In THE QUIET ONE, by Yiting Lee, Millie dreads Show and Tell. She doesn’t want to speak in front of her noisy classmates, so she escapes to a secret place that’s “filled with things that people had forgotten.” Millie finds a wheel, some roller skates, and a broken robot (named Arnold), which she cleans, fixes, and reboots. Together, Milly and Arnold transform the secret place into an elaborate playground. On Show and Tell day, Milly brings Arnold to school, and finds she’s so exited to talk about the robot, she’s not afraid anymore. The other kids are delighted with Arnold and with the playground, and “Milly [is] happy she ha[s] been heard.” Lovely digitally-edited watercolor and colored pencil art equally conveys emotion and whimsy. Pair it with The Most Magnificent Thing for two different takes on girls solving problems creatively—with tools!
ONE GIRL’S VOICE: How Lucy Stone Helped Change the Law of the Land, written by Vivian Kirkfield and illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon, is the empowering story of how young Lucy Stone was full of “ideas, thoughts, and opinions,” but was supposed to keep quiet because the law in 1830s Massachusetts stated that “the voices of girls and women didn’t count.” Lucy saved her money to buy schoolbooks and put herself through college. Along the way, she encountered men who wanted to silence her, from her father to the minister at church to school administrators. But Lucy knew her voice mattered, and she proved it. The text moves quickly and assertively to portray Lucy’s smarts and determination, and watercolor and acrylic ink illustrations convey a folk-arty yet modern feel, with plenty of vibrant colors. This is an inspiring look at how one girl used her voice to make the world a better place.
PEPPER & ME, by Beatrice Alemagna, is the story of one child and their scab. Yes, when the narrator of this story scrapes their knee on a cobblestone, it’s like “a scary movie with you-know-what dripping down [their] leg.” At first they see the scab as hideous, but then they name it Pepper and the child and scab talk to each other and the scab even comes to their grandparents’ house for a visit. And then, one morning, Pepper is gone. This is a strangely sweet story with big feelings that leaves readers with a sense that somehow all is right with the world when it’s over. Alemagna’s art is splendid, as always.
JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY, written by Lisa Rogers and illustrated by Stacy Innerst, describes the way painter Joan Mitchell envisions a valley in her mind—she “doesn’t paint the valley’s flowers and meadows. She paints a feeling about them,” using “exuberant dashes of sun-soaked yellow, cotton-candy pink, inky black, bright raspberry, periwinkle, turquoise, tangerine—embraced by eternal blue.” Joan climbs the ladder up and down, looks and listens, thinks and feels. This creative picture book takes readers along as the artist works her way to her final exhibit, La Grande Vallée, a series of canvases that are full of meadows, slopes, and dells, joy and sadness, despair and delight. Back matter explains and inspires.
TEN-WORD TINY TALES OF LOVE, by Joseph Coelho and 21 Artist Friends, caught my eye when I opened it to the black and white image of ghosts in a graveyard, illustrated by Jon Klassen, which reads “They’d visit his grave yearly, before returning to their own.” Other pages may be more to your liking, but this book of evocative tiny tales features a compelling opening from the author, a closing with writing advice, and a middle filled with poignant, whimsical, extremely short stories illustrated in a variety of accomplished styles.
In THREAD BY THREAD, written by Alice Brière-Haquet, illustrated by Michela Eccli, and translated by Sarah Ardizzone, “knit one, purl one,” a mouse who's initially “toasty warm” at home, watches her world “begin to unravel.” The mouse family knows they must “up and leave, don’t look back, never let the thread go slack.” There are many dangers, and they dream of staying put, until eventually, “little by little, thread by thread,” they rebuild their nest. The text is minimal, making this an easy read for little ones even as it hints at darker subject matter, and the clever illustrations, which are created with “drawing, photography, and plenty of yarn,” nicely emphasize the whimsical.
--Lynn