It happens often in children’s publishing: suddenly, a topic no one’s written about in years (or ever) manages to surface in more than one book. Sometimes, there are enough coincidental titles they constitute a mini-trend. Last November, I wrote about The Year of the Yeti; a few years ago, it seemed every YA book cover trumpeted The Season of Windblown Hair, among other trends. And there was one year when I served on a book committee, and three or four MG and YA novels involved severed hands as major plot points.
Lately, I’ve noticed some modest two-book coincidences. Celestial-body home visits, club feet, and free-verse Tuskegee Airmen are just a few of the past several months’ coincidental releases.
     
The Moon Is Going to Addy’s House by Ida Pearle (Dial) is a beautiful picture book that came out last summer, in which a big full moon “follows” a little girl from her playdate in the city back to her home in the country. Don’t miss the full-page spreads and the many hues of a gorgeous moon.
How the Sun Got to Coco’s House by Bob Graham (Candlewick), another 2015 release, shows the sun’s giddy, glorious morning journey across a rich and varied world before arriving at Coco’s house to wake her for the day’s adventures. As always, Graham is a master at showing the connections between the humans (and animals) of our little planet.
     
One of my very favorite books from last year was Newbery Honor recipient The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Dial), which features an incredibly feisty, resilient, resourceful girl in WWII England, whose club foot has made her an object of loathing to her mother. How Ada saves herself and learns to blossom despite tough beginnings makes for one of the most satisfying reads in recent memory. Our whole staff is in love with this book.
Imagine my surprise at encountering another fantastic book with an outcast club-footed child at its center. The Wolf’s Boy by Susan Williams Beckhorn (Disney-Hyperion) takes place in prehistoric France, where young Kai, who yearns to prove himself as a hunter and a man, is considered taboo because of his foot. After his courageous rescue of a wolf pup, Kai begins to see himself differently and takes his life and future into his own hands. This book is a vividly written, memorable standout, reminiscent of My Side of the Mountain, Call It Courage, Julie of the Wolves, and Island of the Blue Dolphins.
     
You wouldn’t think that 2016, the 76th anniversary of the Tuskegee Airmen, would be the year that brings not one, but two, verse novels about those incredible, dauntless individuals, but it is. American Ace by Marilyn Nelson (Dial) and You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen by Carole Boston Weatherford with illustrations by Jeffery Boston Weatherford (Atheneum) both tell the history of the first African-American military pilots who overcame discrimination on all fronts to form distinguished squadrons. Though they share an unusual free-verse format for historical treatment, one is fiction, the other nonfiction. Both are fascinating and inspiring accounts of American heroes in every sense.
For people who don’t know how the industry works, the wheels of publishing grind slowly, and books are in the editorial process for a year or more (usually more) before being released. So these related releases truly are publishing coincidences, not copycats or derivations of one another. Something just enters the zeitgeist and finds more than one creative outlet.
One final observation: Dial is represented in every pair of this post, and in every case had the first release — which means that Dial is my new weather sock for interesting new micro-trends in publishing.
What publishing coincidences have you encountered?