Picture Book

Tim and Tom, “midnight black” Percheron horses, love the snow. Jenny, their driver, hitches them to a sleigh decked with lights, their bridles bedecked with bells and jingling.

Thomas loves ballet. On this cold winter day, Thomas, who is Black, and five other preschoolers arrive for Mr. Elliot’s class. “We hang up our coats, hats and woolly scarves. Then we wiggle and slide into our ballet shoes.”

When his usual tactics to alleviate boredom don’t work, Raccoon decides to bake an apple cake. Out of eggs, he heads to Fox’s to borrow some.

“Today is a BIG day. Today is the first time I get to help my papi at his work. He is a landscape contractor.”

The green-skinned witch hosting a cooking show breezes confidently through the first few steps of making Frog Soup. She’s filled her cauldron with water, added potatoes, carrots, 22 cloves of garlic, and fly extract.

This imaginative approach to describing the four seasons (in some regions) captures the overlapping traits that are inevitable between one season and the next.

“He leaped so high that he looked like he was never coming down, like he defied gravity or something.” The new kid at the neighborhood basketball court doesn’t have a nickname, but his skills quickly earn him one.

Olu lives near Lagos, in Nigeria; Greta lives in Milan, in Italy. The two children (both Black) are cousins. “They have never met each other in person! How would they?”

In her secret treasure box, a girl with brown skin collects special found items: a particularly smooth, round rock; a papery snakeskin; a large feather; a bird’s nest. She delights in sharing these items with her white grandfather when he visits.