Book of the Week: Finding Langston

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Published by Holiday House, 2018
107 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3960-7

Ages 8-11

In the late 1940s, 11-year-old Langston has recently moved to Chicago from Alabama with his father and is having a hard time with the transition. He and his dad are both still grieving the death of Langston’s mother, while Langston is teased at school for being a country boy. On a day he’s evading a bully after school, Langston discovers the George Cleveland Hall branch of the Chicago Public Library. Back in Alabama, his mother had told him that libraries were for white people, but here he sees people that look like him going in. Langston enters and finds a welcoming world. He’s drawn first to the work of a Black poet who has the same name as he does: Langston. Reading Langston Hughes’s poems makes Langston feel like he’s found someone who understands his life, whose words could be his own. Talking more to his dad and reading old letters, Langston realizes that his mom, too, found resonance and hope in the words of Langston Hughes, and that she chose to name him “Langston” because of Langston Hughes. A short, stirring novel that sees Langston making new connections in myriad ways also sees him move from loneliness and isolation to hope. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices

Cheryl and Wade Hudson, editors 

Foreword by Ashley Bryan

Published by Crown, 2018
87 pages
ISBN: 978-0-525-58042-31

Age 8 and older

The intention throughout this volume is clear and focused: It reads like a love letter to Black and brown children. A gathering of poems, essays, short stories, and a wide range of artwork, the pieces include hard truths and hopes and dreams grounded in experience, memory, and imagination. “Kindness Is a Choice,” Jacqueline Woodson writes in a letter to her children. “Stay safe my child …. Come home to me each night,” writes Sharon Draper in “Prayers of the Grandmothers.” Ellen Oh’s childhood memories affirm that words have power—to hurt, yes, but also to change minds. “One day Papí drove me to school,” begins Tony Medina’s short story of the same name, in which the young narrator’s father is arrested by ICE. “There is always a storm,” writes Pat Cummings in her poem assuring young readers and listeners that “We’ve Got You.” Thirty written offerings are paired with 30 visual accompaniments in this collection featuring many authors and illustrators of color and from First/Native Nations. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Marla Frazee Wins 2019 Charlotte Zolotow Award

 (Read the full press release.)

Little Brown, written and illustrated by Marla Frazee, is the winner of the twenty-second annual Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture book. The award is given by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC), a library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Little Brown was edited by Allyn Johnston and published in the United States in 2018 by Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. 

Do the other dogs not play with Little Brown because he’s cranky, or is he cranky because the other dogs don’t play with him? It’s a question examined with both humor and pathos in this marvelous picture book. In Frazee’s superb text, supported by equally fine, soft-hued pencil and gouache illustrations, a dramatic narrative crafted with wonderful language and artful pacing is full of hilariously spot-on dog behavior. But Little Brown’s isolation is heartbreaking, while the puzzlement of the other dogs and the “dilemma” they all face when Little Brown steals their toys and refuses to give them back makes for a complex look at social dynamics. All the dogs wonder whether, and how, things might be different, leading to a brilliant open ending. “Maybe tomorrow … they would know what to do.” A story that entertains, it also respects young readers and listeners, asking them to rise to the challenge of thinking about what might happen next, and to reflect on Little Brown’sconnection to their own lives in a picture book that is the antithesis of didactic.

The 2019 Zolotow Award committee named two Honor Books: 

Honey, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein, edited by Nancy Paulsen, and published by Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, is about a young bear in his second year who remembers honey, but must wait for it to be ready, in a narrative where every carefully chosen word impacts the rhythm and flow of a story in which timing (and appreciating each moment) is everything.

Saturday Is Swimming Day, written and illustrated by Hyewon Yum, edited by Kate Fletcher, and published by Candlewick Press, about a small girl’s anxiety over learning how to swim, her experience stated in simple, declarative sentences providing evocative descriptions of her feelings and actions as she gradually overcomes her fear with the help of a patient teacher.

 The 2019 Zolotow Award committee also cited nine titles as Highly Commended: 

•  A BIG Mooncake for Little Star written and illustrated by Grace Lin (Little, Brown)
• Carmela Full of Wishes written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson (G. P. Putnam Son’s / Penguin Random House)
• The Day You Begin written by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López (Nancy Paulsen Books / Penguin Random House)
• Dreamers written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House)
• The Patchwork Bike written by Maxine Beneba Clarke, illustrated by Van Thanh Rudd (U.S. edition: Candlewick Press)
• The Rough Patch written and illustrated by Brian Lies (Greenwillow Books / HarperCollins)
• Thank You, Omu! written and illustrated by Oge Mora (Little Brown)
• We Don’t Eat Our Classmates written and illustrated by Ryan T. Higgins (Disney / Hyperion)
• Winter Is Here written by Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek

(Greenwillow Books / HarperCollins).

Congratulations to all!

Book of the Week: Black Bird, Yellow Sun

by Steve Light

Published by Candlewick Press, 2018
16 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9067-0

(Birth to age 3)

A deceptively simple board book, with just four words per page (two of which are always "black bird") is also quite elegant. From morning to night, a blackbird moves from page to page, each featuring part of the natural world that’s a different color. Logically organized from sun up (“yellow sun") to sundown ("blue moon"), the little black bird is shown from various perspectives throughout the day, sometimes flying, sometimes perched. The lines are clean and the shapes are clear in the textured collage artwork, so that a baby will always be able to find the black bird in its natural setting. It's rare for an eight-page-spread board book to offer such a high level of artistry and such an exquisite aesthetic. (KTH) ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Learning to Breathe

by Janice Lynn Mather

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2018
328 pages
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0601-8

Age 14 and older

Although she was raised mostly by her loving grandmother, everyone seems to expect 16-year-old, Black Bahamian Indy to follow in the footsteps of her mother, who has a drug addiction and cannot provide a stable home for her daughter. So when Indy moves to Nassau to live with her aunt and is raped by her cousin Gary, she keeps the resulting pregnancy a secret, afraid that her aunt will kick her out of the house. Struggling in school and in agony due to the trauma she has survived—and which she continues, horrifically, to experience at Gary’s hands—Indy spends a lot of time alone on the island. Stumbling upon a yoga retreat one day, she experiences the kindness of a few of its employees and slowly opens herself up to receiving the support that she deserves and so desperately needs. This is a heart-wrenching study of one vulnerable young woman who, with the help of a few others, summons the strength to speak her truth, to regain her footing, and to press on despite the violence she has endured. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center