It’s raining new books! We picked three April releases that young readers can find at their libraries and bookstores. What better way to spend a rainy afternoon than curled up with a new book?

The Secret Language of Birds by Lynn Kelly. (240 pages. Ages 8-12)

From the award-winning author of Song for a Whale comes a poignant and heartwarming tale about a girl who discovers a pair of endangered birds about to lay eggs in the marshes of her summer camp…and the secret plan she hatches to help them. This instant classic captures the coming-of-age moment of learning to spread your wings in a way you’ll never forget.

 

The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie (256 pages. Ages 8-12)

Crack the codes. Find the treasure. Escape the house.

From the acclaimed author of Scritch Scratch and What Lives in the Woods comes an action-packed adventure novel about three friends who team up to find a hidden treasure in an abandoned 1950s funhouse.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West and Hannah. But everything changes when a foreclosure notice appears on Sarah’s front door. Since her father became ill two years ago, things have been bad, but not lose your house bad…until now. Sarah feels helpless until the day Hannah mentions a treasure rumored to be hidden in the walls of an abandoned funhouse.

Isabel in Bloom by Mae Respicio (368 pages. Ages 8-12)

In this middle-grade novel that celebrates nourishment and growth, a girl discovers a connection between her home in the Philippines and her new home in the U.S. through a special garden. Making new friends in a new city, a new country, is hard, but joining the gardening and cooking club at school means Isabel will begin to find her way, and maybe she, too, will begin to bloom.