A quiet, contemplative story in which a Hmong American girl’s year of simple, joyful discoveries culminates with a gift for her grieving neighbor.
Book of the Week
Brown Girl Dreaming
“And somehow, one day, it’s just there / speckled black-and white, the paper / inside smelling like something I could fall right into, / live there — inside those clean white pages.” Jacqueline Woodson’s childhood unfolds in poems that beautifully reveal details of her early life and her slow but gradually certain understanding that words and stories and writing were essential to her. Her older sister was shining smart. One of her brothers could sing wonderfully. She would come to realize words were her smart, her singing, her special thing.
For Black Girls Like Me
Makeda (Kade), 11, and her family have moved across country to New Mexico for her dad’s musical career. Kade knows the adjustment, as always, will be complicated by questions: She is Black, and the rest of her family is white.
Why?
A small rabbit has question after question for a large bear, always simply stated as “Why?” Children must infer the specific question from both the accompanying illustration and the bear’s answer in this story that moves across the seasons.
The Run-aways
Grandpa is stuck in the hospital after a bad fall, and he’s not happy about it. He swears a lot, makes unreasonable demands of his nurses, and complains about the food.
Birdsong
Katherena, a young Cree girl, and her mother move from their home by the sea to the country. Over the course of a year, Katherena adapts to her new home and grows close to Agnes, an older woman who lives nearby.
Don’t Date Rosa Santos
High school senior Rosa Santos’s mother was born at sea during her grandparent’s escape from Cuba. Rosa’s grandfather drowned on that journey. Rosa’s own father died at sea before she was born. Rosa, who’s been shaped by both the love and the pain of her grandmother and mother, avoids the water, believing her family has a curse.
Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace
Like most African American soldiers in the segregated army during World War II, Ashley Bryan was assigned to a service unit. As a stevedore he helped unload shipments in Boston—although he was much more adept drawing others at work—before going overseas.
Moth: An Evolution Story
“This is a story of light and dark. Of change and adaptation, of survival and hope.” Once, most peppered moths had “speckled, freckled” wings—black on white. Occasionally they were born with charcoal wings—easily spotted by predators. It was the speckled ones that survived to breed.
Astro Girl
Young Astrid wants to be an astronaut. Can she go round and round the earth? She assures Papa she can as he spins her. Can she eat food from a package? Astrid says she can through bites of a cereal bar. And then there’s zero gravity, Papa points out as he tosses her into the air.