Autumn always brings a big crop of new books, as does spring, the two main seasons in the publishing world. This season local author Janet Taylor Lisle, winner of a Newbery Honor Award for Afternoon of the Elves, has a delightful new animal fantasy, Highway Cats. A group of scrappy cats is barely getting by, living near Interstate 95 and scrounging in trash bins for food. When the nearby town threatens to put a road through the cats’ home, three kittens mysteriously appear to lend their slightly magical help. Episodic chapters and silhouette illustrations make this short book appealing to upper elementary school readers and just right for reading aloud to younger kids.

For the same age group, Louise Erdrich, an award-winning author better known for her adult books, has added a third book to the series that began with The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence. This engaging installment, The Porcupine Year, can be appreciated without reading the previous two. Omakayas, a 12-year-old Ojibwe girl, and her family have been forced off their island in 1852 and are struggling to live through a northern Minnesota winter. Their strong family ties and impressive survival skills keep them going in this fine historical novel.

A book in the fall harvest for slightly younger readers, Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look, will have children laughing about, but also sympathizing with, the problems of second grader, Alvin Ho. Alvin, who lives in Concord, Mass., talks and yells at home, where he practices being a superhero. Yet for some reason, he can’t talk at school and has trouble making friends. Snappy retro illustrations lend humor even in Alvin’s low moments when he breaks his father’s Johnny Astro toy and visits a therapist to overcome his fears. Fans of Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody and Stink books will want to add Alvin Ho to their reading.

Children who enjoy chapter books still love and benefit from shorter books with illustrations on every page like Way Up and Over Everything. This serious, beautiful picture-story book recounts a traditional story about African slaves who could fly. Exquisite watercolors by Jude Daly, which portray South Carolina in the 1840s, move from realistic to magical and back again. Alice McGill, a professional storyteller, has honed the tale to make it an effective read-aloud.

Tanya Lee Stone’s Sandy’s Circus provides a lively introduction to Alexander Calder, showing how he came to be an artist and create his wonderful movable circus out of wire, wood, buttons and more. His playfulness, captured on every page by Boris Kulikov’s illustrations, makes Calder an excellent artist for children to get to know.

Many children are eager to find out about people’s lives in picture-book biographies like Sandy’s Circus and longer biographies. Memoirs for teenagers such as Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution by Moying Li infuse a personal note into a certain time and place. Born in the mid-1950s, Li, who now lives in Boston, grew up in an educated family in Beijing, a secure life that fell apart in 1966 with the onslaught of the Cultural Revolution. This fascinating memoir covers the next 10 years, when Li was forced to live apart from her parents. Even after the family’s library was ransacked and burned, Li took refuge in books, reading forbidden English classics with her brother and friends. Learning became her lifeline in a devastating time.

Teens who read to escape from the real world will welcome Graceling by Kristin Cashore, a terrific fantasy novel about an adventurous girl. In the seven kingdom area where Katsa lives, a few people are born as gracelings, each with a different special power. Katsa, to her increasing dismay, can kill easily and successfully, which her uncle the king uses for his own purposes. Only after meeting a prince whose Grace is also fighting does Katsa see she has choices. She and the prince turn their skills to a suspenseful rescue mission that threatens to defeat them both.

Laughter is another excellent avenue of escape for readers, who will find it nonstop in Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman. The over-the-top plot has 14-year-old Antsy befriending Gunnar Umlaut, a fellow student who claims he has only six months to live. Antsy’s tendency to be impulsive, which is his downfall, kicks in as he offers a month of his own life to Gunnar. The warm-hearted, symbolic gesture has consequences no reader can foresee, including Antsy’s awkward dates with Gunnar’s beautiful older sister. The sequel to The Schwa Was Here, Antsy Does Time can be read on its own with complete satisfaction and a lot of laughs.

Kathleen Odean, who recently moved from Barrington to North Kingstown, is the author of several guidebooks to good reading for children and teens.