Picture Book

 “Mina lived in her own little world where nothing ever bothered her. Except for one thing.”

“It’s the kind of night when you just can’t fall asleep. You feel as though everyone in the world is asleep but you.” A small child dressed in bunny pajamas is wide awake in the peaceful calm of a deep-blue-hued bedroom, longing to play.

There’s only one classmate who makes “Violet’s heart skip,” and that’s brown-skinned Mira. In Violet’s imagination, she “astound[s] Mira with heroic feats” and embarks on adventures with her.

“Kiskisiw means ‘he remembers.’” A young Cree boy leaves the city and travels north by plane with his grandfather to see the trapline where Moshom spent the early years of his life.

A fawn opens its newborn eyes to its mother. “You are alive!  You are a bright star inside our hearts.”

Named after her mother’s favorite flower, warthog Daisy gets teased about her name at school. “’You don’t look like a daisy,’ said Rose. ‘More like a thistle,’ said Violet.”

“America, the Brave. America, the Bold. / America to Have. America to Hold.” A picture book in which the opening lines suggest the celebratory and devotional goes on to asks unflinching, essential questions in a second-person narrative addressing America in the voice of individual Black and brown children.

“The night wished it was quieter.” A series of arresting poetic “wish” statements together with the illustrations each is paired with create a powerful, poignant story following the journey of a refugee family.

A young Dominican American girl is jealous of each child who stays overnight with her family while their adult caregiver works, not only because they get to sleep on the cot in the living room, but because they get her parents’ attention, special privileges (she thinks), and a view of the George Washington Bridge through the window.