A Star Shines Through

The school-age child narrator and their parents used to live in a city, in an apartment with a star-shaped cardboard lamp in the kitchen window. “When I returned home from music lessons … I could recognize our window from afar: a star shone through the cold November darkness.” When war begins, the child and their mother flee to another country.

Where Wolves Don’t Die

Minneapolis teen Ezra longs to spend more time at Red Gut, the Ojibwe reservation where his extended paternal family lives. When his school bully, Matt, is killed in a house fire, Ezra is brought in for questioning; he’d punched a locker earlier that day after Matt threatened Ezra’s friend and crush, Nora. While he complies with the investigation, Ezra’s father also swiftly moves Ezra to live with his grandparents just over the Canadian border, in Red Gut.

Little Shrew

Little Shrew, a silky rodent with a pointed nose and round eyes, lives a rather commonplace life with a well-established routine. He eats the same breakfast each day, brushes his fur with a hairbrush he’s had “forever,” and departs for his job at the currency exchange.

No More Señora Mimí

Ana (Latina) spends her day before and after school with her apartment building neighbor, Señora Mimí, while her mother is at work. “Señora Mimí has a two-tooth baby named Nelson and a no-tooth dog named Pancho, who likes buttered crackers as much as I do.” Ana and Señora Mimí’s relationship is one of warmth, familiarity, and loving routines; they even have matching hand-knitted sweaters Señora Mimí made.

South of Somewhere

When white, twelve-year-old Mavis’s mother is accused of embezzlement, the rest of the family makes an abrupt transition from a life of luxury to small-town living. Upon returning to their upscale Chicago home after a vacation, the family finds that the FBI is already there—and Mom is already in hiding. With their bank accounts frozen, Mavis’s father takes his kids to live with his estranged sister just south of Somewhere, Illinois.

ninitohtênân / We Listen

A school-age Cree girl visiting her grandmother, Nôhkom, describes Nôhkom’s measured actions, each of which the girl, her friend (who is Black), and her mother repeat. “Nôhkom prays. We pray. Nôhkom picks. We pick.” The simple story eloquently shows the role this elder plays in teaching by doing, while also giving a lovely sense of family as the foursome walks in the woods to harvest berries and gathers for a meal.