Five titles for kids, tweens, and teens—including the much-anticipated prequel to The Hunger Games—hot off the presses this week. 

Read Together

Three mermaids care for the delicate ecosystem in Coral, the latest picture book from Molly Idle, the Caldecott Medal–winning author/illustrator of Flora and the Flamingo.

For Tweens and Teens

Stepsiblings Lisa-Marie and Vernon find themselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, of sorts, when some seemingly cuddly teddy bears suddenly turn into ravenous zombies in the laugh-out-loud horror adventure, Night of the Living Ted.

The prequel to Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, comes out tomorrow, May 19. The narrative focuses on a young Coriolanus Snow, the man who becomes the villainous President Snow in the original trilogy. The book’s website offers a virtual party kit, including a discussion guide, excerpts, Zoom backgrounds, and trivia questions.

Teens looking for a light summer romance will want to pick up Sarah Mlynowski’s Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe. Sam’s boyfriend goes on a trip to Europe for the summer, so she takes a job as a camp counselor—never expecting to fall in love with her co-counselor, Gavin.

For readers looking for immersive, narrative nonfiction, Poisoned Water is a “stomach-churning, blood-boiling, tear-jerking account” of how the citizens of Flint, MI, fought for their lives amid the still-ongoing water crisis.