BABA PALOOZA

A yellow car zips through busy city streets carrying a precious load of parental love.

Aizah’s Baba works long hours driving his taxicab, but on Saturday mornings, Aizah dons star-shaped glasses and a tiara for their weekly ritual—a father-daughter ride that makes Aizah feel like a movie star. Baba rarely has time to see Aizah perform in school plays, and she’s on her own while walking home after school. She’s stoic, though, meeting challenges with grace and humor (“I have to figure out by myself that the crossing guard is really an alien from Planet Froofawitz”). When a Daddy-Daughter dance appears on the school calendar, Aizah turns her initial disappointment at Baba being unable to attend into triumph with a creative solution: a party honoring her father (the titular “Baba Palooza”). Eloquent yet child-friendly similes likening the yellow taxi to a tropical mango (from the “Pakistani grocery store”), a bumblebee, and even a worn-out yellow No. 2 pencil underscore the characters’ South Asian heritage and speak to the family’s conflicted feelings about Baba’s job—Baba’s shame as he compares himself to friends employed as doctors or engineers; Aizah’s pride in her hardworking father. Alam’s fluid, bustling, cartoonish artwork carefully zeroes in on small details (like a hearing aid for Baba, who’s Deaf and speaks in Pakistani sign language) and builds creative compositions for a vivid tale that addresses socioeconomic realities.

Sensitive, uplifting, and honest—a pitch-perfect portrait of a loving working-class family.