2021 Freeman Book Awards Honorable Mention - Children's Literature The Best Children's Books of the Year 2022, Bank Street College STARRED REVIEW! "Hadley has created a remarkable debut that flows elegantly, interweaving the two tales in a way that is readable and fun...An exquisite choice for all collections."—School Library Journal starred review A multigenerational retelling of a Japanese legend. Tanabata Matsuri, the Star Festival, celebrates a popular folktale: The Emperor of the Heavens separates his daughter, Orihime, from her love, Hikoboshi, all year—but on this day the two stars finally reunite on a bridge across the Milky Way. For Keiko, her mama, and her grandmother, Tanabata is about making tanzaku wishes, taking in the colorful decorations, and eating delicious food like nagashi somen and shaved ice. But when Obasaan gets lost in the crowd, Keiko and Mama must make their own bridge to find her again—and see if their tanzaku comes true.

Holi, Hai! Holi, Hai! It’s time to prepare for the Indian springtime Festival of Colors in this delightful Classic Board Book! It’s time for the Indian festival of Holi, a celebration of the start of spring, of new beginnings, and of good over evil. Friends, families, and neighbors wear white clothing and toss handfuls of brightly colored powders at one another until they’re all completely covered from head to toe! Young readers will love following the young siblings gathering flowers to make the colorful powders for the big day until—poof!—it’s time for the fun to begin.

A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2021 “Thompson is a master showman . . . [Beeswing is] everything you’d hope a Richard Thompson autobiography would be . . . It’s both major and minor, dirge and ditty, light on its feet but packing a punch.” —The Wall Street Journal Now Featuring an Interview with Elvis Costello In this moving, immersive, and long-awaited memoir, beloved international music legend Richard Thompson recreates the spirit of his early years, where he found, and then lost, and then found his way again. Considered one of the top twenty guitarists of all time, Thompson also belongs in the songwriting pantheon alongside Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman. Here the British folk musician takes us back to the late 1960s, a period of great change and creativity for both him and the world at large. During the pivotal years of 1967 to 1975, just as he was discovering his passion for music, he formed the band Fairport Convention with some schoolmates and helped establish the genre of British folk rock. It was a thrilling period of massive tours, where Thompson was on the road in both the UK and the US, crossing paths with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix, as well as a time of heady and explosive creativity for Thompson, who wrote some of his most famous songs during this time. But as Thompson reveals, those eight years were also marked by upheaval and tragedy. Honest, moving, and compelling, Beeswing vividly captures the life of a remarkable man and musician during a period of artistic intensity, in a world on the cusp of change. “An absorbing, witty, often deliciously biting read, as all rock memoirs should be.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Thirty thousand hardbacks sold On Mexico's Day of the Dead, the skeletons jump for sheer joy. And no wonder: they've been cooped up the whole year and now they're ready to party. Watch the calaveras shake, rattle, and roll as they celebrate the biggest event of the graveyard's social calendar

New York Times Bestseller "I never thought science could be funny . . . until I read Frank Einstein. It will have kids laughing." —Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid "Huge laughs and great science—the kind of smart, funny stuff that makes Jon Scieszka a legend." —Mac Barnett, author of Battle Bunny and The Terrible Two Clever science experiments, funny jokes, and robot hijinks await readers in the first of six books in the New York Times bestselling Frank Einstein chapter book series from the mad scientist team of Jon Scieszka and Brian Biggs. The perfect combination to engage and entertain readers, the series features real science facts with adventure and humor, making these books ideal for STEM education. This first installment examines the science of “matter.” Kid-genius and inventor Frank Einstein loves figuring out how the world works by creating household contraptions that are part science, part imagination, and definitely unusual. In the series opener, an uneventful experiment in his garage-lab, a lightning storm, and a flash of electricity bring Frank’s inventions—the robots Klink and Klank—to life! Not exactly the ideal lab partners, the wisecracking Klink and the overly expressive Klank nonetheless help Frank attempt to perfect his inventions.. . . until Frank’s archnemesis, T. Edison, steals Klink and Klank for his evil doomsday plan! Integrating real science facts with wacky humor, a silly cast of characters, and science fiction, this uniquely engaging series is an irresistible chemical reaction for middle-grade readers. With easy-to-read language and graphic illustrations on almost every page, this chapter book series is a must for reluctant readers. The Frank Einstein series encourages middle-grade readers to question the way things work and to discover how they, too, can experiment with science. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews raves, “This buoyant, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the impulse to ‘keep asking questions and finding your own answers’ fires on all cylinders,” while Publishers Weekly says that the series “proves that science can be as fun as it is important and useful.” Read all the books in the New York Times bestselling Frank Einstein series: Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor (Book 1), Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger (Book 2), Frank Einstein and the BrainTurbo (Book 3), and Frank Einstein and the EvoBlaster Belt (Book 4). Visit frankeinsteinbooks.com for more information. STARRED REVIEW "In the final analysis, this buoyant, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the impulse to ‘keep asking questions and finding your own answers’ fires on all cylinders." --Booklist, starred review "Scieszka mixes science and silliness again to great effect." —Kirkus Reviews "In refusing to take itself too seriously, it proves that science can be as fun as it is important and useful." —Publishers Weekly "With humor, straightforward writing, tons of illustrations, and a touch of action at the end, this book is accessible and easy to read, making it an appealing choice for reluctant readers. A solid start to the series." --School Library Journal "Kids will love Frank Einstein because even though he is a new character he will be instantly recognizable to the readers...Jon Scieszka is one of the best writers around, and I can't wait to see what he does with these fun and exciting characters." —Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl "Jon Scieszka's new series has the winning ingredients that link his clever brilliance in story telling with his knowledge of real science, while at the same time the content combination of fiction and non fiction appeals to the full range of the market." —Jack Gantos, Dead End in Norvelt

Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.

With a history now stretching back four decades, Pacific festivals of Aotearoa assert a multicultural identity of New Zealand and situate the country squarely within a sea of islands. In this volume, Jared Mackley-Crump gives a provocative look at the changing demographics and cultural landscape of a place frequently viewed through a bicultural lens, Pākehā and Māori. Taking the post–World War II migrations of Pacific peoples to New Zealand as its starting point, the story begins in 1972 with the inaugural Polynesian Festival, an event that was primarily designed as a Māori festival, now known as Te Matatini, the largest Māori performing arts event in the world. Two major moments of festivalization are considered: the birth of Polyfest in 1976 and the inaugural Pasifika Festival of 1993. Both began in Auckland, the home of the largest Pacific communities in New Zealand, and both have spawned a series of events that follow the models they successfully established. While Polyfests focus primarily on the transmission of performance traditions from culture bearers to the young, largely New Zealand–born generations, Pasifika festivals are highly public community events, in which diverse displays of material culture are offered up for consumption by both cultural tourists and Pacific communities alike. Both models have experienced a significant period of growth since 1993, and here, the author presents a thought-provoking and wide-ranging analysis to explain the phenomenon that has been called a “Pacific renaissance.” Written from an ethnomusicological perspective, The Pacific Festivals of Aotearoa New Zealand incorporates lively first-person observations as well as interviews with festival organizers, performers, and other important historical figures. The second half of the book delves into the festival space, uncovering new meanings about the function and role of music performance and public festivity. The author skillfully challenges accounts that label festivals as inauthentic recreations of culture for tourist audiences and gives both observers and participants an uplifting new approach to understand these events as meaningful and symbolic extensions of the ways diasporic Pacific communities operate in New Zealand.