50+ Children's Picture Books from 2019-2020

from Julie Flett's Birdsong (2019)

These books simply caught and held my interest.

1.    Albee, Sarah. (2019). North America: A Fold-out Graphic History. Greenbelt, MD: What on Earth Books.

2.    Barnes, Derrick. (2019). The King of Kindergarten. Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.

3.    Beaty, Andrea. (2019). Sofia Valdez, Future Prez (The Questioneers) . Illustrated by David Roberts. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

4.    Beaty, Andrea. (2019). Sofía Valdez, presidenta tal vez / Sofia Valdez, Future Prez. Illustrated by David Roberts. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

5.    Bryant, Jen. (2019). Feed Your Mind: A Story of August Wilson. Illustrated by Cannaday Chapman. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

6.    Charles, Tami. (2020). Freedom Soup. Illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

7.    Cline-Ransome, Lesa. (2020). The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne. Illustrated by John Parra. New York: Simon & Schuster.

8.    Cooper, Elisha. (2019). River. New York: Orchard Books.

9.    Copper, Susan. (2019). The Shortest Day. Illustrated by Carson Ellis. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

10.DiCicco, Joan. (2019). The Unstoppable Garrett Morgan: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Hero. Illustrated by Ebony Glenn. New York: Lee & Low Books.

11.Engle, Margarita. (2019). Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln. Illustrated by Rafael López. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

12.Flett, Julie. (Cree-Métis). (2019). Birdsong. Vancouver, BC: Greystone Kids.

13.Gonzalez, Maya Christina. (2019). They, She, He easy as ABC. Illustrated by Matthew SG.  San Francisco, CA: Reflection Press.

14.Gravel, Lisa. (2019). What is a Refugee? New York: Random House.

15.Gray, Caitlin. (2019). Serena: The Littlest Sister. Illustrated by Monica Ahanonu. New York: Page Street Kids.

16.Greenfield, Eloise. (2019). The Women Who Caught The Babies: A Story of African American Midwives. Illustrated by Daniel Minter.  Carrboro, NC: Alazar Press. (For middle school and older).

17.Hale, Christy. (2019). Todos Iguales / All Equal: Un Corrido De Lemon Grove/A Ballad of Lemon Grove. New York: Chidlren’s Book Press/Lee & Low Books.

18.Hegedus, Bethany. (2019). Rise!: From Caged Bird to Poet of the People, Maya Angelou. Illustrated by Tonya Engle. New York: Lee & Low Books.  (For middle school and older).

19.Hopkins, Lee Bennet (2019). I Remember: Poems and Pictures of Heritage. New York: Lee & Low Books.

20.Leung, Julie. (2019). Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist. Illustrated by Chris Sasaki. New Yoirk: Schwartz & Wade.

21.Lukoff, Kyle. (2019). When Aidan Became a Brother. Illustrated by Kaylani Juanita. New York: Lee & Low Books.

22.Lyons, Kelly Starling. (2020). Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon. Illustrated by Laura Freeman. New York: Lee & Low Books.

23.Maclear, Kyo. (2019). It Began with a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way. Illustrated by Julie Morstad. New York: HarperCollins.

24.Maillard, Kevin Noble. (Seminole Nation). (2019). Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. Illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal.  New York: Roaring Brook Books.

25.Méndez, Yamile Saied. (2019). Where Are You From? Illustrated by Jaime Kim. New York: HarperCollins.

26.Méndez, Yamile Saied. (2019). ¿De dónde eres?: Where Are You From? Illustrated by Jaime Kim. New York: HarperCollins.

27.Mora, Oge. (2019). Saturday. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

28.Muhammad, Ibtihaj. (2019). The Proudest Blue: The Story of Hijab and Family. Illustrated by  S. K. Ali Hatem Aly. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers .

29.Paul, Miranda and Paul Baptiste. (2019). I Am Farmer: Growing an Environmental Movement in Cameroon. Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press.

30.Perkins, Mitali. (2019). Between Us and Abuela: A Family Story from the Border.  Illustrated by Sara Palacios. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

31.Quintero, Isabel. (2019). My Papi Has a Motorcycle. Illustrated by  Zeke Peña.  New York: Kokila.

32.Quintero, Isabel. (2019). Mi papi tiene una moto.  Illustrated by  Zeke Peña.  New York: Kokila.

33.Ransome, James E. (2019). The Bell Rang. New York:  Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books.

34.Robeson, Susan. (2019).  Grandpa Stops a War. Illustrated by Rob Brown. New York: Triangle Square.

35.Robeson, Theresa. (2019). Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom. Illustrated by Rebecca Huang. New York: Sterling Children’s Books.

36.Robertson, Joanne (Atikameksheng Anishnawbek). (2019). The Water Walker / Nibi Emosaawdang. Translated by Shirley Williams and Isadore Toulous. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press.

37.Robinson, Christian. (2019). Another. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

38.Rogers, Lisa. (2019). 16 Words: William Carlos Williams and "The Red Wheelbarrow.” Illustrated by Chuck Groenink. New York: Random House.

39.Rosenstock, Barb. (2019). Prairie Boy: Frank Lloyd Wright Turns the Heartland into a Home. Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal. Honesdale, PA: Calkins Creek

40.Russell-Brown, Katheryn. (2020). Voice Named Aretha. Illustrated by Laura Freeman,. New York: Bloomsbury Children's Books.

41.Smith, Sydney. (2019). Small in the City. New York: Holiday House.

42.Sotomayor, Sonia. (2019). Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You. Illustrated by Rafael López. New York: Philomel Books 

43.Sotomayor, Sonia. (2019). ¡Solo pregunta!: Sé Diferente, Sé Valiente, Sé Tú. Illustrated by Rafael López. New York: Philomel Books.  

44.Thorn, Theresa. (2019). It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity. Illustrated by Noah Grigni. New York: Henry Holt and Co.

45.Tucker, Zoë. (2019). Greta and the Giants: inspired by Greta Thunberg's stand to save the world. Illustrated by Zoe Persico. London: Frances Lincoln Children's Books.

46.Wilson, Janet. (2019). Our Future: How Kids Are Taking Action. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press.

47.Winter, Jeanette. (2019). Our House Is on Fire: Greta Thunberg's Call to Save the Planet. New York: Beach Lane Books.

48.Winter, Jonah. (2019). Thurgood. Illustrated by Bryan Collier.  New York: Random House.

49.Wittenstein, Barry. (2019). A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech that Inspired a Nation. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. New York: Neal Porter Books.

50.Yang, Kao Kalia. (2019). A Map into the World. Illustrated by Seo Kim. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books.

51.Zunon, Elisabeth. (2019). Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family. Illustrated by New York: Bloomsbury Children's Books.

Keith

Dev at 3 in what was then our new home.

I.

I'm leaving where I have lived for the last 18 years. Dev has gone to Hoboken, fallen in love, and I couldn't be more pleased. On my way out to get tape I needed to close some boxes, I stopped to talk with a neighbor, and I thought she said she was returning a rake to Keith.  When I asked her if that's what she meant, she looked at me and said, "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Keith died a few weeks ago."

Keith lived next door. He left behind a wife and a 15-year-old daughter.  I was stunned.

II.

The winter after Rob died, a UPS truck driver plowed down my mailbox and left it in pieces.  When I saw what had happened, I felt like crying. I had been holding so many disparate parts of my life together and this insult was just too much.

I said to Dev, "there's only so many things we can fix. Leave it alone and we'll figure it out tomorrow."   Neither of us had any idea how to put it back together. I imagined all day how I would not be getting mail. I fretted and wondered what to do.  After great loss, the body mostly knows paralysis. Even small decisions can be troublesome.

When I got home that night from work, Keith was at the mailbox.  He had just finished assembling it. It has never fallen again.

That's who he was. Quiet. Kind. Watchful.

III.

I've been away from the house a good deal since it was put on the market and now sold.

Four years ago, Rob was still living. He had just been released from the hospital and was cleared for chemo after battling a staph infection he had gotten when a surgeon placed a filthy port into his chest 7 weeks earlier.  Two weeks from now he would suffer heart trauma and undergo thoracic surgery to remove an abscess the staph infection, followed by chemo, had caused. Hours after learning of Keith's death, I was reminded of the sharp pain that never quite heals.

Loss is never far away, even when I think I have tucked it well under my skin.  I imagine most women who have lost their husbands know some of what my neighbor now faces.  I brought a card over to the house and rang the bell. I could hear the dogs barking and the soft sounds of those at home. I wasn't too surprised that the door remained closed. 

After the first shock wears off, facing life is often too hard. I placed the card in her mailbox and left.

IV.

I wish I was wiser. I wish I had the power to heal with just a word or two and I could say or write something here that would ball up  the immense pain my neighbor, Tracy and her daughter, Natalie must feel. But I know that it asking the impossible and the dangerous. Grief works itself out of a body across years. It's patterned and idiosyncratic.  I see that now. 

The pulse to live is biologically strong. It carries the wounded along until we can find our feet and stand once again. Wobbly knees and all that.

V.

Two things mattered most to me after Rob's death and the years that followed.

Art I made after Rib died from his notebooks,

The first was love. My Devon had just turned 17 a few weeks before his dad died. The love I have for Devon kept me strong and vulnerable.  I did not know I would need both.  I did not know in the months after Rob's death that Devon and I would have to break and fall apart. 

We did.  Where there had never been distance--distance grew. Where there had been trust, trust frayed. Yeat's poem about how the center cannot hold was too true.  We had to break to become whole again.

The second was the knowledge that I have been so well loved by Rob. Distance has a way of reframing the ordinary.  It has allowed me to live brilliantly as he asked, and not live in response to fear.  And lord knows there are so many fears that arose alongside the loss.


VI.

"I don't understand it," says Dawn. "I don't understand why good men die early."
I tell her what Jane told me 2 years ago. "You're never going to understand that. That's what acceptance is.  Accepting what you can't understand."

If you find a quiet moment in the next few days, offer a prayer or two for my neighbor and her young daughter that they may find solace in one another.

Then go and live boldly. 
Live brilliantly.
Live.

Live to the Point of Tears

I.

Tree Lines (M.A. Reilly, acrylic paint, gesso, citra-solv)

"Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss," writes David Whyte in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. "Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness."

Loss brings the opportunity for honesty, in part because it allows us to know in our bones that powerlessness is unavoidable. Four years ago, most everything I thought I knew to be true became opaque, less clear and the world more topsy-turvy.  By mid-September, 2015, we had seen the oncologist, learned Rob had stage 4 lung cancer, and Rob had scheduled his first chemotherapy session for later in the month.  What we did not know at that moment was that a week earlier a surgeon had placed an infected port into my husband's chest and altered any chance at life he might have had.

I was reminded of all of that and the five months that followed when I received an email from a friend on the West coast last night. When I opened it what first caught my attention was that new email was written in response to an email I had sent 3 years and 7 months earlier, explaining that Rob had died. This caught me unaware.

Loss does not leave a body.  It carries a breath-stealing punch that surfaces without any self-will. It rises full force stirring the acid in the gut, the heart.

A wolf to the throat.


II.

In the trail of emails back and forth, I read the new message: the mother of a friend of Dev's from childhood had died. Agnes Kurdyla Lauria was just 48.


III.

After Rob died I found myself paying attention to death notices as if some insights I so desperately wanted could be fathomed through the loss of another.  The year Rob died, so too did David Bowie, who lived 9 years more than Rob. I measured every one's death by the plus or minus of years from when Rob's life ended.  I did this automatically, without thought. The way I organized time was redefined.

This morning I am wondering once again why good people die. This is not productive thinking and I know that, but nonetheless the thoughts rise and with them come the unknowable, the unanswerable. Agnes, like Rob, was a beloved teacher. I can recall when she first was hired as a basic skills teacher and the many conversation we had while waiting for or collecting our children from school or a sleepover.  Her child, Alex, like mine is just 20-years-old.

How could two sweet children each lose a parent so early in their lives? 


IV.

Perhaps asking, "Why do good people die early?" is a place holder for a more important observation.  Whyte explains:

The French philosopher Camus used to tell himself quietly to live to the point of tears, not as a call for maudlin sentimentality, but as an invitation to the deep privilege of belonging and the way belonging affects us, shapes us and breaks our heart at a fundamental level. It is a fundamental dynamic of human incarnation to be moved by what we feel, as if surprised by the actuality and privilege of love and affection and its possible loss. Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive.

Life happens whether we have a hand in designing it or not.  Each breath that breaks tells us we belong.