Important, accessible, needed.
A necessary children’s book about whiteness, white supremacy, and resistance.
Higginbotham’s text includes both dialogue among white adults and a white girl grappling with her growing race consciousness and additional text that references and unpacks the ideas in that dialogue. The connective tissue between these two essential pieces of the book can be weak, but the book as a whole is sure to spark conversations, and its collage art and DIY aesthetic may encourage creative expression. The dialogue begins when the girl overhears snippets of a news story about a police officer (whose white hand is shown holding a gun) killing an unarmed black man. “Oh no, not again,” says her mother, covering her eyes, and the girl asks “What? Mom. What ‘not again’?” Instead of responding, Mom turns off the TV and dodges questions, asserting, “Our family is kind to everyone. We don’t see color.” The girl grows increasingly frustrated and eventually seeks information independently while also asserting that she does see color and knows “that what that police officer did was wrong!” Precisely how she came to this raised consciousness isn’t clear, and no adults seem sympathetic or overtly supportive. Narrative text directed at readers (perhaps also absorbed by the girl as she reads?) highlights white people engaged in anti-racist activism, and it avoids undermining itself by also placing historical and contemporary black activism at the center. Curiously, however, the text excludes people of other races from its discussion.
Important, accessible, needed. (Picture book. 5-12)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9483-4000-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Dottir Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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