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2025 School Library Journal Best Book of the YearIn this moving picture book on the importance of hope, a small bird--nestled in a dusty crack in the Western Wall--feels a deep shift within, setting her on a path to overcoming her fear of change. One day, Sparrow wakes up feeling different. Her world is on the brink of change and she knows that she must prepare. As she flies from one familiar corner of her life to the other--from the fruit stand to the top of the bell tower--she searches far and wide for the thing that will help her get ready for whatever tomorrow may bring. Here is a soul-stirring picture book about change and how to embrace it with the help of hope--as demonstrated by a sweet sparrow embarking on the great journey of life.

Now in paperback, the debut Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” This Weightless World subverts classic sci-fi tropes set in gentrified Chicago, Silicon Valley, and across the vastness of the cosmos.From the streets of gentrified Chicago to the tech boom corridors of Silicon Valley, This Weightless World follows a revolving cast of characters after alien contact upends their lives. We are introduced to Sevi, a burned-out music teacher desperate for connection and fighting to find meaning in rekindled love; Ramona, his on-again, off-again computer programmer girlfriend who is a determined to build an AI that will prevent mankind’s destruction; and Eason, Sevi’s cello protégé, who struggles to measure his commitment to a childhood friend against the chance of escaping neighborhood troubles after his Chicago high school is shuttered. When a mysterious signal–at first seen as a sign of hope–stops as abruptly as it started, they all must grapple with its aftermath.

Like Gary Shteyngart or Michel Houellebecq, Wang Xiaobo is a Chinese literary icon whose satire forces us to reconsider the ironies of history. “Apparently, there was a rumour that Chen Qingyang and I were having an affair. She wanted me to prove our innocence. I said, to prove our innocence, we must prove one of the following: 1. Chen Qingyang is a virgin; 2. I was born without a penis.Both of these propositions were hard to prove, therefore, we couldn’t prove our innocence. Infact, I was leaning more toward proving that we weren’t innocent.” And so begins Wang Er’s story of his long affair with Chen Qinyang. Wang Er, a 21-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession for his crimes but instead, takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writing about the Cultural Revolution’s impact on