Waiting on Wednesday: When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai. 256 p. HarperCollins Publishers, May 9, 2023. 9780063047004.

Last week, when Mr. Schu posted an interview and cover reveal for When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai, I emailed my sixth grade LA colleague immediately. She got so excited as well. Inside Out and Back Again is a sixth grade class read and beloved. Mark your calendars. May 9 is the pub date. Here's the a short synopsis via Mr. Schu's website:

When Clouds Touch Us tells the story of Hà and her family two years after becoming refugees. Yes, she now speaks English and eats lunch in the cafeteria, instead of the bathroom, with actual friends. But then her mother announces they must move again, to Texas, which Hà can’t even pronounce. In many ways the long task of rebuilding proves even more daunting than fleeing war in panic.

Waiting on Wednesday: Pax, Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

Pax, Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker. Illustrated by Jon Klassen. 256 p. Balzer + Bray/ HarperCollins Publishers, September 7, 2021. 9780062930347.

Waiting on Wednesday features Pax, Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker. Fans of Pax will be thrilled to learn of this sequel due to publish on September 7, 2021. Here's the publisher synopsis: It’s been a year since Peter and his pet fox, Pax, have seen each other. Once inseparable, they now lead very different lives. Pax and his mate, Bristle, have welcomed a litter of kits they must protect in a dangerous world. Meanwhile Peter—newly orphaned after the war, wracked with guilt and loneliness—leaves his adopted home with Vola to join the Water Warriors, a group of people determined to heal the land from the scars of the war.

When one of Pax's kits falls desperately ill, he turns to the one human he knows he can trust. And no matter how hard Peter tries to harden his broken heart, love keeps finding a way in. Now both boy and fox find themselves on journeys toward home, healing—and each other, once again.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

The Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland. 336 p. Balzer + Bray, February 2, 2020. 

Publisher synopsis: After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears—as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by—and that Jane needs her too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive—even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

I was totally riveted by Dread Nation and absolutely cannot wait to revisit this world.