Children’s Picture Book Reviews

Children’s Book Reviews

Sue Christian Parsons, Ph.D.

RECOMMENDED: BOOKS THAT CHALLENGE, DELIGHT, AND INSPIRE

Bold Biographies for Young People

What empowers a person to reach beyond what is given to and expected of them to consider and reach for what else might be? One powerful function of a story is to offer possibility. A wellchosen biography not only captivates the imagination but may challenge assumptions about what has been, what is, and what might be. Beyond a simple “who” and “what,” a strong biography calls readers to consider what truly matters in our lives and society. In the best learning contexts, biographies spark dialogue about the world today and tomorrow.

Given the increased importance of visual imagery in communication and the vital push to publish more books that reflect diverse, frequently marginalized cultural experiences, multicultural picturebook biographies deserve particular attention on classroom shelves. In their “trueness,” they offer relevance and a sense of attainability. Because they are short, they afford space on the shelf for many cultures and perspectives.

Christopher Myers (2014) observes that children “see books less as mirrors and more as maps. They are indeed searching for their place in the world, but they are also deciding where they want to go. They create, through the stories they’re given, an atlas of the world, of their relationships to others, of their possible destinations” (p. 1). The protagonists of the true stories highlighted below lived lives in contexts that tried to restrain their possible paths. Yet, they also found encouragement and inspiration within their communities that helped them move beyond. And, as path-forgers, they intentionally cleared paths for others to move ahead as well. “Also recommended” books offer possible text sets for content and thematic exploration.

Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen Bryant (author) and Frank Morrison (illustrator). 2020; Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Young Elgin Baylor and his friends wanted to play basketball, but the city parks in Washington, D.C. were “whites only.” “But things can change in time, the child knew. Time was important. That’s why his own name, Elgin, came from his father’s favorite watch” (n.p.). Eventually, a hoop appeared in a nearby field, and Elgin Baylor’s basketball prodigy appeared, too. From neighborhood court to high school standout to college star (in Idaho because D.C. colleges were “whites only”) to the NBA, Baylor’s style of play was so different that “people stopped what they were doing and watched." When questioned about where he learned his moves, Elgin always told them, “It’s spontaneous.” But civil rights progress in the mid-twentieth century was anything but spontaneous. Bryant narrates Baylor’s

barrier-breaking career in tight counterpoint with acts of courage in that era that caused people to stop what they were doing to watch. Baylor leads his first college team to victory as Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat. When newspapers wrote about the 1958 college basketball championships, they also write about the courage of black students in Arkansas integrating a previously all-white school. As activists implemented lunch counter sit-ins, we see Baylor sitting out of a game in protest of his being denied access to restaurants and hotels while traveling with the team, an act that led the NBA to refuse to patronize discriminatory businesses. Bryant’s descriptions of Baylor’s playing style surge with energy and excitement while the long-view treatment of his story gives readers insight into the slow arc toward justice and the steadfast intentionality of those who worked to win it. Morrison’s illustrations vibrate with movement in the sports scenes but solidly center the change agents on pages depicting taking a stand. Back matter includes a generous author’s note detailing Baylor’s influence on the NBA and the game of basketball and explaining the social significance of his career, a detailed timeline of his life so far, and suggested further readings and resources.

The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown by Mac Barnett (author) and Sarah Jacoby (illustrator). 2019, Balzer + Bray.

There are few books for young children more ubiquitous than Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. In this unconventional biography, Mac Barnett evokes Brown’s, The Important Book, noting the most important thing about Margaret was that she wrote books. Every book was authored, Barnett begins, by real people in the real world, who do real everyday things, some of which might be important to others to know. In rapid-fire, he poses and answers direct questions about Brown’s life—her birthday, the color of her hair, whether she ever fell in love, did she have dogs. “Is any of this important?” he asks. “What is important about Margaret Wise Brown” (n.p.)?The pages that follow illuminate a life lived in interesting stories. Young Margaret skinned a dead pet rabbit and wore the pelt. As an adult, she liked to swim naked in cold water and she spent all the money she was paid for her first book on filling her house with flowers and throwing a party Barnett acknowledges might be questioned as appropriate for a child’s book, but they are, like her books, true and beautiful, just as they are strange. Barnett devotes 18 pages to the vigorous and ongoing rejections of Brown’s work by New

York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore who deemed them worthless and not suitable for purchase. Barnett’s emphatically unflattering depiction of Moore is punctuated by images of bunnies from Brown’s books plastered with “not recommended” stamps. But in just one two-page spread, Barnett and Jacoby capture one event that encapsulates Brown’s broad response to such criticism. Barred from a library gathering of famous authors and illustrators, Margaret and her editor held a tea party right in the middle of the library steps. To get in, guests had to walk around them. Brown’s life ended early and unexpectedly, a fact that Barnett, true to the spirit of his subject, doesn’t dodge but rather invites the reader to consider and wonder about--because life is strange, true books are important, and Margaret Wise Brown wrote such books for children.

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell (author) and Natasha Donovan (illustrator). 2021, Millbrook Press.

Young women in the 1920s were not expected to enjoy math, but Mary Golda Ross loved it and used it to launch a career that, eventually, helped land the first person on the moon. Readers encounter a statement of four primary Cherokee values in the front matter and the last page of end matter restates these values in Cherokee syllabary, transliterated with the English alphabet with pronunciation, and translated into English. In between, Sorell demonstrates how these values guided Ross throughout her life. Ross’s commitment to the value of gaining skills in all areas of life led her to the university where she majored in math because she recognized it as a language that would help her understand a technical world. After college, Ross’s work teaching and mentoring young people enacted the value of ensuring education for all. When World War II broke out, Ross began work as a mathematician for Lockheed Aircraft Cooperation where she found a passion for designing aircraft. Again undeterred by gender expectations, she juggled college and work to earn her engineering certificate. As the first female engineer at Lockheed, Ross, following the value of working cooperatively, became a trusted and respected member of the team. She eventually became part of the top-secret team working on space travel. No matter how impressive her achievements, Ross stayed true to the Cherokee value of humility. Instead of seeking public recognition of her impressive achievements, she quietly encouraged others, including new generations of women in STEM. Donovan’s comic-style illustrations have a retro feel that fits the story of this humble STEM superhero. Rich backmatter also includes a detailed timeline of Ross’s life, author’s note, and resources.

Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist by Julie Leung (author) and Chris Sasaki (illustrator). 2019, Schwarz and Wade.

Contextualizing this story is important. The history of immigration in the United States is complex, but the same pattern persists over centuries. Immigrants come seeking a better life and willing to work for it but meet resistance and prejudice from those whose ancestors were already able to get a foothold. In the mid-nineteenth century, with China struggling economically, many Chinese immigrants arrived through the Angel Island immigration center near San Francisco. The Gold Rush in the U.S. was a hopeful draw for many who, after the rush, stayed, many providing labor that fueled industrial and economic progress, including most of the hard work that went into developing the Transcontinental Railroad. When the U.S. economy became depressed, though, folks that had been here awhile rushed to blame the new immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, banned Chinese immigration to the U.S. But the specter of opportunity and hope still beckoned and hopeful immigrants found a way. In her author’s note, Leung explains that exceptions were made for “those of high status or blood relatives of American Citizens,” so an industry was born providing false identities. Immigrants able to pay the high price for these “paper” identities had to memorize intricate details to pass interrogation and be allowed to enter.

Wong Geng Yeo, a passionate young artist traveling with his father, was separated and detained at Angel Island, a boy all alone. In interviews, he was able to remember the many details of his paper identity and, finally, was released to his father to embark on a new life in the United States. In school, his name was Americanized to Tyrus Wong. Both Wongs worked hard so Tyrus could attend art school where he developed a style fusing Asian and Western traditions. Graduating at the top of his class, Tyrus began work at Walt Disney animation studios in a low-level job, filling the space in between key scene images. When studio animators struggled to find the right scenery for their new production Bambi, Tyrus offered paintings using his unique culturally merged style. Disney loved his work and Wong’s images became Bambi’s world. Yet, in the movie credits, Wong was only listed as an animation assistant. Illustrator Chris Saaki notes that Wong’s work inspired him and many other artists, Asian or not, to challenge lines of limitation and create new ways of seeing and being. The end matter includes the author's and illustrator's notes and photos of Wong as a child and an adult.

The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Ground-breaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne by Lesa Cline-Ransom (author) and John Parra (illustrator). 2020, Simon and Shuster Books for Young Readers.

Born in 1911, Ethel Payne grew up “with an equal measure of discipline and love” and surrounded by stories, from the tales her relatives told, to the stories found at the library her mother took her to each week, to the words of the African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender, which her father helped distribute to the black community by tossing stacks from the train on which he was a porter. Ethel honed her determination to fight injustice as a "black girl who dared to go to school with whites” and who, though a strong writer, was barred from working on the school newspaper. After graduation, as World War II raged, Payne became involved in community activism. After the war, she took a job as a club social director on a military base in Tokyo, recording the stories she was told in her diary. An article she wrote addressing the unjust treatments of black U.S. soldiers gained an audience in newspapers back home. Upon her return to the U.S., Payne took a job at the Chicago Defender. Her stories shown a light on community issues like housing, jobs, and healthcare and covered the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where civil rights issues took the stage. One of only three black journalists with press access to the Eisenhower White House, Payne determinedly asked questions calling attention to issues related to race and justice that were ignored by the white press. After Eisenhower, she questioned Kennedy, then Nixon, then Johnson and Carter, eventually making “readers of all races pay attention to the plight of African Americans.” Parra's folk-style illustrations claim most of the real estate on each page, setting the scene for ClineRansom's simple but effective narration of Payne's story. In a two-page spread toward the end of the book, an image of Payne’s hands on her typewriter take a place alongside pictures of Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. End matter includes an author's note, bibliography, source credits for quotations, and suggested related readings.

Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom by Teresa Robeson (author) and Rebecca Huang (illustrator).

When Wu Chien Shiung was born in Liuhe, China, most people thought girls were not as smart as boys. They were not sent to school or encouraged to learn. But Wu Chien Shiung’s parents thought differently. In fact, they felt so strongly that girls could and should learn that they ran a school for just for girls. The name they gave their daughter meant “courageous hero,” and they believed she would be just that and make a

difference in the world. And make a difference, she did! Courage, passion, and a confidence instilled in her by her parents fueled Wu on a journey to becoming a groundbreaking nuclear physicist. Robeson addresses complex scientific and sociological concepts clearly and accesibly from Wu’s groundbreaking research on beta decay in atoms to the racism and sexism she encountered along the way. Overlooked three times for the Nobel Prize despite her important contributions to the recognized work, Wu persisted and perservered. Wu’s curious, determined and generous nature shines through the story, a testament to the power of love and encouragement.

“Sometimes Chien Shiung did not get the jobs she wanted, either— because she was a woman, because she was Asian. Was she sad? Yes. Was she disappointed? Often. Was she discouraged? Occasionally. But she did not let those feelings stop her from doing what she loved because Baba always said, “Ignore the obstacles. Put your head down and keep walking forward” (n.p.).

Back matter includes an overview of Wu’s accomplishments, a glossary further explaining physics terms, and suggested books for readers sure to be inspired to know more.

The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard (author) and Oge Mora (illustrator).

Mary Walker lived her childhood as a slave. She knew the rules: “Keep working" and “slaves should not be taught to read or write or do anything that might help them learn to do so” (n.p.). Mary dreamed of freedom, specifically being able to rest when she wanted to and to learn to read. When she was 15, the Emancipation Proclamation released Mary to freedom but not from poverty and hard labor. The Freedman’s Bureau helped her family find shelter in a one-room shack, and Mary helped her mother provide for the younger siblings, churning butter, cleaning houses, and caring for other people’s children. She worked long hours but wasn’t allowed to eat, drink, or even use the outhouse until she got home at night, all for a quarter a week. One day an evangelist handed her a Bible, telling Mary her civil rights were in that book. Someday, Mary hoped to learn to read it, but for now, there was too much work to be done. When Mary married, she and her husband toiled long and hard as sharecroppers. When her first son was born, a friend wrote his name in the Bible for her. Mary added her mark as she did for the births of her other two sons. With a growing family, Mary took on extra jobs. “Words would have to wait” (n.p.). Mary held on to and cherished her Bible, hoping someday to read it. Mary’s sons read to her, but she outlived all of them. At 114

years old, living in a retirement home, Mary still yearned to learn to read. And, so, she joined a reading class offered in her building. “Could someone her age learn to read? She didn’t know, but by God, she was going to try” (n.p.) And she did! News of Mary’s achievement traveled far! Newspapers covered it, the city of Chattanooga celebrated it, and the U.S. Department of Education gave her a certificate officially deeming her nation’s oldest student. Gifts arrived from all over. President Johnson sent birthday wishes for her 118th; President Nixon did, too, for her 121st. All those years, Mary found comfort and company through reading and reading to others, whom she always reminded, “You’re never too old to learn” (n.p.) Hubbard’s telling of Mary’s struggles, yearning, and determination deftly balance matterof-fact recounting and poignant moments evoking deep feeling. Mora’s textured collage art uses space and line to evoke struggle, community, and the hope that moves Mary's life along.

Coming soon!

Reference

Myers, C. (2014, March 15). The Apartheid of children’s literature. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-ofchildrens-literature.html

Between Two Cultures: Young Adult Writers Explore Identity

Children come into the world bearing stories—stories of those who came before them, those who birthed them, and those who will raise them, as well as the swirling stories of the families, communities, and cultures they enter. The ways they come to understand themselves depends in good part upon the stories told to them and about them. Their own experiences shape the stories, too, of course, with many day-to-day details lost, but others firmly entrenched in memory. Fortunate children have caring adults who listen to them well, helping them learn to find and tell their truths.

As children grow into adolescence, they enter a critical stage in their life stories—a revision stage. Any writer knows that revision is hard work. It involves looking critically at a story and deciding which parts matter most, which parts can (at least for now) be placed to the side, and what new elements may need to be created. Because the future audience might be judgmental or even capricious, there is a natural concern with getting it all right while not playing too safe. Crafting the story from childhood to adulthood is hard. The right YA book can serve as a mentor text for the process.

The best children’s authors are great listeners, having attended thoughtfully to their own experiences and considered, as well, the stories of others. Historically, from its roots in the 1970s “problem novels,” YA acknowledges the inherent tension in moving from childhood to adulthood, looking it directly in the eye, without easy answers but with the earned wisdom of hope and the truth of possibility. The books featured below show protagonists living in intersections of culture as well as the intersection of childhood to adulthood, trying to make sense of themselves. We may assume that the work of adolescence is complicated by the need to navigate more than one cultural world, and that may be true. But as these stories suggest, that very complication can provide more possibilities for young people to work with as they craft their stories. Perhaps this is a primary role of books in young adults' lives, to help them see all the possibilities in themselves and the beauty in others.

Everything Sad is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri (2020, Levine Querido).

I met this book in a parking lot in Edmond, OK. Invited to attend a virtual conversation with authors whose novels were recently published by Levine Querido, I had to connect from my car as I waited out my child’s athletic practice. When I apologized for my odd positioning, one author quickly responded. “Wait. You said you are in Edmond? My book is set in Edmond!” That night I ordered the book, and I read it days later while again sitting in the lot and waiting. I was not at all happy to have to put it down to drive back home.

Daniel Nayeri moved to Edmond, Oklahoma when he was eight years old. Born in Iran into an old and well-respected family his life was suddenly transformed when his mother, a physician, was forced to flee to save her life. She had converted to Christianity, a capital

crime, and had been caught helping the underground Christian church. Khosrou (later called Daniel) and his sister went with her; their father stayed behind. After a stop at a refugee camp in Italy, the family made their way to Edmond, from where 12-year-old Daniel narrates the story as if speaking directly to the reader. It is clear in the book that he is telling these stories again and again, including for class assignments, to try to make others see him as more than just a “smelly refugee boy.” (Daniel repeatedly references Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, telling stories to save her life.) The ache of not belonging, of not feeling safe, is palpable, as is the unwavering love, faith, and tenacity of his mother. Daniel interweaves the telling of his experiences with Persian history and folklore as well as his own family’s extended history and the stories that hold it. The telling moves between different times and places, through stories of love, loss, tragedy, resilience, and beauty. The images are vivid and abiding.

The most significant parts of Daniel’s story develop a bit at a time, with Daniel referencing an incident here and a related one there, each anecdote a strand in a complex tapestry that takes shape as the book progresses. Every so often narrator Daniel pauses to share an observation about life that rings so true it seems to reverberate as the storytelling picks back up again. The “patchwork” stories Daniel tells are understood through a child’s eye and understanding, the facts perhaps colored by perception and memory. But they also hold a breathtaking truth—the truth of faith and family, of insistent and persistent hope.

Read this book, then purchase the audio version read by Nayeri, then read the book again. Keep something to write with handy, because you will want to hold on to lines from this book.

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth (2020, Levine Querido).

In this exquisitely crafted free-verse memoir, Gansworth (enrolled Onondaga, raised at the Tuscaroras Nation) explores what it means to be Indian in the wake of historical attempts to obliterate the culture. Anyone familiar with Gansworth’s work knows his affinity for the Beatles, which informs this book as well. The term apple in the title has a double meaning—the Beatles’ Apple Records and the racial slur suggesting someone who is Indian on the outside but white in the middle. Additionally, the four collections that make up the book as well as some of the individual poems feature Beatle-themed titles relevant to the content.

The first collection, “Apple Records,” speaks to Indian boarding-school brutalities that came wrapped in promises of “the opportunity of a lifetime” but resulted in death, both actual and cultural. Gansworth’s grandfather was one of five children shipped away and one of only two to return, leaving an extended family forever cleft and the next generations struggling to piece back together what it means to be Indian. “And two generations later, we continue to find those fragments, pick up pieces and situate them in the puzzle frame. We hope we can figure out what all the missing pieces should look like, so we can rebuild them from scratch” (p. 14).

The second collection, “The Red Album,” explores Gansworth’s boyhood and his young adult years, using snapshots in the family photo album as a map to explore his family and community. The early poems move from photo to photo, Gansworth narrating the story and meaning behind each moment, then the poems broaden to pictures of reservation life. Fascinated with Batman, Gansworth spent his early years masked and caped, even in the photos, many taken by his oldest brother for whom photos tethered the family together when he fought in Vietnam. Gansworth’s fascination with costumes and superheroes reemerges throughout this longest collection, a delightful personality note but also thematically significant, as this work explores cultural masking and unmasking, covering and uncovering, naming and renaming, true identities and assigned identities in tension with expectation and representation. Gansworth notes that he writes the books he wanted to see, for as a child he wondered, “[W]hen do Iget to see the Indians as the superheroes, not the super hapless, when are we the victors, not the victims? How much longer do I have to wait (p. 102)?”

Each poem in collection three bears a title that is also a title of Beatles song. “The Side A” subseries reveals a freshly graduated Gansworth working a menial job and trying to figure out what else might be. In “Side B,” he finds his way to community college, where he initially struggles with how to do college but finds his way and finds it “world richening.” He chooses a health major, not knowing that people actually major in art and writing. (A “bitter high school counselor” told him that “writers and artists only succeed after they’ve died.”) Eventually he moves out of his mother’s home into an apartment in the city. “You and I already know here, I’ve lived my last Dog Street year” (p. 225).

In collection four, “Get Back,” Gansworth moves into adulthood, into that strange space in which creating your own life and home bathes where you started in a different light. In these poems he revisits home and the people and places we've met earlier, illuminating them more fully than the earlier child's perspective could offer. These are poems of love and loss, of knowing and forgiving, of coming to understand more fully who we are.

Initially conceived as a visual-art project, Apple is enriched by family photos and Gansworth’s art. The author’s note explains the Beatles’ connection and details the meanings behind the musical references in each section. Apple: Skin to the Core will hold up to reading again and again.

The Other Half of Happy by Rebecca Balcárcel (2019, Chronicle Books).

The modest home 12-year-old Quijana shares with her loving parents and little brother tilts. No one is sure why, but it leans so much that a bowling ball set in the kitchen would roll through the house and into her bedroom on the far side. Her world is starting to feel off-kilter, too. She’s starting junior high. Her mother is balancing her job and classes for her master’s degree. Her three-year-old brother is still not talking, and the family is getting worried. And suddenly her parents are “Spanish-izing” their house. Bright yellow and orange curtains and bold green and red pots glow in the living room. Gone are the familiar baby pictures, replaced by a photo of a group of people she doesn’t recognize, though she knows they are her

father’s family—and they are moving from Chicago to Bur Oak, Texas where Quijana’s family lives. A large painting of Lake Atitlán is now a feature in the living room, a celebration of her father’s Guatemalan roots. Quijana is horrified when her parents—including her American-born mother, who she thinks should know better—suggest that she wear the colorful huipil her Guatemalan grandmother sent her for the first day of school. They suggest it will make her stand out as special, but the last thing Quijana wants is to stand out. “Everybody knows that standing out in the seventh grade is bad, as in disastrously, monstrously, don’t-be-ridiculous-ly bad, especially the first day” (p. 7).

Quijana has always felt centered by her close relationship with her maternal grandmother, a marine scientist. The sea-turtle bracelet Quijana wears on her wrist and the manatee poster on her bedroom ceiling anchor her, and frequent Skype conversations with Grandma Miller are a lifeline. But as Quijana struggles to find her place at school, news that Grandma Miller has cancer sends her tilting world into a spin.

At school, Quijana loves her English class and teacher but finds Spanish class to be agony. Everyone assumes she speaks Spanish, but she does not, a struggle that is magnified by her fear of being unable to communicate with her father’s family when they arrive. As her world shifts, Quijana becomes fixated on her inability to speak Spanish. Spanish-speaking classmates sneer and call her “coconut,” and she is convinced her newly arrived and capably bilingual cousins think less of her. She cringes at the thought of speaking to her Guatemalan grandmother on the phone, and when her parents excitedly inform her of an upcoming trip to Guatemala, Quijana hurls headlong into a plan to avoid the trip by selling the huipil online to buy a bus ticket to go to Grandma Miller in Florida.

As Quijana struggles, she is steadied by new friendships with Zuri, who also lives in a bicultural family, and outgoing Jayden. But Jayden has her unsteady as well, as her burgeoning romantic feelings make her unsure of the nature of their friendship. Reeling with change and loss, Quijana stumbles but, steadied by loving family and good friends, she is able to discover new strengths and find joy in a newly balanced cultural foundation.

Finding one’s own identity is a common theme in adolescent literature, one that can become an easy cliché. But Balcárcel’s characters are nuanced, richly realized, and complex, as are the developing friendships and extended family relationships on both sides. Love, belonging, and even security aren’t predicated on sameness. Language is not directly equated with culture. And despite the constantly shifting sands of our lives, the bonds of family and friendship can adjust and hold steady. Like newly hatched sea turtles, we just need to follow that light.

Related and recommended:

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020, Random House Graphic)

Tién’s family recently immigrated from Vietnam. He helps his mother learn English by reading to her from folk and fairy tales from the local library. While these traditional stories are culturally situated, they are also in many ways universal. As Tién reads, his mother shares Vietnamese tales, traditional stories, and her own memories from life in Vietnam. At the same time, as he helps his mother bridge language and culture gaps, Tién tries to find the words to tell her he is gay. This graphic novel is infused with the beauty of story and the timelessness of family love.

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (2020, Dial Books)

After his father is killed in the Somali civil war and they are separated from their mother, Omar Mohamed and his younger brother Hassan spend their childhood in a Dadaab Refugee Camp. Hassan suffers from a seizure disorder, and Omar strives to care for him and secure their future. The harsh realities of the refugee experience, the strength we find in love, and the insistent persistence of hope shine through in this graphic novel based on Omar’s true story.

The Land of Cranes by Aida Salazar (2020, Scholastic Press)

Nine-year-old Betita’s father always told stories of her Aztlán ancestors, who made their home where the southwestern U.S. is today. This ancestral land was known as the land of the cranes, and stories told of the people’s destiny to fly back someday to live among the cranes again. Betita’s family migrated to the U.S. to escape cartel violence in Mexico. Her father tells her they are cranes that have come home. But now her father has been deported, and Betita and her pregnant mother are held in a detention camp at the border. While she finds hope and comfort in the community that develops among the detainees, budding poet Betita wonders if her family will ever be whole again.

The Leavers: A Novel by Lisa Ko (2017, Algonquin)

Deming Guo is in fifth grade, living in the Bronx, when his mother, Peilan, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to work and never comes home. Put into foster care and eventually adopted by a white couple, Deming is renamed Daniel and moved out of the city. This story is told from the dual but intertwined perspectives of Daniel and Peilan, Daniel struggling to make sense of loss and divergent identities, and Peilan wrestling with unimaginably

wrenching choices. The tension in the dual storytelling propels the mystery of Peilan’s disappearance, along with Daniel’s yearning, to the very end.

Efrén Divided by Ernesto Cisnero (2020, Quill Tree Books)

When twelve-year-old Efrén’s mother is deported, he must step up to care for his younger siblings while his father works a second job to make ends meet. Efrén feeds them, makes sure they get to school and tries hard to keep them both physically and emotionally safe. He also needs to keep up with his own schoolwork and deal with his own grief. Isolated by secrets, he struggles to figure out who he can trust with knowledge of what is happening in his life. Cisneros depicts this overwhelmingly difficult situation with clarity and honesty. In that same clear light, the beauty of a caring community and the ways love and hope fuel resilience come into focus as well.

Suzii Parsons believes that books truly matter in the lives of young people. She is the Jacques Munroe Professor of Reading and Literacy at Oklahoma State University. You can contact her at sue.parsons@okstate.edu.