Julie Berry’s work ranges from light middle grade and picture books to sweeping YA-to-adult crossover historical novels with fantasy elements. Her latest, If Looks Could Kill (Simon, 14 years and up), is one of those historical fantasy novels (with a vengeance—literally). Set primarily in New York’s Bowery in 1888, it pits an imagined Jack the Ripper against Salvation Army volunteers and Medusa-inspired powers. For more books with fantasy elements for middle- and/or high-school readers, see the Fantasy tag in the Guide/Reviews Database or our list “Mythical and magical" in this issue ofNotes.
1. What challenges were there in interweaving fictional and even fantastical elements with real historical events and people?
Julie Berry: To me, blending Medusa and Jack the Ripper didn’t feel like a great stretch creatively, perhaps because Jack the Ripper is, himself, mythologized, looming large over our collective consciousness much as Medusa does. I had some work to do, however, to create a paradigm for how Medusa-ness worked in this story’s world and for twenty-first-century readers. I deliberately reinterpreted the myth and expanded a Medusa’s range of possibilities to create Medusas who could turn their powers on and off and modulate their degree of effect on others (i.e., they can do more or, rather, less than turn someone to stone, if they want to). The hardest place to integrate myth and history was theological, oddly enough. I had chosen Salvation Army volunteers for my main duo, Tabitha and Pearl, for reasons that felt important to the story, and the early Salvation Army was unabashedly religious. This meant my characters would absolutely face a crisis of faith when they discovered the pagan Medusa in their midst. Reconciling this monstrosity with their nineteenth-century biblical Christianity took careful spadework. I always want to take the social, psychological, and spiritual worldview of my characters seriously and at face value...
Ash Woods, the transmasculine alchemist who saved the city from his father’s destructive magic in Infinity Alchemist (rev. 3/24), begins this novel now licensed, honored by House Alexander, and cohabiting with the two people he fell in love with, Callum and Ramsay...
Defanged by H.E. Edgmon
Lux Priddy has always considered himself a good vampire who doesn’t make trouble for others, unlike those scary, violent vampires rumored to live in an underground society called Nox Urbus...
The Scorpion Queen by Mina Fears
In imperial Mali in 1359, Aminata, a rich merchant’s daughter originally betrothed to a noble she loves, loses everything after a false accusation leads to her disownment and the cancellation of her engagement...
The Poisoned King [Impossible Creatures] by Katherine Rundell; illus. by Ashley Mackenzie
When Christopher Forrester returns to the Glimouria Archipelago, conditions could not be more dire: the ancient, wise dragons are dying, and the dragon Sarkany, on whose back Christopher flew inImpossible Creatures (rev. 9/24), has sent for his help...
Football! Soccer! Swimming! Skateboarding! These seven novels ranging from early-to-upper middle grade cover many bases. See the Sports tag in the Guide/Reviews Database for even more.
The Big Splash [Julia on the Go!] by Angela Ahn; illus. by Julie Kim
Picking up right where Swimming into Trouble (rev. 3/24) left off, the story finds Julia Nam, having recovered from her ear infection, back in the water, preparing for a regional swim meet...
Thirteen-year-old Henson Blayze is about to start eighth grade and, as his friend Menkah tells him, “The whole town, the whole state of Mississippi has been waiting on you.”...
Goalkeeper by Edward Bloor
Twenty-eight years after Tangerine (rev. 7/97) was published, Bloor returns with a sequel to his classic debut that picks up after the first book ends...
Thirteen-year-old Pakistani American Mohammad and his father move from Queens to Houston to stay with his aunt and cousin while his research scientist mother works in a refugee camp in Greece...
Middle-school athletes Ghost, Lu, Patina, and Sunny each have their own titles in Reynolds’s Track series (most recently Lu, rev. 11/18); now it’s Coach’s turn...
Biggest Fake in the Universe by Johan Rundberg; trans. from Swedish by Eva Apelqvist
What do you do when you fall in love with the best skateboarder in Midsommarkransen, but you’re just a nerdy seventh-grade boy who has never kissed a girl and loves chess, computer games, and cooking?...
In these six nonfiction books, primary and/or intermediate readers can experience how people interact with, benefit from, study, and protect themselves from natural phenomena. For lots more, see the Science tag in the Guide/Reviews Database.
Light, airy illustrations dotted with golden specks float across the pages, lending a near-magical atmosphere to a story that starts with a mother-to-be in a child’s nursery and then travels through space and time, providing clear and fascinating scientific explanations of Saharan dust along the way...
Just in Case: Saving Seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault by Megan Clendenan; illus. by Brittany Cicchese
Deep in the earth, protected by multiple sensors and systems, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on an icy Arctic island ensures that the “priceless treasure” of more than 580 million seeds is kept safe from extinction...
Hatteras Island off the coast of North Carolina is the scene for Chin’s latest: an examination of a hurricane (based on several real ones) brilliantly told in segments alternating between actions of island residents and those of scientists...
We Carry the Sun by Tae Keller; illus. by Rachel Wada
Thousands of years ago, humans gathered under the sun’s rays for immediate heat. Then they began constructing homes that faced south to take advantage of that warmth...
The Eclipse of 1919: How Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Changed Our World by Emily Arnold McCully
This picture book serves as a good introduction to the concepts of scientific theory, methodology, and history involved in the role of a 1919 eclipse in proving Einstein’s theory of general relativity...
Wonder Why by Lisa Varchol Perron; illus. by Nik Henderson
Perron’s accessible STEM-friendly text about meteorological phenomena grounds itself in that quintessential question of childhood: “Why?”...
The November/December 2025 Horn Book Magazine has gone to press, with its hopeful, looking-ahead cover image (by Emily Mendoza from The Giving Flower, written by Alda P. Dobbs and reviewed in our Holiday High Notes column). And we’re looking ahead ourselves to a busy fall. On October 25, come see us at the Boston Book Festival in and around Copley Square. On November 6 at the Cambridge Public Library, you’re invited to celebrate the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards with us—and when the January/February 2026 issue of the Magazine comes out, you’ll be able to read the winners’ and honorees’ speeches there.
We hope we can look ahead to a time when everyone has the freedom to read. For more on book challenges, see Malinda Lo’s Five Questions interview with Mike Curato on Out of the Box.
