Illustrated by Lenny Wen 3 stars A delicious story of community, family, and generosity. Every Saturday, Carina visits Tia Mimi’s to make empanadas. But this week, Tia Mimi is volunteering at the food center, which leaves Carina to collect all the ingredients herself. Along the way, she finds that her diverse neighbors all have their…
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Illustrated by Dung Ho 5 stars Another lush, heartwarming, gorgeous read from Joanna Ho and Dung Ho. Through poetic text, the narrator describes how her eyes are different from her adoptive family’s and how their loves connects them. It explores the narrator’s relationship with her adoptive father and mother, and her curiosity about her birth…
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Illustrated by Charlene Chua 4 stars A delightful and delicious story full of family, food, and love. Jin is disheartened when his sisters are asked to help prepare the family’s Lunar New Year’s feast and he never is. When he asks to help, his aunties only shoo him away, assuming he will just get in…
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Illustrated by Jade Orlando 5 stars Sydney wants to grow up to be a great leader, but public speaking makes her nervous and she can’t get the words out. To help her gain the confidence to give a speech to her class, her father teaches her about famous Black women in history including Kamala Harris,…
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Illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina 5 stars A wonderfully sweet and empowering book, celebrating bodies and what they can do. The illustrations are beautiful. Loved the soft lines and diversity of characters. The artwork contains people with different skin tones, sizes, hair textures, and heights. There are characters that wear glasses, use wheelchairs, wear hijab,…
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Illustrated by Mika Song 3 stars A follow-up early chapter book to the picture book, A Friend for Henry. One day at school, Henry’s teacher tells the class that they will have a parade on Friday. But that means changing their weekly schedule. Henry soon becomes frustrated by the changing rules, the loudness of the parade…
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Illustrated by Mika Song 2 stars A story about a boy looking for a friend at school who is quiet, shares, listens, and follows the rules. While it is started in the blurb that Henry is autistic, it does not make mention in the actual story as the author wanted the story to be more…
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Illustrated by Carolina Godina 4 stars Delightfully creepy and well written. Nice variety of story structures including poetry, short stories, an epistolary, a play, chat fiction told through text messages, metafiction, and even stream of consciousness from a family dog. In terms of kid’s horror, I think this one hits the mark well for middle…
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5 stars A fascinating exploration of the life of Octavia Butler. Told through poetry, quotes, photographs, and short biographical prose, Zoboi shares events from Butler’s life and connects her writing with historic influences like the Red Scare, the Space Race, the Civil Rights Movement, and the larger development of the science fiction genre. This book…
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Illustrated by Brooke Kerrigan 3 stars A sweet, gentle story. Lou loves visiting Grandad and Pops on Saturdays. But one Saturday, something terrible happens and Pops gets hurt. Lou makes a plan to cheer him up with the help of Grandad and their neighbors. The illustrations are lovely. Loved the soft colors and sweet details….
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