By Yuyi Morales
Neal Porter Books / Holiday House, 2021
32 pages
9780823443284
Ages 3-8
A fawn opens its newborn eyes to its mother. “You are alive! You are a bright star inside our hearts.” The fawn’s mother teaches it how to move through a desert landscape full of beauty and danger both. When the fawn is separated from its mother by a wall, overwhelmed and afraid, it curls up, vulnerable and alone. With a turn of the page, the fawn has disappeared and a brown-skinned girl with a deer on her shirt appears in its place, her pose and expression echoing the fawn’s. In this extraordinary moment, a story about the need for safety and security, and above all love for our children, becomes one that is also about migration, and immigration, and borders. Empathy, and this truth, are both transcendent: “You are a bright star inside our hearts.” The author/illustrator’s expands on the subject and setting in an eloquent author’s note. “I made this book knowing that children everywhere, but especially migrant children at the borderlands, have experienced things they should never have to endure … I made this book because I want you to know that no matter where you are, wherever you’ve come from, or where you are going, you should always be honored, respected, cared for, and loved.” Exquisite mixed media illustrations infused with golden light accompany a spare, eloquent text in English with Spanish integrated throughout. ©2021 Cooperative Children’s Book Center