Picture Book

A bilingual (English/Chinese) counting book follows little Mia and her Uncle Eddie on a walk through Chinatown. They are headed to the Big Wok restaurant for dim sum.

Claire and her brother, Timbo, each make winter-themed dioramas for a school project. Timbo’s is cotton balls of snow and glitter; Claire’s is about migration—their home, the Big Island of Hawaiʿi, is a winter refuge for many birds.

 “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.