DEAR TBR:
Do you ever have years when the ALA awards smack you upside the head and you say, “Whaaaaa? I hadn’t even heard of that book!”
TBH, that happens to me a lot – more than I’d like. I read a lot, but who can keep up with the torrent of books that comes out each year? ALA panelists – who are making a concerted effort, that’s who! And even then, sometimes I think there’s books they miss. But – this year they caught a couple that are absolutely sterling that I was excited to read.
CHOOCH HELPED, Andrea L. Rogers – It is a delight for me to learn new things when I’m reading even a simple book, and this early reader has plenty of words – with their pronunciations – in the Cherokee language, and a lot of gorgeous illustrations using traditional Cherokee iconography, motifs and symbols. The illustrations, which highlight everyday activities done by the native people in this family, leans in on the fact that native people do… normal things, and are not mired in some past where they’re sitting around a fire. They paint murals, repair bikes, make dumplings, gig for crawdads and make pinch pots out of clay. Chooch – so named, I believe, from the Cherokee word for boy or son “atsutsa,” which is pronounced “ah-choo-jah” – tries to make himself a part of all of these things. Chooch is …two. He’s determined to help, even when no one reeeeallly needs his assistance. His oldest sister, called Sissy, is fed up, and lets him know it, resulting in an obvious meltdown. I love the illustrations, which layer chalk on textured paper with pen-and-ink style drawings and charcoal sketches. There is movement and emotion somehow captured in these images, making the simple words and concepts in this story come to life. Chooch is, frankly, a pain in the butt – and having a little brother sometimes IS a pain in the butt. It’s so relatable – and Sissy’s frustration is, too. But, in the end, the embrace of family is also familiar, relatable, and …necessary. And much appreciated, and celebrated in this small way. This books is really lovely, and I can see a small child returning to it repeatedly, and not because of that glossy Caldecott medal affixed to the cover.
WATERCRESS, Andrea Wang – I picked up an Andrea Wang book for older MG on a whim, based on the title the other week – this book of hers I deliberately sought out. It has beaucoup stickers on the cover, which made it something I knew a lot of people had enjoyed, but I picked it up because: Andrea Wang. An unnamed girl is riding in a faded red car down a backroad in Ohio when her parents excitedly pull over. They’ve seen watercress growing in a ditch on the side of the road and they chivvy their kids out of the car to help pick it. The daughter is DEEPLY unimpressed. It’s muddy, it’s got snails in its roots, and someone she knows might see her as she’s hunched down with her family on the side of the road. She doesn’t want to eat it, when it’s offered for dinner. Why can’t they be like everyone else and get veg from the supermarket?
The novel ends shortly after her mother indirectly shares the reason with her – leaving the reader reeling.
This is a very short novel. It may make adults cry. It will stretch younger readers empathy and understanding, because it doesn’t give things away for free.
I think I’m going to have to go back and find everything this writer has written, because she’s is giving me a primer on how to say a lot by saying …less. This is brilliant, and I can see why it won both the Caldecott and the Newbury Honor for 2021.
KIN, Carole Boston Weatherford – Carole Boston Weatherford’s early readers are often written in a poetic style that readers young and old find accessible. She is the recipient of the 2025 Children’s Literature Legacy Award honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for children, so I was already on board with reading anything by her.
Almost immediately the language and imagery in this novel in verse places it squarely in the middle grade category. The first person “I” asks questions on a trip to Africa — is this where I belong? Is this where I have connection? Where are my roots? Shouldn’t I be able to feel them here? The poems meander through the narrator’s ancestry – from Goreé Island in Senegal to a native-named river spilling into the Chesapeake Bay to an archaeologist’s findings in the Wye Valley. Inanimate objects speak, as well as the human narrator, revealing atrocities, asking again and again, in various ways, “Where do I fit into this? Am I present in the past – or in the future? Is forgetting all of this less painful than remembering?” The poem that struck me the most is called “We Were Swimmers,” and reveals, in a sparse prose poem, how the West African slaves were first used as life guards and as swimmers who were bet on by white landowners… and then how that changed, and how water and swimming became something to punish and a skill prevented, so that slaves could not escape. That poem was both revealing and heartbreaking, and highlighting a history that few know.
I always imagine using good verse novels in language arts and social studies classes, and I can imagine that this one sparked so many discussions! It is truly not the sort of book that I, personally, can read in one sitting. I struggle with narratives about The Middle Passage and about slavery, and so this …took some time. For students of that history, there is simply too much horror to read it head-on. I do love that nonfiction is also something which can be written in verse, however. Though a very difficult read, this book is enhanced with artwork by Jeffrey Boston Weatherford, the poet’s son, and won the Coretta Scott King Honor this year.
THERE WAS A PARTY FOR LANGSTON, Jason Reynolds – Langston Hughes is, of course, A Big Deal, but when I was a kid, not many kids knew why, except that he, like Emily Dickinson, had a poem we read in Language Arts.
Few middle graders knew more than two facts about him: he wrote a poem (or, like, two), and he was alive during the Harlem Renaissance… whenever or whatever that was.
Though we were told precious little about this poet in elementary school, THIS book reveals quite a bit more about Hughes, gives readers some insight on his contemporaries, and then – urges readers into the celebration.
The author, Jason Reynolds, uses his own poetic sense to make Langston leap onto the page with rhythm and flow. Reynolds brings the biography and the celebration of Hughes poetry with his own style, but oh – the illustrations in this book are really what MAKE this book. Brothers Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey’s collaboration bring Reynolds’ work to vibrant, delightful life, and the word art is an absolute tour de force. Their work elevates this beyond a verse picture book, and beyond a retelling of the real-life party for Langston Hughes at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York in 1991, where poets Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka danced with abandon. The line drawings of Hughes contemporaries, the Schomberg center, and integrating words of Hughes poetry throughout the spreads makes this the kind of picture book that has double-page spreads worth framing – I want to buy one to have, and one to frame. The party for Langston is well worth attending, which is why this book is both a Caldecott Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book for 2023.
Fresh onto the TBR:
- Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley Ford
- The Friend Zone Experiment, Zen Cho
- Breathing Space, Kristen Painter
Awards are all very well – someone declares winners and losers for almost everything. Only YOU decide YOUR winner. Stay reading!
📚 Still A Constant Reader
