Picture Book

A gently reassuring narrative explores the hardships and triumphs of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown without directly naming the virus.

“On cold winter days in the Turtle Mountains, I helped Mama cook soup on our woodstove, The Range Eternal.” On the blue enamel stove in the Anishinaabe narrator’s childhood home, her mother deftly feeds wood into the fire even as she stirs.

A small penguin is separated from its community when the ice on which it’s standing breaks away.

Each page or spread of this creative look at many ways light is part of our lives features one or more rhyming couplets describing light in a specific context set against an illustration showing an accompanying scene.

Lami, a small girl who lives with her extended family in an African compound brimming with activity, is known as an expert chicken catcher.

“We live with a bear!” a boy insists. The bear that sleeps in the bedroom next to his is loud, bossy, and strong.

“In my family, when the sun goes down, our hair goes up!”

Kaia is happy to tell her friends everything her beekeeper dad has taught her about bees and how important they are, talking as if she’s a beekeeper, too.

Mónica is from Bolivia. Her best friend, Hannah, is from Israel. Both miss things about their homelands.

Ernestine can’t wait to go on her first camping trip, with her Aunt Jackie and cousin, Samantha.