Lerner Publishing Group Showcase Fall 2022

The weeks of summer vacation are winding down and one of the things I will miss most when I head back to school is not being home to immediately open all the great book mail that shows up at my house. I have a whole system for the massive amounts of books that appear here: tweet the books, add them to various book mail posts, sort them into things I will definitely read, books that will likely be good options for post-it note reviews, books I may want consider reading, and books that I likely won’t read. Then I read whatever, review it if it grabbed my attention, and send all the books back out somewhere in the world (often to my school or my kid’s high school). I also read in order of publication date to try to keep a handle on this whole thing. I do like a system!

Pull out your TBR lists or get ready to add to the orders for books that stock your library or classroom shelves. Today I’m sharing with you new and forthcoming titles from Lerner Publishing Group. All annotations are from the publisher.

Funeral Girl by Emma K. Ohland (ISBN-13: 9781728458007 Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group Publication date: 09/06/2022, Ages 12+)

Sixteen-year-old Georgia Richter feels conflicted about the funeral home her parents run—especially because she has the ability to summon ghosts.

With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, she can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear, to a fate that remains mysterious to Georgia. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives.

Then her classmate Milo’s body arrives at Richter—and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing Georgia to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.

Unretouchable by Sofia Szamosi (ISBN-13: 9781728462929 Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group Publication date: 09/13/2022, Ages 12+)

Olive is spending the summer before art school at a coveted internship, helping one of the fashion industry’s elite digital-imaging specialists. After a glamourous New York photoshoot, she learns that taking pictures is only the first step. She discovers the “violent verbs” (cut, crop, slice, lasso) of image retouching software and the secrets behind “virtual models.”

Soon Olive is fixating on her own appearance and pondering the ethics of her work behind the scenes. As college gets closer, she’ll try to get out of her own head, attempt to quit the Internet, and finally embrace image-making on her own terms. Unretouchable is a window into the little-known, hugely influential world of fashion photography and a tribute to self-acceptance.

I Could Not Do Otherwise: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker by Sara Latta (ISBN-13: 9781728413921 Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group Publication date: 10/04/2022, Ages 13+)

As a teenager, Mary Edwards Walker determined she would no longer wear the confining corsets and long skirts society dictated women wear at the time and instead opted for pants with a short skirt, setting the stage for her lifelong controversial efforts to change expectations. One of the first women to earn a degree in medicine, Walker championed women’s rights, social justice, and access to health care. She became a Civil War surgeon and a spy, who was captured and arrested by the Confederacy, and she is still the only woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Written by young adult author Sara Latta, I Could Not Do Otherwise teaches readers about Walker’s determination and strength of conviction, as well as her complete disregard of what others thought of her unconventional style. The slogan, “women’s rights are human rights” is a direct descendent of Walker’s words: “The recognition of the individuality of woman, is simply an acknowledgement of human rights, which all human beings have guaranteed them, by the fact of their having an existence.” I Could Not Do Otherwise brings to light an amazing historical figure who broke gender norms and fought for issues that are still relevant today.

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Monique Gray Smith, Nicole Neidhardt (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9781728458991 Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group Publication date: 11/01/2022, Ages 13+)

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.

Torch by Lyn Miller-Lachmann (ISBN-13: 9781728415680 Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group Publication date: 11/01/2022, Ages 13+)

Three teens struggle to carve out futures for themselves under a totalitarian regime.

Czechoslovakia, 1969

Seventeen-year-old Pavol has watched his country’s freedoms disappear in the wake of the Soviet Union’s invasion. He’s seen his own dreams disappear too. In a desperate, fatal act of protest against the oppressive new government, he sets himself on fire in public, hoping to motivate others to fight for change.

Instead, Pavol’s death launches a government investigation into three of his closest friends. Štěpán finds his Olympic hockey ambitions jeopardized and must conceal his sexual orientation from authorities who could use it against him. Tomáš has already been accused of “antisocial” behavior because he struggles to follow the unwritten rules of everyday interactions, and now he must work even harder to meet the expectations of his father, the regional leader of the communist party. And aspiring film director Lída, Pavol’s girlfriend, is pregnant with his child, which brands her a traitor by association and upends all her plans.

With their futures hanging in the balance, all three must decide whether to keep struggling to survive in the country Pavol died hoping to save . . . or risk a perilous escape to the other side.

Filed under: New Releases