Book of the Week: New Kid

by Jerry Craft

 

Published by Harper, 2019
249 pages
ISBN: 978-0-06-269120-0

Ages 9-13

In his early weeks at Riverdale Academy Day School (RAD), seventh grader Jordan Banks is so happy when he sees another student of color that small cupids appear around his head. It’s emblematic of the keen social commentary rooted in much of this graphic novel’s humor. Black students (and the few Black faculty) at RAD are often confused for one another; it’s assumed that students of color need financial aid, just as it’s assumed Black kids are athletic and, in one unsettling scene, prone to violence. Conversely, one teacher is so worried about saying something racist that he constantly asks for reassurance. The racism and absurdities at RAD (required athletic participation—Jordan’s on a fifth string soccer team) aren’t the sum of Jordan’s experiences. He makes two good friends who share his love of gaming: Drew, another new, Black student, who also shares Jordan’s frustrations, and Liam, a white student embarrassed by his family’s wealth. And he appreciates academic challenges like the art class that pushes him to try something new. Black-and-white pages from Jordan’s sketchbook illuminate his feelings about RAD and about the daily transformation required to movie back and forth between the worlds of his home (where he feels his parents love and also the weight of their hopes and fears), neighborhood, and school. Genuine characters propel this funny, warm, biting, fearless story. Entertaining and insightful, it will surely offer affirmation for some readers, revelation for others. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: We Are Here to Stay — Voices of Undocumented Young Adults

by Susan Kuklin

 

Published by Candlewick Press, 2019
182 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7884-5

 

Age 11 and older

Nine young adults with undocumented immigrant status in the United States share their individual, complex stories about how and why they came to this country, and their experiences since arriving. Each has made the decision to speak out, not only in this book but often in other contexts: courageous activism as they both live in and emerge from “the shadows” to share their stories and dreams. The young adults interviewed came originally from Colombia, Ghana, Independent Samoa, Mexico, and South Korea as children or young teens, usually with their parents, in one case because of trafficking. The book, originally slated for publication in 2017, was delayed after presidential action put the status of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in limbo. Changes were made to protect the young people’s identities, which are now indicated only by first initial and a dash (e.g. Y—), while Kuklin’s photographs of her subjects were eliminated—only empty frames remain. Each dash and empty frame is a sobering reminder that visibility is a risk for these young people, who deserve to be seen. Black-and-white photographs do appear in a chapter about the work of Reverend John Fife of Tucson, part of a group providing assistance to immigrants making the difficult desert crossing. End matter includes notes about each interview and resources. Kuklin writes, “These individuals remind me again and again that the American Dream is worth fighting for—and that the American dream is worth sharing.” ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Hands Up!

by Breanna J. McDaniel

Illustrated by Shane W. Evans

Published by Dial, 2019
32 pages
ISBN: 978-0-525-55231-4

Ages 4-9

Sometimes the young Black girl at the center of this story raises one or both of her hands as a simple part of moving through the day (stretching them over her head when she wakes in the morning, holding on to her parents’ arms and swinging, raising her hand in class, reaching for a book on the high shelf). Sometimes she raises her hands in moments of exuberance and assertiveness and living out loud (lifting them high in church as she sings, reaching for the basketball in a game, celebrating a victory, holding up a sign at a march). This celebration of selfhood, family, and community has a powerful subtext, intentionally reclaiming and recasting the phrase “hands up,” so frightening for Black and brown lives when it comes to encounters with police, by affirming the girl’s right to move through and occupy the space around her—and the world itself—without question. The bright mixed-media art has abundance of yellow, amplifying the joyful feel. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Dreamers

by Yuyi Morales

Published by Neal Porter Books / Holiday House, 2018

32 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4055-9

Ages 4-9

“…when we made it to the other side, thirsty, in awe, unable to go back, we became immigrants.” Yuyi Morales tells the story of her journey with her young son to the United States and what happened next in a picture book that pays tribute to love, resilience, books and reading, and dreamers everywhere. The text, spare and poetic, describes a physical journey but, more important, a journey of discovery when mother and son stumble on a place that was “Suspicious. Improbable. Unbelievable. Surprising.” A place that was full of stories. The books they found at the public library were home, and inspiration, and validation, affirming that their stories, their voices, their dreams, their gifts, matter. The lush, fanciful multimedia illustrations incorporate 48 children’s books that Morales was inspired by during that time. End matter includes more details about Morales’s immigrant journey from Mexico, as well as a bibliography of the books she incorporates into the artwork and a brief note on how she made the book. Highly Commended, 2019 Charlotte Zolotow Award ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

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!