B is for baby. It’s also for beads, basket, banana, brother, bicycle and more in this un-alphabet book that features the letter B with bountiful delight.
Starred Review of the Week
Dig
In this taut, mesmerizing work, the Shoveler’s mom is adept at survival but has never told him anything about his dad, and their recent move to Pennsylvania has him wondering yet again.
The Little Red Stroller
When Luna is a baby, her mommy gives her a red stroller. When Luna is bigger, she and her mommy encounter baby Ernie and his mommy and daddy. “We wish we had a little red stroller like yours,” they tell her. Luna, declaring herself too big for her stroller, gives it to them.
This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality
A compelling, present-tense narrative combines poems in teenage Jo Ann Allen’s voice with clippings from news stories and other contemporaneous documents from the 1956-57 school year, when she was one of the Clinton 12 who integrated the high school in Clinton, Tennessee.
Heroine
Mickey, a talented catcher, finds her softball dreams derailed after a car accident puts her and her best friend, pitcher Carolina, in the hospital months before their senior season. When the OxyContin Mickey is prescribed runs out sooner than it should, she stumbles upon another source: Edith, who snags Oxy from the senior citizens she drives to doctors’ appointments.
My Papi Has a Motorcycle
As Daisy rides with Papi on his motorcycle, she describes her neighborhood and city in a delightful, loving ode to present and past, family and community, joyfully evoking place and people and connections.
The Storm Keeper’s Island
Fionn and his older sister Tara are spending the summer on the island of Arranmore, just off the coast of western Ireland, while their mother is treated for depression. Fionn’s father drowned before he was born and Fionn is terrified of the sea. But he’s intrigued by the island, which sometimes shimmers and shifts before his eyes, and his grandfather, whose cottage is full of homemade candles, each labeled with a different date.
Another
A young Black girl is asleep in her bed with her red-collared black cat when a blue-collared black cat appears through a porthole of light. The blue-collared cat absconds with the red-collared cat’s red mouse toy. The red-collared cat follows through the hole, as does the now awake little girl in her red planetary nightgown.
A Place to Belong
In 1946, Hanako, 12, and her family arrive in Japan with others who, like her parents, refused to sign a loyalty oath while imprisoned in U.S. internment camps during World War II. Their U.S. military ship lands near devastated Hiroshima.
We Set the Dark on Fire
Daniela and her family illegally crossed the border into Medio when she was small. At 12, with forged citizenship papers, she was accepted into the Medio School for Girls, where students are groomed for one of two roles: Primera or Segunda—first or second wife—to the sons of wealthy, politically connected families, roles with origins in their culture’s creation story.