Chirchir is Singing by Kelly Cunnane, illustrated by Jude Daly (Schartz and Wade, 2011)

Chirchir is one of the charming-est girls to jump off a picture book page in a long while. Kelly Cunnane and Jude Daly work seamlessly to bring Chirchir and her family to life, transporting a young reader far away to the Kenyan highlands. 

Warblers and cuckoos swing
    in the bottlebrush tree,
and Chirchir is singing.

Drop,
plop
the bucket in.
Wiggle it… jiggle it… Let it fill…
Then hand over hand,
up comes
maji, maji — water!

She helps Mama lower the bucket
into the winking silver circle
of the well. 

Even with set-back after set-back Chirchir keeps looking for some way to help out with her family’s daily chores, singing the whole way. I have to say that I was especially charmed by the artwork depicting typical Kalenjin family life, with chickens roaming in and around open houses and monkeys laughing from the rooftops.

Idyllic? Yes. But isn’t that one of the reasons we love children’s picture books in the first place? 

(Image source: Goodreads)

Oh No, Gotta Go #2 by Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Lynne Avril (G.P. Putnam and Sons, 2007).

This is a very funny follow-up to Oh No, Gotta Go. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Susan Middleton Elya at a writer’s conference a few months back and even got this book autographed for my kids. 

Our little protagonist mastered the potty back in the first book and now is off on a picnic with her parents. Her parents ask her many times if she needs to go, but she assures them that she’s fine until…

…my insides were gurgling and grumbling.
I wasn’t hungry, but something was rumbling.

Mama and Papa were in deep conversation.
I pedaled along with that funny sensation.

I didn’t drink jugo or pink limonada.
I didn’t drink agua. I didn’t drink nada.

But then I remembered the thing I forgot.

There’s more than one reason to sit on the pot.

I find Elya’s rhymes so charming and the subject of poop, treated in this light-hearted way, just gets me chuckling.  Perhaps there are people who don’t appreciate any poop humor (No Captain Underpants for you!) or who might want a more “pure” bilingual book (Keep the Spanish side Spanish and the English side English). But those guys are missing out on a whole lot of fun in this book. Check it out, it’s irresistible. 

(Image source: susanelya.com)

Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan (Scholastic, 2004). 

This book sucked me right in and made me a huge fan of Pam Munoz Ryan. Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw is in fifth grade and she and her little brother Owen have lived with their grandma since Naomi was three. That was when her mother dropped them off with Gram and never came back… until now. When Skyla (as her mom wants to be called) comes waltzing in the door of Gram’s airstream trailer with all her stuff in a big, black plastic bag, Naomi’s world is turned upside down. 

The plot takes a twist and Naomi, Owen, Gram and Gram’s two neighbor friends hit the road in Baby Beluga, as the trailer is called, headed to find Naomi and Owen’s father in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Here’s a short excerpt to get a little taste for yourself:

There we were, minding our lives with the same obedience as a clock ticking. A few weeks earlier the sun had switched to its winter bedtime, so even though it was early evening, the sky was dark as pine pitch. That meant that Gram, Owen, and I couldn’t sit outside on the white rock patio. Instead we had to crowd around the drop-down table in the living room/ kitchen of Baby Beluga. That was what Gram called our Airstream trailer…

…We had already put away the dinner dishes from Wednesday chicken bake and Owen started racing through his second-grade homework like a horse on a tear. People were usually fooled by his looks and thought he was low in school due to being born with his head tilted to one side and scrunched down next to his shoulder. It had straightened a little after three surgeries at Children’s Hospital, but he still talked with a permanent frog voice because of something inside being pinched…

…Gram, in her usual polyester pantsuit and running shoes, was doing her weekly hair set, rolling what little blue hair she had on those new bristle curlers that required no hairpins. (I was not being mean about her hair. It really looked blue in the sunlight.) And I mulled over my sorry situation at school, which was three boys in my fifth-grade class who had decided that Outlaw was the funniest last name in the universe. They did not give me an ounce of peace. 

(Image source: Scholastic)

My People by Langston Hughes, photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr. (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009). 

This picture book is a stunner. The photography by Charles R. Smith Jr. is soak-it-up-to-your-bones-to-your-soul beautiful. Find this book and see for yourself. 

Here’s what Smith said about his photos himself:

At just thirty-three words total, the poem is a study in simplicity, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. Langston wrote the poem to celebrate the pride he had for his black brothers and sisters in the late 1920s, when blacks were not acknowledged much in society…

…To me, the words celebrate black people of different shades and age, so I wanted to show skin color as bright as the sun and as dark as the night; I wanted to show the newness of a newborn smile and the wisdom of wrinkled skin. But more than anything, I simply wanted to show that like any other group of people, black people come in all shapes, sizes, shades, and ages, and that each of us is unique.

(Image source & additional interview: The Brown Bookshelf) 

It’s been a whole year of diverse kids books and other whatnot. Below are the writers, artists and books that started this little blog off one year ago today.  

These books are still some of my absolute kids lit favorites. I remember staying up all night making these posts. I was so focused that I hardly noticed that the sun was starting to come up, mostly because I really love these books and wanted to share them with you all. 

Many people talk about how books are lifelines— and they truly are for many of us. But for people “on the margins,” without (m)any representations of our stories out there, these books give us a beautiful mirror to see ourselves in. So powerful, especially when there are many other messages that try to counter our inherent beauty. 

Here’s to another year of gorgeous and important books! 

-Kate

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, art by Ellen Forney

• E.B. Lewis

• Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things (2008) by Lenore Look, illustrated by LeUyen Pham

• Al Capone Shines My Shoes & Al Capone Does My Shirts, both by Gennifer Choldenko

• Love Makes a Family: Mommy, Mama and Me & Daddy, Papa and Me both by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Carol Thompson

• Jacqueline Woodson

• Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, illustrated by Marla Frazee

• Umbrella (1977) by Taro Yashima

• The Colors of Us by Karen Katz

• Little Night by Yuyi Morales

• Yo! Yes? by Chris Raska

• Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin 

• Gracias-Thanks by Pat Mora, illustrated by John Parra 

Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by LeUyen Pham (Hyperion, 2008).

The story begins like so:

One Monday morning in September, Mrs. Barrington rolled out a big poster with all of the presidents’ pictures on it. Grace Campbell could not believe her eyes. 

Where are the GIRLS?

When Grace finds out there has never been a woman president, she decides to run for president herself. No one else in her class is interested in running. Grace thinks she has the election in the bag.

But there’s a hitch. The other class nominates Thomas Cobb as their presidential candidate, as in Thomas Cobb the spelling bee champ, science fair blue ribbon winner, and captain of the soccer team. 

So Grace kicks her campaign into gear. Each kid in their grade gets to be a whole state with all the electoral votes that state gets. 270 electoral votes becomes the winning target. 

Each week, the teachers set aside time for the candidates to meet with their constituents. Polls were taken. Voters were making their choices.

Thomas was sneaky. He figured out early on that the boys held slightly more electoral votes than the girls so while Grace was working her butt off, he was doing his usual things. He thought he had the election in the bag. 

On the day of the election the voting was down to the wire. Only Wyoming, represented by a boy named Sam, was left. Sam’s three electoral votes would choose the winner. And Sam chose the best person for the job… Grace! 

And someday, for all our young girl readers, a woman president will be fact, not fiction. 

(Top image source: Kelly DiPucchio’s website)

Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina, illustrated by Claudio Munoz (Candlewick, 2011). 

For this story’s young protagonist and her Tia Isa, having a car means trips to the beach. It means working extra hard to save up a little at a time. Having a car means there’s room in the back for family members far away. Having a car means freedom for an auntie and her niece.

Tia Isa wants a car.

But Tio Andres laughs when he hears his sister’s plan.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he says. “You’re not a rich queen! We walk to everything we need here, Isa. Now, what’s for dinner?”

Tia Isa just whistles as she steps over Tio’s work boots— muddy like ogre shoes— and stirs our black-bean soup.

These two have a lot of determination and grit. And even better, when all the work is done, they know how to kick off their shoes and high tail it to the ocean. 

(Image source: Meg Medina’s website)

Tia Isa Wants a Car book trailer. This will give you a taste of Claudio Munoz’s vivacious artwork. 

Very sincere reflection by Gene Luen Yang about the origins of Level Up. 

Go to the image Source (wired.com’s geek dad blog) for a version that expands. 

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang, art by Thien Pham (First Second, 2011).

Amazing artwork, right? Plus the set up for this story is a classic: a young Asian American man must choose between going to med school like his parents want or following his own dreams to become a star video game player. 

Check out a preview of Level Up for yourself here. Do it. You won’t be disappointed. 

(Image Source: thienisawesome.blogspot.com)