"Sora no Kotoba ga Futteru: The Infirmary Haiku Circle" is a YA novel about Sora, a middle schooler who stays in the infirmary instead of class, and the haiku club he builds with his haiku-loving classmate Haseo, the school nurse Kitamura, and later Yumi. It folds haiku practice and know-how naturally into the story while showing how language can help wounded people begin to heal.

Receive the sky's words as snow falls.

"Atelier by the Sea" is a reflective picture book in which a grandmother tells her grandchild about a summer from her girlhood. After she stops going to school, the young 'I' spends a week at a seaside studio with an artist, drawing, swimming, reading, and slowly opening her heart through meals and conversation. Its center is a quiet sense of happiness and the encounter with an adult who does not treat children condescendingly.

This child? It's me.