Our 2024 literary gift guide is here!

Believe it or not, it’s somehow mid-December 2024 — which means that it’s time for the Lakshmi and Asha Show’s annual gift guide!

Since this newsletter’s founding back in 2016, we’ve been rounding up our favorites in the worlds of Children’s Books, Young Adult Books, and Literature just in time for the holiday season. As always if you purchase something from the links in our newsletter, you’ll be supporting the continued growth of your favorite chat-based scribes.

Let’s bring on the holiday cheer and kick things off with our favorites in the world of children’s books!

Children’s Books

Asha: Once again, I tapped into my friends-with-small-children network for these recs - thank you Becky Potter and Lena Moy-Borgen!

Lakshmi:  I always love their recs!!

Asha:  This year Kat Zhang and Charlene Chua have a new Amy Wu book out, “Amy Wu and the Lantern Festival”, where Amy Wu and her family celebrate Chinese new year.

Lakshmi: Ooh, I’m really liking these new picture books that take us inside a cultural celebration.

Asha: Me too!

Lakshmi: In fact, my first pick does that! It’s called “On Powwow Day” and it’s by the Native author Traci Sorell (Cherokee Nation) and the illustrator Madelyn Goodnight (Chickasaw Nation). It has the narrator count from one to 10 while exploring the beauty of the powwow!

Asha: That sounds great!

For our musical theater-loving readers, Phillipa Soo and her sister-in-law Maris Pasquale Doran have written a book for aspiring singers suffering from stage fright: “Piper Chen Sings” 

Lakshmi: That also sounds amazing!

My second pick is for toddlers (and parents) and it is by both a South Asian American author and illustrator. “It's Time to Hush and Say Good Night” is about a father and a finicky toddler who are setting for bed. It’s by Chitra Soundar and the art is by Sandhya Prabhat. The bold colors of the cover grabbed me immediately.

Asha: That cover is gorgeous…

Lakshmi: I want to explore more of Sandhya Prabhat’s work for sure!

Asha: The last one is from the beloved novelist of our childhoods, Lois Lowry: “Tree. Table. Book.”, about 11 year old Sophie, who sets out to save her elderly neighbor's memory (also named Sophie).

Lakshmi: Any others from your buds?

Asha: Just a few: Kelly Yang has released a fourth book in her Front Desk Series: “Key Player”; Vashti Harrison’s 2023 release; “Big”, which won the Caldecott Medal; and from 2014, “Jacob’s New Dress” by Sarah and Ian Hoffman. 

Lakshmi: Let’s move on to middle grade!

Asha: I need to start asking my piano students for middle grade recs!

Middle Grade 

Lakshmi: We have talked before about how much we like Hena Khan’s work. I’ve also really liked a lot of the multi-author novels and short stories that have come out recently.

Well both of those wonderful things are COMBINED in “The Door Is Open: Stories of Celebration and Community by 11 Desi Voices”, which is authored by Khan and several of our other favs. Best of all, the book centers around a New Jersey community center and the kids that visit each day! What a great concept

Asha: I love that!

As for me, my first pick isn't new, it was published in 2021, but it comes highly recommended by one of my students: ”Other Words for Home”, by Jasmine Warga. It's about Jude, a Syrian girl, who has to leave her home with her mother and move to Cincinnati.

Lakshmi: I don’t want to make this list too Hena Khan heavy — but her book “Drawing Deena” is also absolutely lovely. Deena is an artistic middle schooler who struggles with anxiety (two things I feel like will connect to the readers of all ages who get this newsletter).

Asha: On the subject of things that will connect to our readers: Lindsay Currie’s latest book is a locked room mystery for middle graders, aptly titled “The Mystery of Locked Rooms”. Seventh-graders Sarah, West, and Hannah set out to find rumored hidden treasure in an abandoned 1950s funhouse.

Kirkus Reviews called it: A riddling, sporting adventure and a story of true friendship.

Lakshmi: !!! Oooh

Flora Ahn’s A Spoonful of Time is also great!

Asha: I do love books involving food…

Lakshmi: Ok, let’s move to YA. What have you read recently?

Young Adult

Asha: For our  February newsletter, we read Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s sophomore novel “Where Sleeping Girls Lie” which meant I had to go back to read her debut: Ace of Spades. Chiamaka and Devon, the only two Black students at an elite private school, are both made senior class prefects, a high honor that all but guarantees their future success. But when an anonymous texter named Aces, starts revealing their secrets, those bright futures are threatened. “Ace of Spades” isn’t as polished as “Where Sleeping Girls Lie”, but it does have some interesting characters, and a continually relevant message about institutional racism.

Lakshmi: Journalist and physician Seema Yasmin made her publishing debut this summer with “Unbecoming,” a YA about two Muslim teen girls in Texas who are determined to fight for the right to abortion care in their state. It’s a work of speculative fiction so it has a futuristic setting and I appreciated how ambitious and timely it was.

Asha: Sounds great!

Lakshmi: Ok let’s move to adult

Adult

Asha: I mentioned this one in our last newsletter but I loved it so much that I need to remind everyone about it. I messaged you right after I read The Berry Pickers about how I couldn't put it down!  It was published in 2023, so not new new, but so so good.

Lakshmi: I also loved that book. I picked it up when I was looking for Native authors to read (author Amanda Peters is Mi'kmaq) and I was pulled into the mystery right away.

I thought it was so cool that you mentioned Lois Lowry above, because I’ve also been exploring the work of a classic author lately – though in this case, the writer is completely new to m

I’ve mentioned before about how I run a small book club for journalists. While searching for a Caribbean author, I came across Sam Selvon, who was an Indo-Trinidadian novelist who immigrated to the UK in the 1950s as part of the Windrush generation. We’re currently reading “The Housing Lark” for our next meeting and it’s just been really eye opening to see how things like immigration, identity, and the simple act of house hunting while a new arrival were written about back then.

Asha: Earlier this year I also read “Womb City” by Tlotlo Tsamaase, an African futurist, horror novel set in a dystopian Botswana, where repurposing human bodies is normal, and “criminal” bodies are microchipped and monitored in case they commit another crime. Nelah, a successful architect, inhabits one of those bodies, and her police officer husband, Elifasi, effectively controls her through her microchip. This one was a slow read because the patriarchal state is so complete and dehumanising that I had to keep putting it down, but in the end, it was worth it.

Lakshmi: I also wanted to give one of the nonfiction books I’m currently reading (and thoroughly enjoying!). Journalist Katie Gee Salisbury’s biography of early Hollywood star Anna May Wong is titled “Not Your China Doll” and manages to be a totally fresh look at the life of an often overlooked and misunderstood actor.

Asha: Ooo, sounds great! 

Moving on to one of our favorite genres: Mystery!

Mysteries

Lakshmi: I picked up Nev March’s “The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret” at the library on a whim and it’s so fun. The author is from an Indian Parsi background and I feel like that comes through in the writing as well.

Asha: I’ll have to check it out!

I’ve been consuming a lot of cozy mystery shows this year, which means I’ve been reading the books they’re based on. The latest one I’ve read is the “Marlow Murder Club” by Robert Thurogood about a whiskey-drinking, seventy-seven year old, crossword puzzle author who teams up with two other women in her small town to solve a murder (or three, because isn’t there always three in the end).

And with that we are off for the holidays. See you all in 2025!