New Releases

July New Releases!

One of the best things about summer is lounging in a lawn chair and reading. Lucky for us, July is filled with a pile of new middle grade books – including books by our very own Natalie Rompella and Beth McMullen (Congratulations, Natalie and Beth!) – just in time for those lazy summer days. Enjoy!

July New Releases:

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgMidnight. Stars speckle the darkness with bits of light.

A cockroach skitters across the kitchen floor to snatch a forgotten breadcrumb. In the backyard, a spider weaves an intricate design on the fence. Winged insects dance and flicker in the porch light.

Day and night, small creatures are busy working, eating, hunting, hiding.

This nonfiction picture book reveals the hidden lives of insects and other small creatures from one midnight to the next. The world may appear to be sleeping in the dead of night, but it is not. As moonflowers open and stars shine, nature goes about her business. The world never sleeps.

Natalie Rompella’s lyrical text is vividly complemented by Carol Schwartz’s watercolors. A cat roams through the illustrations―silent witness, in the house and in the yard, to the myriad lives of night and day. A sense of mystery pervades all―even the backmatter natural-history portraits of the animals met in the book. This nature book invites children into a parallel universe, one that teems with life while they sleep.

Abby and the rest of her friends go international as they embark on their first “official” Center mission in this second book in the Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls series.

After discovering the truth about her spy school/boarding school–and her super-spy mom–Abby Hunter is ready for her next adventure, but what’s about to happen is something she never would have guessed…

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgEveryone at The Smith School is obsessed with Monster Mayhem, the latest reality video game craze. But when Drexel Caine, the mastermind behind the game is suddenly kidnapped, it becomes clear that the kidnappers are playing for more than just special badges.

After Drexel’s son–who is Abby’s friend, Toby–receives a cryptic message, Abby and her friends discover the kidnapping is part of a bigger scheme that could take down The Center for good.

With the help of Abby’s frenemy (and reluctant mentor), Veronica Brooks, the group tackles their first official Center Mission. They tangle with the world’s most notorious hacker, get in trouble for the possible theft of the Mona Lisa, and prepare for the ultimate showdown in London. But not before they have to contend with one more hurdle: the agonizing Smith School Spring Formal. Along the way, they discover they are much stronger as a team they can ever be alone.

And with a little luck, they might just save the world.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgA hilarious—and slimy—alien adventure (set on Earth) that the bestselling author of Zombie Chasers, John Kloepfer, calls “fast paced, out-of-this-world fun!”

When Margot Blumenthal removes a bright blue slug alien attached to Mateo Flores’s back, the school play co-stars know it’s definitely not going to be a regular day at West Cove Middle School.

They reluctantly team up and soon discover that the mayor and countless other adults, including Mateo’s dad, are infected—which means that West Cove, and possibly all of Earth, is in danger.

What will they (and their new scientist friend) do? Ditch class and protect humankind, of course—because one unexcused absence doesn’t matter when the world is at stake!

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgThirteen-year-old chef Lailu Loganberry must stop a war between the elves and scientists in this follow-up to A Dash of Dragon, which Kirkus Reviews calls “a recipe for success.” It’s the Week of Masks, a festival held to chase away evil spirits. But Lailu doesn’t have time to worry about demons. She has bigger fish to fry–or rather, griffons, now that she’s been asked to prepare a mystical feast for the king’s executioner, Lord Elister. Unfortunately Lailu’s meal is overshadowed by the scientists’ latest invention: automatons, human-shaped machines that will respond to their masters’ every order. Most people are excited by the possibilities, but the mechanical men leave Lailu with a bad taste in her mouth. Even worse, the elves still blame the scientists for the attacks on them weeks ago, and Lailu worries that the elves might be cooking up revenge. So when she and her sorta-rival-turned-almost-friend Greg stumble across the body of a scientist, the elves are the prime suspects. With help from Greg, her best friend Hannah, and the sneaky, winking spy Ryon, Lailu has to discover the truth behind the murder, and soon–because hostilities between the elves and the scientists are about to boil over faster than hydra stew. And just ask any chef: war is bad for business.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgNew Horizons was designed by NASA to study Pluto and the fringes of our solar system, farther away than any spacecraft has ever explored. Join science writer Elaine Scott as she tells the story of this mission. For Stephen Hawking, New Horizons signifies that “We explore because we are human and we want to know.” This remarkable ship, no bigger than a piano, and using no more energy than a lightbulb, has already traveled three billion miles out to Pluto, and is continuing on to the Kuiper Belt, the farthest reaches of our solar system. The book will feature the beautiful, amazingly sharp photographs it is sending back from its journey, which are letting scientists fill in the blanks in our knowledge of Pluto–and delivering a few surprises along the way. Elaine Scott tells the exciting story of everyone’s favorite planet, from Pluto’s discovery through the frustrating attempts to study such a distant object, the creation of the New Horizons project, scientists’ hopes and expectations for the mission, and what is being discovered. Her clear, engaging prose does more than narrate the events. By showing how scientists operate, their hypotheses, hopes, and disappointments, and how they make use of them, she gives readers an inspiring portrait of the scientific method itself.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgFans of The Thing About Jellyfish and A Snicker of Magic will be swept away by Cindy Baldwin’s debut middle grade about a girl coming to terms with her mother’s mental illness.

When twelve-year-old Della Kelly finds her mother furiously digging black seeds from a watermelon in the middle of the night and talking to people who aren’t there, Della worries that it’s happening again—that the sickness that put her mama in the hospital four years ago is back. That her mama is going to be hospitalized for months like she was last time.

With her daddy struggling to save the farm and her mama in denial about what’s happening, it’s up to Della to heal her mama for good. And she knows just how she’ll do it: with a jar of the Bee Lady’s magic honey, which has mended the wounds and woes of Maryville, North Carolina, for generations.

But when the Bee Lady says that the solution might have less to do with fixing Mama’s brain and more to do with healing her own heart, Della must learn that love means accepting her mama just as she is.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgA fully illustrated, globe-trotting new middle grade fantasy-adventure series about mythical creatures and their cultures of origin, from the Newbery Honor-winning author of The Inquisitor’s Tale. Elliot and Uchenna have barely recovered from their first adventure with the Unicorn Rescue Society when the mysterious Professor Fauna approaches them with an all-new quest. And this time, they’re going to have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Basque Country. Elliot and Uchenna, with Jersey in tow, soon wonder whether their newest, fire-breathing rescue might be more than they can handle. And why do the evil-doing Schmoke Brothers seem to be involved yet again? This is the second book in Unicorn Rescue Society, an exciting and hilarious new series about friendship, adventure, and mythical creatures from around the world by Newbery Honor-winning author Adam Gidwitz teamed up with Mixtape Club founders Jesse Casey and Chris Smith, and Hatem Aly, illustrator of The Inquisitor’s Tale.

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgFans of the Princess in Black and Dory Fantasmagory series will love Isadora Moon: half-fairy, half-vampire–and ready for her first-ever human birthday party. Isadora Moon might be half-fairy, half-vampire, but she wants to have a totally normal human birthday party. She gives her mom and dad a list–cake, balloons, presents, and games. But when the invitations arrive on bats’ wings, Isadora worries that maybe her parents don’t know how to throw a human party. Which can mean only one thing: Isadora’s birthday is going to be anything but normal.

 

 

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgDarek and Zantor work to convince everyone that dragons and humans can get along in this second book in the fantastical Dragonling chapter book series

Ever since Darek saved Zantor the dragonling, they’ve been inseparable. Darek is the only family Zantor has ever known. But now Darek is bringing Zantor home from the Valley of the Dragons, and the villagers are up in arms He and his brother Clep are called traitors. Their best friends are turning against them. Even Darek’s father has been threatened for allowing the enemy in their midst.

How can Darek prove that dragons are good neighbors to the villagers?

 

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgKids who love video games will love this first installment of the new 5-book series about 12-year old Jesse Rigsby and his wild adventures inside different video games.

Jesse Rigsby hates video games – and for good reason. You see, a video game character is trying to kill him. After getting sucked in the new game Full Blast with his friend Eric, Jesse starts to see the appeal of vaporizing man-size praying mantis while cruising around by jet pack. But pretty soon, a mysterious figure begins following Eric and Jesse, and they discover they can’t leave the game. If they don’t figure out what’s going on fast, they’ll be trapped for good!

Fun, relevant, and action-packed Trapped in a Video Game is the perfect book to get kids off screens and into books! Included in this edition is a bonus More to Explore section that teaches computer programming concepts through a fun game.

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgWatch out, middle school In her second foray out of graphic novels and into middle grade, Babymouse has a smartphone, and she’s not afraid to use it. . . . Ping Ping The sound of texting is in the air. Everyone at middle school has a cell phone. Babymouse just has to get one, too. But having a phone is a lot of work Building up a following on SoFamous, learning text lingo, keeping up with all the important koala videos . . . Babymouse is ready to tear her whiskers out. Why does it suddenly feel like she has no friends? Somehow, Babymouse needs to figure out how to stop worrying and love her smartphone . . . if Locker doesn’t eat it first. #Typical.

 

 

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgIt’s Desmond and Andres versus the Zombie Zookeeper in the fourth book of the Desmond Cole Ghost Patrol chapter book series. Welcome to Kersville, a town with a spooky history and a collection of ghosts and spirits who are major mischief-makers. Most kids spend their days without ever seeing or dealing with a ghost, but some kids get stuck with a haunt. When that happens, they call Desmond Cole Ghost Patrol. There’s no job too spooky, icky, or risky for Desmond. I’m not like that at all. My name’s Andres Miedoso. I’m Desmond’s best friend and ghost patrol partner. For this case, we’re off to the zoo Zoo field trips are the best. You get to ride in a bus, you get to spend the day outside, and all the animals are safely far away in their enclosures. Nothing scary here, right? Wrong Leave it to Desmond Cole to find the one zookeeper who’s also a zombie. With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Desmond Cole Ghost Patrol chapter books are perfect for emerging readers.

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Mark of the Dragonfly comes a thrilling fantasy adventure about two magical friends living as refugees in a world that doesn’t trust magic. Perfect for fans of Serafina and the Black Cloak and the School for Good and Evil series. There was no warning the day magic died in Talhaven. It happened with a giant explosion and the arrival of a skyship full of children, all with magic running through their veins and no memory of home. Rook and Drift are two of those children, and ever since that day, they’ve been on the run, magical refugees in a world that doesn’t trust magic. Because magic doesn’t die right away–it decays, twists, and poisons all that it touches. And now it’s beginning to poison people. Try as they might, Rook and Drift can’t remember anything about their lives before Talhaven. But it’s beginning to look like they’re the only ones who can save their adopted world . . . if that world doesn’t destroy them first.

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgA poignant middle grade debut about the friendship between a white girl and an elderly black woman in the 1960s South. Alice is angry at having to move to Rainbow, Georgia–a too small, too hot, dried-up place she’s sure will never feel like home. Then she gets put in charge of walking her elderly neighbor’s dog. But Clarence won’t budge without Miss Millie, so Alice and Miss Millie walk him together. Strolling with Clarence and Miss Millie quickly becomes the highlight of Alice’s day and opens her eyes to all sorts of new things to marvel over. During their walks, they meet a mix of people, and Alice sees that although there are some bullies and phonies, there are plenty of kind folks, too. Miss Millie shares her family’s story with Alice, showing her the painful impact segregation has had on their town. And with Miss Millie, Alice is finally able to express her own heartache over why her family had to move there in the first place. Tamara Bundy’s beautifully written debut celebrates the wonder and power of friendship: how it can be found when we least expect it and make any place a home.

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgThe Museum of Peculiar Arts holds many oddities–a mechanical heart, a diary bound in its owner’s skin . . . and Penny, a child-size marionette who almost looks alive. Fog clouds Penny’s memories from before the museum, but she catches glimpses here and there: a stage, deep red curtains, long-fingered hands gripping her strings. One day, a boy named Chance touches Penny’s strings and hears her voice in his head. Penny can listen, and watch, and think? Now someone else is watching Penny and Chance–a man with a sharp face, a puppeteer who has the tools to change things. A string through a needle. A twist of a spindle. And suddenly Chance is trapped in Penny’s marionette body, while Penny is free to run and dance. She knows that finding a way to switch back is the right thing to do. But this body feels so wonderful, so full of life How can Penny ever return to her puppet shell?

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgJasmine’s best friend, Linnie, has just gotten a puppy. And now Jasmine wants a pet of her own―a flamingo! So when her grandmother sends Jasmine a daruma doll as a surprise gift, Jasmine colors in one doll eye and wishes for a flamingo to keep.

Next, Jasmine tries to convince her parents that she’s responsible enough for a pet. She cleans her room, brushes her teeth, takes out the trash, and, most importantly, researches everything she can about flamingos. But soon it becomes clear that her wish may never come true! Will Jasmine’s daruma doll ever get its second eye? Luckily her big sister, Sophie, has a surprise planned that fulfills Jasmine’s wish beyond her wildest dreams.

Debbi Michiko Florence is at her best in this sweet, special story of sisterhood and new responsibilities!

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgA Mississippi ghost town and an art mystery combine in this gorgeously written debut just right for fans of Three Times Lucky and A Snicker of Magic. How far would you go to find something that might not even exist? All her life, Cricket’s mama has told her stories about a secret room painted by a mysterious artist. Now Mama’s run off, and Cricket thinks the room might be the answer to getting her to come back. If it exists. And if she can find it. Cricket’s only clue is a coin from a grown-over ghost town in the woods. So with her daddy’s old guidebook and a coat full of snacks stolen from the Cash ‘n’ Carry, Cricket runs away to find the room. Surviving in the woods isn’t easy. While Cricket camps out in an old tree house and looks for clues, she meets the last resident of the ghost town, encounters a poetry-loving dog (who just might hold a key to part of the puzzle), and discovers that sometimes you have to get a little lost . . . to really find your way.

 

 

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgA quirky Dungeons & Dragons-inspired adventure that will appeal to gamers and readers of the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series. What if your favorite fantasy game characters showed up on your doorstep IRL? Sixth graders Ralph, Jojo, Noel, Persephone, and Cammi are hooked on fantasy tabletop role-playing games. When they somehow manage to summon their characters to Ralph’s house, things take a truly magical turn
The five are soon racing around town on a wild adventure that tests their both their RPG skills and their friendship. Will Ralph and crew be able to keep their characters out of trouble? Trying to convince a sticky-fingered halfling rogue not to pickpocket or a six-foot-five barbarian woman that you don’t always have to solve conflicts with a two-handed broadsword is hard enough. How will they ever send the adventurers back to their mystical realm?

 

 

 

July is overflowing with great books! Which of the July New Releases are you putting at the top of your stack this month?

 

 

9 Wacky Facts from the National Geographic Kids Almanac 2019

Big welcome to Angela Modany, the editor of the National Geographic Kids Almanac 2019! To celebrate the brand-new guide, Modany answers a few Mixed-Up Files questions for us, and shares some wacky factoids from this year’s Almanac.


Mixed-Up Files: What goes into creating the National Geographic Kids Almanac? How many people and how much time does it take to get this project done?

Angela Modany: We start working on the Almanac about a year and a half before you can buy it in stores. (We’ve already been working on the 2020 edition for several months now!) It takes a big team to make sure the book is ready on time. We have a main writer, contributors, fact checkers, editors, photo editors, and designers, all of whom do a lot of work to make sure the Almanac has the greatest stories, information, and photos that will appeal to kids. And we stay busy updating news, trends, and facts up until press time.

 

 

MUF: What’s the most fun part about working on the Almanac? 

AM: The best part about working on the Almanac is reading all the stories and facts. I learn something new every year and it reminds me that there’s so much in our world to explore. I also love seeing what photos are chosen for the Cutest Animals section!

 

 

 

9 of Angela’s favorite, wackiest fun facts from this year’s Almanac:

There is a hotel run by robots in Japan. An automated velociraptor greets you at the front desk!

A lion can eat 40 pounds of meat—the same as 160 hamburgers—in one sitting.

There is a laser that can produce gas that is hotter than the sun.

Barbershops in India will close on Tuesday because a Hindu superstition considers Tuesday haircuts bad luck.

The Hubble Telescope has traveled more than three billion miles.

The Dorcas gazelle lives in the Sahara and doesn’t drink any water. It also doesn’t ever pee.

“Berserkers” were Viking warriors who wore bear and wolf skins and bowled in battle like wild animals.

South Koreans say “kimchi”—a pickled cabbage dish—instead of “cheese” to smile for photos.

The Statue of Liberty has a 35-foot waistline and wears a size 879 shoe.

Find out more about the all-new Almanac over at National Geographic. 

Interview: Debut Author Cindy Baldwin

I’m thrilled to introduce debut author Cindy Baldwin to our Mixed-Up Files readers today. Her new book, WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW (HarperCollins Childrens), is set to release on July 3rd, and I am so excited!

Cindy Baldwin

We at MUF not only have the honor of introducing you to Cindy, but also giving you a sneak peek of her book .. a Chapter 1 reveal.

AND … because we’re cool like this … Cindy has teamed with MUF to give away a FREE copy of WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW.

Transparency moment: Cindy and I were finalists in the Pitch Wars writing contest, so we’ve been friends for awhile.  I hope you’ll look past my potential lack of objectivity and see for yourselves how great this book is.

So read on, get to know Cindy Baldwin, enjoy the first chapter of her amazing book, and then enter the Rafflecopter below to get a chance at winning your own free copy.

Interview with Cindy Baldwin

MUF: What’s the origin story for WATERMELONS?

A few years ago, when my daughter (now five) was about one, I was singing “Down By The Bay” to her. The idea of this child who’s so distressed by their mother’s mental illness that they run away from home really stuck with me, and spoke to some of my own deep insecurities and worries as a disabled parent. I knew very early on in the planning process that I wanted this to be a disability-positive book, where a kid comes to recognize that disability in her family doesn’t prevent them from having a happy, loving, positive life, and that her mother’s disability is a part of who her mother is and not something to be “fixed” or “cured.” As a disabled reader and writer, it’s really important to me that books capture the complexities and difficulties of disability honestly, but do it in a way that doesn’t paint disability either as incompatible with happiness or as “inspiration porn.”

MUF: How did you research schizophrenia – was it something you already knew a lot about?

I did know the basics of schizophrenia, like what the most common symptoms were and some of the ways it affects people in their day-to-day lives. However, I don’t have it myself, and so I wanted to do plenty of research to get it as close to “right” as I could! I spent a lot of time reading articles by psychologists as well as first-person accounts of schizophrenia from patients themselves. I had to research things like typical age of onset, how schizophrenia is affected by pregnancy and postpartum hormones (since part of the plot of my book has to do with having children when you have schizophrenia), what medication regimens are typically like, and what it might look like to have a patient slowly losing touch with reality. Although I don’t have a family member with schizophrenia, I do have some past personal experiences that gave me a little insight into some of the issues Della and Suzanne struggle with.

MUF: Why focus on schizophrenia?

I don’t have schizophrenia, but like Della’s mama, I am a disabled parent. In Where the Watermelons Grow, I really wanted to explore the idea that disability doesn’t have to be removed for characters to achieve happiness—which is a trope that pops up a lot in books with disabled characters. So often, the disability itself is the great barrier to a happy ending, and that ending can’t be achieved unless there’s a magical cure involved. When I was growing up—and even still, as a disabled adult—I found these narratives so frustrating because my health conditions are not ones that will ever go away; it was very invalidating to be shown again and again that I couldn’t have a rich, happy life while being disabled. In Watermelons, I wanted to write a book that was anti-magical-cure, showing that it’s possible to have a loving, happy, wonderful life, even if your challenges look significantly different from those of your friends.

I really wanted to explore a disability that had a very large impact on both the patient’s life and her family. I have cystic fibrosis—a life-shortening genetic disease—as well as fibromyalgia and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and my illnesses have a really profound impact on the shape of my husband’s and daughter’s lives, as well as my own. Because that’s our reality, it felt natural to write about a family, like ours, who is also greatly impacted by disability. When I was working on proofreading the manuscript, the last step before publication, I actually read it out loud to my five-year-old daughter, and it was a really neat experience to see her reactions as she listened to this story about a family whose lives weren’t all that different from ours. She picked up on a lot of the parallels as we read (she told me, “that mama has a sickness just like you, and I am just like Della!”), and we had some really cool conversations. She actually still loves to play that we are the characters from the book—I think because it is something that resonates with her own lived experience!

MUF: What challenges did you face maintaining a middle-grade voice when dealing with such a complex subject?

Della’s voice came to me so naturally that it actually wasn’t always that hard! Probably the most difficult thing was balancing the heaviness of Della’s struggle to “cure” her mother with lighter, more normal preteen activities, like hanging out with her best friend or the way her baby sister gets into trouble all the time. I also did have a bit of a tricky time knowing how much I could delve into the darker aspects of her family’s story. For instance, there are only two ways that a mentally ill person can be involuntarily committed to a behavioral health hospital (i.e., taken there without their will)—attempting to harm themselves or another person. Because Della’s mother being involuntarily committed four years previously was a big part of the plot, I had to figure out how to reference a suicide attempt, and the emotional fallout that that had on Della’s father, without it being heavy-handed or too much for young or sensitive kids. I also had to figure out how to show how Della’s daddy was fracturing at the seams himself under all the stress without it resulting in truly abusive behavior towards his kids (as it is, he engages in some definite neglect!), or showing reactions that would be too intense for readers on the younger end of the MG spectrum.

MUF: Your writing is poignant in general, but one point I found deeply resonant is the part where Miss Lorena tells Della “probably, your mama is never going to be quite like other mothers out there.” Because you live with chronic physical illness and are raising a little girl, I wondered whether that part was a little autobiographical? And if so, was it more difficult to write?

Oh, absolutely! I actually wasn’t thinking, while I was writing the book, that I was delving deep into my own insecurities about parenting as a disabled mom (it’s amazing how much the brain can ignore things it doesn’t want to face!), but a few weeks before I got an agent, a friend and critique partner asked me if I was writing my anxieties about my own daughter. My gut reaction was “No, of course not!”—but after a few seconds, it dawned on me that yes, I TOTALLY was. I’ve always had intense anxiety about parenting with a disability, since I was a teenager, actually. I worry a lot that I will never be able to give my daughter the things she needs to have a happy life. I worry that my disease will limit her. I worry a LOT about the burden of sorrow and worry that she will have to carry through her life, as my disease has some pretty serious ramifications (not unlike schizophrenia). And, like Della resents her mama at the start of the novel, I worry a lot that my daughter will grow up resenting me for what I can’t be for her. My deepest hope is that, like Della, she will both be able to be surrounded by other mothers in our community, and that she will recognize that even if I’m NOT like the other mothers out there, I still love her more than words can express and that we can still be a loving and happy family even if our family looks a little different than others.

MUF: What message do you most hope readers will come away with?

Between 11 and 13, I was grappling with a lot of more serious components of my illness, cystic fibrosis. I had stayed out of the hospital since I was two, but at 11 and 13 I was hospitalized again for the first times in my remembered life—and I had to stay all by myself through the long hospital nights because my parents were busy with newborn triplets. At 13, I also learned for the first time that cystic fibrosis is life-shortening—back then it carried a life expectancy in the mid-30s. These big, difficult life experiences often felt overwhelming and isolating at that age. I felt different from everyone around me like I was living on a completely different frequency than the rest of the world, and nobody quite understood what I was going through. In so many ways, I wrote WATERMELONS for my preteen self, the one who felt so at odds with her peers; I wanted to write a book for all the children whose lives look different from their friends. This book is like my love letter to those children—to the child I was. I hope that they come away from WATERMELONS with the firm conviction that even if their lives might look different, they can still be rich, happy, and satisfying. I also hope that children and adults emerge from WATERMELONS ready to treat disabled people with a little more dignity and acceptance, something that our society could really use!

MUF: You’ve had so much fun with your watermelon theme – people have posted pictures on Instagram and Facebook with watermelons and other book-themed layouts; one friend even posted a picture of her baby girl wearing a watermelon dress. What are some of your other favorite fan-stagrams?

Oh man. I have to choose just a few?! It delights me to no end when people share their watermelon ideas with me. It’s seriously been a highlight of this whole lead-up to publication! Some of my favorite things I’ve done:

Author and makeup artist extraordinaire Michelle Modesto created the most INCREDIBLE eye makeup look based on the cover for WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW.

One night, I showed up for a weekly family dinner at my parents’ house and discovered that my dad and sister had made me a watermelon cake, just for fun! It was darling and delicious, too.

Watermelon Cake

One of my dear friends who knows how much I love dahlias sent me a pair of dahlia tubers for a variety called Penhill Watermelon. I can’t wait to see them grow!

And almost more than anything, I’ve been so touched by reviews from teachers and librarians that have been shared with me on social media. It’s amazing to see this book that has lived in my head for so long really making an impact in other peoples’ lives.

MUF: We as authors often share at least one trait with our main characters. Is your favorite food watermelon?

I can’t say it’s my ONLY favorite, because I have a LOT of favorites! And in general, I love the abundance of fresh fruit in spring, summer, and fall. I live in Oregon and from May to September I pretty much live my life by what delectable fruit is in season! But watermelon is and always has been one of my absolute favorite parts of summer, just like it is for Della. Ever since I was a little kid, there’s been nothing that screamed “summer” more than a cool watermelon bursting with juice! The part in the book where Della says that she likes to reach into the fridge and just take big spoonfuls right from the watermelon is 100% something I do and have gotten in hot water with family members over! And once in college I really did sit down at the table and eat an entire watermelon, just like Della claims she can do. Basically, if you set me up with some watermelon and summer sweet corn, I’d be perfectly happy for the months of July and August.

 

Cindy Baldwin is a fiction writer, essayist, and poet. She grew up in North Carolina and still misses the sweet watermelons and warm accents on a daily basis. As a middle schooler, she kept a book under her bathroom sink to read over and over while fixing her hair or brushing her teeth, and she dreams of writing the kind of books readers can’t bear to be without. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter, surrounded by tall trees and wild blackberries. Her debut novel, Where The Watermelons Grow, was named an Indies Introduce/Indie Next pick for 2018, as well as receiving starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist.

First Peek: WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW

CHAPTER ONE

On summer nights, the moon reaches right in through my window and paints itself across the ceiling in swirls and gleams of silver.

I lay in bed, the sheet on top of me as hot and heavy as a down quilt, listening to the roar of the box fans that
weren’t doing a single thing to keep the heat out of my bedroom. I’d gone to bed hours earlier, but it was too hot
to sleep—too hot to do anything but lie there watching the moonlight shift across the ceiling, thoughts spinning
through my head like the wind on the bay right before a storm breaks. On the other side of the room, baby Mylie
snored in her crib.

Only a baby could sleep on a night as hot as this.

I closed my eyes, letting a string of numbers appear against my darkened eyelids. Doubling numbers as far
up as I could go: it was a trick Daddy had taught me, and my favorite way to fall asleep—a problem interesting
enough to keep my mind focused, but not so hard that I couldn’t drift off when I was ready. One. Two.
Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four.

I’d made it all the way to One thousand twenty-four times two is two thousand forty-eight when I finally gave
up trying to concentrate my way into sleep and slid my legs over the side of the bed, the cool carpet hitting my
toes a tiny little shot of relief in all that heat. The clock on my nightstand read 12:03. I tiptoed out of my bedroom
and through the dark hallway so nobody could hear I was awake and come tell me off for it.

But I wasn’t the only one awake.

Mama was sitting at the kitchen table, her pale skin strange and greenish in the light from the left-open
fridge. A plate of watermelon slices sat on the table in front of her, and she was looking at them with the same
look I have when I’m taking a test in English class. She sed the tip of a knife to flick the black seeds out of each
slice, one by one, not seeming to care that they were landing all over the table and the floor. One seed had
stuck itself to her forehead, hanging there like a little bug just above her crunched-up concentrating eyebrow.

“Mama?” My voice was quiet and a little shaky in the silent kitchen, with only the refrigerator hum to back
me up.

It was one of Daddy’s sliced-up watermelons on that plate. My daddy grows the sweetest watermelons
in all of North Carolina. He grows other things, too, like wheat and peanuts in his big fields and squash and
berries in his small ones, but the watermelons are my favorite. Biting into one of those ruby-red slices is like
tasting July, feeling that cold juice hitting your tongue like an explosion.

I like to take a spoon and dig out round bites so big they barely fit into my mouth, but Mama’s always after me to slice them in neat little pyramids. “So that everyone can enjoy them,” she says, glaring at the holes my spoon left, and every time she does I know she’s thinking about all the germs that came from my lips touching that spoon touching the watermelon.

But whatever she was doing to those slices on that plate was way worse than obsessing over a few germs. Watermelon is near about my favorite thing in the world to eat—if I’m hungry enough, I can eat almost a whole one by myself, which Daddy says is pretty impressive for a girl who’s barely twelve and not yet five feet tall—but right then, the taste of all those remembered melons on my tongue was sour and awful.

I cleared my throat. “Mama?” I said again, louder this time.

“Della,” she said. “You oughta be in bed.”

“I just had to get a drink of water.” I wiggled my toes against the bare linoleum floor. It was sticky where it
hadn’t gotten cleaned up enough after Mylie threw her sippy cup down there when she pitched a fit about going
to bed.

Where sleeping was concerned, Mylie pitched a lot of fits.

“What are you doing, Mama? Don’t you want to be in bed, too?”

“No.”

I inched into the kitchen a little at a time, keeping my feet away from the seeds all over the floor and reaching
for a clean glass from the cupboard. I ignored the open fridge with Mama’s special no-germs-here water-filtering
pitcher and filled my cup with tap water from the sink. I didn’t want to know what Mama was doing. It felt like
the long-ago bad time all over again, and I didn’t want to know a single thing more about any of it. So all I said
was, “Do you know you got a watermelon seed stuck above your eye?”

Mama’s fingers flew to her forehead, picking the seed off and flicking it onto the tabletop real quick, like it might bite her. “I don’t like these. There’s just too many of them. I don’t want you eating any, okay? And I don’t want you feeding them to Mylie, either. I don’t want them crawling around in your tummies and making you
sick.”

The glass of water froze in my hand halfway to my mouth. I looked at Mama and looked at her some more,
wishing so hard that I hadn’t gotten out of bed in the first place. Wishing I was asleep like I should have been,
so that I wouldn’t be here seeing Mama acting like this.

I drank up all my water and put the cup in the sink.  Sometimes I liked to put my water cups on the counter,
so I could keep drinking out of them and didn’t have to wash them out between, but anytime I did that, Mama
got on my case about all the germs my mouth had left on there. I never knew what she thought was going to
happen—it wasn’t like those mouth germs were going to crawl down the sides of the glass and onto the counter—
but she sure didn’t like for me to leave them.

“Listen,” I said, taking a deep breath and pretending I was talking to Mylie instead of to Mama. More than
anything I just wanted to go back into my bed and close my eyes and pretend I’d never come in here in the first place, but I knew I couldn’t do that without it eating me up from the inside. Mama needed me. “I’m gonna close
the fridge door now, okay? And then I’m gonna help you clean up the watermelon, and I think you should go to
bed, otherwise you’ll be tired at church tomorrow. And I know you don’t like that.”

What Mama really didn’t like was when I was tired at church, but she didn’t like being tired herself, either,
because she said it turned her into a mean-green-mama-monster.

Sure enough, Mama frowned. “Why are you still up, Della?” she asked, like I hadn’t just told her a minute
ago. “You need to be in bed, honey.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m going there right now. You gonna come to bed, too?”

Her eyes snapped back to that plate of watermelon, and her fingers started up again with the knife. The
seeds made wet little taps on the table as they hit it, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. “No!” she said, and I felt my shoulders
jump a little, because she was so loud she was almost yelling. “I can’t go to sleep tonight. I need to take care of
this watermelon.”

I heard a door open down the hallway, and Daddy came out, looking tired. His feet were bare and his hair
was sticking up all over his head.

“Suzanne,” he said, “what’s the matter?” Then he saw me. “Della, what are you doing out of bed? You know it’s
after midnight, right?”

I sighed again, a loud one this time so that Daddy could hear it. “I was just getting a drink.” It was Mama I
was mad at, but I couldn’t stop that mad creeping across the kitchen toward Daddy anyway. “Is that not allowed
in this house anymore?”

“Don’t sass,” said Daddy, but he didn’t sound upset. He never sounded upset. That’s one of those things about
my daddy—he’s so calm and quiet that you can hardly hear him talk sometimes. “Did you get your drink?”

“Yeah. Good night.”

I didn’t look at Mama again, but I could still hear those watermelon seeds tap-tap-tapping on the table as I
walked down the hallway.

“Suzanne, please come to bed now,” Daddy said as I opened my bedroom door.

“Can’t. Can’t go to sleep. Too busy.”

There was silence behind me. I pictured Daddy pushing his callused white fingers through his brown hair
like he does when he’s upset and can’t figure out what to do about it. “Suzie,” he said, and his voice was so quiet I
could hardly hear it, “you need your sleep, sweetie. You know you need your sleep or you’re gonna get sicker.”

Mama didn’t say anything. I pulled my bedroom door closed behind me carefully and slowly, leaving it open a crack by my ear, so I could still hear them.

“Suzanne. Come with me now, all right? Come on to bed, please.”

“No!”

I swallowed. Mama was almost-yelling at Daddy just like she’d been almost-yelling at me. I peeked through
the crack I’d made in my doorway and could just barely see him, there behind Mama with his hands on her elbows, trying to pull her up out of that chair.

“Suzie, sweetie, put that knife away.”

“No!” Mama shouted again, louder this time. From the other side of the bedroom, Mylie started whimpering and shaking the bars of her crib.

“Leave me alone,” Mama said. “Just leave me alone.  I have to do this. It’s important. I gotta keep the girls
safe.”

I tiptoed over and reached through the crib bars to put my hand on Mylie’s head, feeling her soft strawberry-blond
curls all wet from sleep sweating. She was sitting up, her fat fingers in fists around the bars.

“Shh,” I whispered, and she quieted down. “It’s all right, baby. Go back to sleep. You want I should tell you
a Bee Story?”

“Stowy,” Mylie repeated, wiggling her little body till she was lying back down on the mattress.

“All right,” I said, sinking down on to my knees by the crib, my voice still quiet and low. I reached my hand
in through the crib bars and rubbed her back as I spoke. I could feel her start to settle, relaxing into the mattress,
like my hand on her back was all she needed to feel safe. Lucky baby. “Way back a long time ago, when Grandpa
Kelly was still a little boy and the farm belonged to his daddy, he was playing on the tractor when he fell off and got a big old cut right down his leg. It was long and deep, and his parents knew if they took him to a doctor it would need stitching and medicine and might never heal good enough for him to walk normal. So they didn’t take him to a doctor. They took him to the Quigleys.”

I leaned my face against the crib, feeling the bars cool and hard on my skin. Mylie’s breathing was steadying, but I could still see the shadows of her open eyelids there in the dark.

“It wasn’t our Bee Lady who was living there then, of course. It was her grandma. Grandpa Kelly asked Mrs. Quigley if her bees had anything that might fix up Grandpa’s leg. Mrs. Quigley took one look at that big old gash, and at Grandpa’s face white as cotton fluff, and went right to her shelves for one of her honeys. It was dark and sticky and thick, and when she tipped the jar over Grandpa’s leg, it took a long time to roll its slow way out. Mrs. Quigley spread it all over Grandpa’s cut with her gentle hands.”

Now Mylie’s eyes were closed, her little butterfly lashes soft against her cream-colored cheek. I slid my hand off her back and she didn’t stir.

“And Grandpa’s leg healed so fast and so clean there was hardly even a scar, and he was up and walking by the time the sun set that day,” I whispered to myself, and then walked back over to my bed and climbed into it, lying down on top of all my blankets. It was too hot for them, anyway.

It was a true story, that one about Grandpa and his leg. More than once, he’d shown me the thin white line of scar tissue that ran almost from knee to ankle. If there hadn’t been a Bee Lady in Maryville, he always said, he probably would’ve limped through the rest of his life.

I sighed and rolled over. Daddy had gone back into his bedroom while I’d been talking to Mylie, but if I listened real hard, I could still hear those seeds tap-tap-tapping on the kitchen table.

I closed my eyes, trying to forget all about those watermelon seeds, all about Mama yelling and acting worse than she had in a long, long time, wishing there was anything in the world that could pull Mama’s brain back together like the skin on Grandpa’s leg.

Fixed right up, without anything more than a harmless little scar.

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