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Walking on thin ice: on Rainy Lake, in the northern reaches of Minnesota, it’s more than a saying. And for Owen Jensen, nineteen and suddenly responsible for keeping his mother and five brothers alive, the ice is thin indeed.

Ice-Out returns to the frigid and often brutal Prohibition-era borderland of Mary Casanova’s beloved novel Frozen, and to the characters who made it a favorite among readers of all ages. Owen, smitten with Frozen’s Sadie Rose, is struggling to make something of himself at a time when no one seems to hold the moral high ground. Bootlegging is rife, corruption is rampant, and lumber barons run roughshod over the people and the land. As hard as things seem when his father dies, stranding his impoverished family, they get considerably tougher—and more complicated—when Owen gets caught up in the suspicious deaths of a sheriff and deputy on the border.

Inspired by real events in early 1920s Minnesota, and by Mary Casanova’s own family history, Ice-Out is at once a story of young romance against terrible odds and true grit on the border between license and responsibility, rich and poor, and right and wrong in early twentieth-century America.

Children have big feelings that are sometimes difficult to manage. In If You’re Angry and You Know It, Go Outside, Mari is struggling with the death of her beloved dog and trying to deal with anger, sadness, and loss. Written simply for young children and illustrated with vibrant colors to reflect the range of Mari’s emotions, this book introduces self-regulation skills for both kids and adults. It emphasizes staying in or returning to our resilient zone—a state where we feel like our best selves and maintain a sense of agency.

The book highlights three key strategies for staying in the resilient zone or returning to it when emotions run high:

(1) Notice sensations. Recognizing physical sensations in the body helps us respond to feelings constructively rather than impulsively.

(2) Practice grounding. Grounding involves physical activities that anchor us in the present and calm our nervous system. Techniques include deep breathing, pushing against objects, stretching, dancing, or even playing video games.

(3) Focus on joy and love. Shifting attention to positive and joyful experiences can foster resilience. Ideas include writing a gratitude journal, creating a photo collage, or spending time with loved ones and pets.

Mari’s story is followed by a section for adults that explains the evidence-backed Community Resiliency Model (CRM), developed by the Trauma Resource Institute, and helps grown-ups guide children through big feelings.

Young children love to explore their world through drama—characters, dialogue, story arcs, and props are all standard elements of a child’s play. It is no surprise then that professional theatre has long been regarded as a way to support children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and creative development. Increasingly, there is an international interest in theatre for very young audiences, and the Wall Street Journal reported on a “baby boom” in American theatre, with a marked upswing in the number of stage plays being written and produced for toddlers and preschoolers.

Fueled by ongoing research into developmental psychology and theatre arts, the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) of Minneapolis presents in this book four of its newly commissioned plays for preschoolers. CTC is widely recognized as the leading theatre for young people and families in North America; it received the 2003 Tony award for regional theatre, and Time magazine rated it the number one children’s theatre in the United States. These four plays encompass a broad range of styles and subjects: Bert and Ernie, Goodnight! is a musical about Bert and Ernie’s unlikely but true friendship, written by Barry Kornhauser and based on the original songs and scripts from Sesame Street. The Biggest Little House in the Forest is a toy-theatre play about a group of diverse animals trying to share a very tiny home, adapted by Rosanna Staffa from the book by Djemma Bider. The Cat’s Journey is a dazzling shadow-puppet play with a little girl who rides on a friendly cat, written by Fabrizio Montecchi. And Victoria Stewart’s Mercy Watson to the Rescue!, adapted from the Kate DiCamillo Mercy Watson series, is a comic romp featuring the inadvertent heroics of everyone’s favorite porcine wonder.

While these plays are as different as they could be, they all help young children to develop a moral compass and critical-thinking skills—while also showing them the power of the theatre to amaze, delight, and inspire.

In Milwaukee, Isabelle Day had a house. And she had a father. This year, on Halloween, she has half of a house in Minneapolis, a mother at least as sad as she is, and a loss that’s too hard to think—let alone talk—about. It’s the Midwest in the early 1960s, and dads just don’t die . . . like that.

Hovering over Isabelle’s new world are the duplex’s too-attentive landladies, Miss Flora (“a lovely dried flower”) and her sister Miss Dora (“grim as roadkill”), who dwell in a sea of memories and doilies; the gleefully demonic Sister Mary Mercy, who rules a school awash in cigarette smoke; and classmates steady Margaret and edgy Grace, who hold out some hope of friendship. As Isabelle’s first tentative steps carry her through unfamiliar territory—classroom debacles and misadventures at home and beyond, time trapped in a storm-tossed cemetery and investigating an inhospitable hospital—she begins to discover that, when it comes to pain and loss, she might actually be in good company.

In light of the elderly sisters’ lives, Grace and Margaret’s friendship, and her father’s memory, she just might find the heart and humor to save herself. With characteristic sensitivity and wit, Jane St. Anthony reveals how a girl’s life clouded with grief can also hold a world of promise.