A silly, laugh-out-loud read-aloud picture book debut from #1 New York Times bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz! Once upon a time, in the middle of a group of seven thousand happy islands named after King Philip of Spain, there lived a lady named Dona Esmeralda. She had a big bouffant hairdo and was much smaller than you. And she was always hungry... And so begins the wickedly hilarious tale of one very old, but very stylish little lady who loves to eat, but can only find the ooey, gooey, mushy, smelly leftovers of naughty children to nosh on. But what happens when Dona Esmeralda finds out about all the tasty treats that children do eat? Hold on to your hairdos as Esmeralda eats everything in sight in a cumulative read-aloud inspired by stories from author Melissa de la Cruz's childhood in the Philippines!

Someone is making a great big mess at the zoo in this hilarious and delightful debut picture book. Can you find the culprit before the zoo animals' do in this gentle mystery for the youngest readers? All the animals at the zoo are in a tizzy. Someone slept in Elephant's haystack, drank from Lion's bowl, went potty in Ostrich's sandbox (yuck!), and scratched Giraffe's favorite tree. Worst of all, someone tried to eat Goldie, the zoo's resident goldfish. Whoever it was has been leaving a suspicious trail of footprints behind. Is it a great big scary monster as the animals fear? Or is it something else entirely? Follow the clues on every page, and you just might be surprised to see who is behind this very messy situation.

A middle grade novel in verse about Samira, an eleven-year-old Rohingya refugee living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, who finds strength and sisterhood in a local surf club for girls. Samira thinks of her life as before and after: before the burning and violence in her village in Burma, when she and her best friend would play in the fields, and after, when her family was forced to flee. There's before the uncertain journey to Bangladesh by river, and after, when the river swallowed her nana and nani whole. And now, months after rebuilding a life in Bangladesh with her mama, baba, and brother, there's before Samira saw the Bengali surfer girls of Cox's Bazar, and after, when she decides she'll become one. Samira Surfs, written by Rukhsanna Guidroz with illustrations by Fahmida Azim, is a tender novel in verse about a young Rohingya girl's journey from isolation and persecution to sisterhood, and from fear to power.

The Wonky Donkey has a daughter in this hilarious sequel to the runaway hit! Wonky Donkey had a child,it was a little girl.Hee Haw! The laugh-out-loud follow-up to the viral sensation The Wonky Donkey is finally here! Featuring playful verses by Craig Smith and charming illustrations by Katz Cowley, The Dinky Donkey follows the same formula that made its predecessor a worldwide hit. Readers will love the antics of this stinky punky plinky-plonky winky-tinky pinky funky blinky dinky donkey!

From the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander Mysteries: An “uplifting . . . grittily realistic” fable about war-torn Africa and a mystical orphan boy (The New York Times). A single gunshot cracks the silence of a hot African night. On the rooftop of a local theater company, a ten-year-old boy slowly dies of bullet wounds. He is Nelio, a leader of street kids, rumored to be a healer and a prophet, and possessed of a strangely ancient wisdom. One of the millions of poor people “forced to eat life raw,” Nelio refuses to be taken to the hospital. Instead, he tells the unforgettable story of his life to a sole witness. Over the course of nine nights, a baker named José Antonio Maria Vaz listens as bandits cruelly raze Nelio’s village, propelling him to join the legions of abandoned children living in the streets. A grand act of imagination intended to prove to his comrades that existence must be more than mere survival, cuts Nelio’s life short. As the tale unfolds, José is forever changed. He becomes the “Chronicler of the Winds”, vowing to reveal Nelio’s magical words to all who will listen. Shortlisted for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature and nominated for the Swedish Publishers Association’s August Prize, Chronicler of the Winds is a beautifully crafted novel that is a testament to the power of storytelling itself. “Mankell writes eloquently of the realities of poverty and violence without becoming sugary or didactic. . . . An expert craftsman” (The Observer).

Throughout the world, the kitchen is the heart of family and community life. Yet, while everyone has a story to tell about their grandmother's kitchen, the myriad activities that go on in this usually female world are often devalued, and little scholarly attention has been paid to this crucial space in which family, gender, and community relations are forged and maintained. To give the kitchen the prominence and respect it merits, Maria Elisa Christie here offers a pioneering ethnography of kitchenspace in three central Mexican communities, Xochimilco, Ocotepec, and Tetecala. Christie coined the term "kitchenspace" to encompass both the inside kitchen area in which everyday meals for the family are made and the larger outside cooking area in which elaborate meals for community fiestas are prepared by many women working together. She explores how both kinds of meal preparation create bonds among family and community members. In particular, she shows how women's work in preparing food for fiestas gives women status in their communities and creates social networks of reciprocal obligation. In a culture rigidly stratified by gender, Christie concludes, kitchenspace gives women a source of power and a place in which to transmit the traditions and beliefs of older generations through quasi-sacramental food rites.

One of "The Best Memoirs of a Generation" (Oprah's Book Club): a young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.