that resonates in even the darkest moments.

When summer camp is so sweet, can you run from all the fun? Raj is going to what has to be the worst summer camp ever--Camp Sweets, where they teach children how to become expert sweet-makers. Yes, his mother is the owner of the Tasty Mithai Bhandar that serves the best gulab jamuns, jalebis, rasgullas and other delectable confections in town. But has anyone ever asked him what he wants? Certainly not to be anywhere near laddoos and imartis. Grumpy and annoyed, he turns up at Camp Sweets determined to not learn anything. Yet, there are boys and girls here who adore sweets. As Raj whips up one Indian dessert after another, he finds that with all the crazy cooking and new friendships, Camp Sweets is a summer camp like no other. And the kitchen is where monstrously sweet adventures begin...

Nemarluk, one of the most feared Aboriginal renegades in the north of Australia, had vowed to rid his land of all intruders. This is the story of the last three years of his life, and his extraordinary battle with the tracker, Bul-Bul, brought in by the Northern Territory police in a final desperate attempt to put an end to Nemarluk's fight. Ion L. Idriess had already brought Lasseter and Flynn to the public's attention with his action-packed stories. He had first-hand knowledge of the courage of Nemarluk and wanted to immortalise the man he called the King of the Wilds. 'Jack [Idriess] understood the depth of Nemarluk's hatred for the Japanese and the white intruders who had come, unasked, into his people's tribal lands of which he was chief. It was not only Nemarluk's desire to protect his people and their lands from the invaders, it was also his obligation and duty.' - Beverley Eley, biographer of Ion L. [Jack] Idriess

The book is a fiction, based on some of the real-time anti-militant operations, conducted by the author in Kashmir Valley, during the period 1992-95. A time when local sentiments were on the boil, blatantly used by a rogue neighboring country and turning it into a proxy war. The era depicts heavy-armed confrontations between the radicals and the Indian Army on its own soil. It is a comprehensive portrayal of the war-like situation prevailing in the valley during the period, the audacity displayed by the army in taming the belligerents, as also the efforts made to win back the hearts and minds of the local population. It is a collation of few high dividend operations selected based on the degree of difficulty and the value addition in achieving the task with minimum collateral damages.