Alice Cary

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Age 16

Review by Alice Cary

Rosena Fung’s much-lauded debut, Living with Viola, explored the mental health and cultural challenges faced by a middle school girl. Her second graphic novel, Age 16, is an excellent examination of a familiar theme—a teenage girl trying to find herself—which Fung explores more fully through depicting the inheritance of trauma and misunderstandings over generations.

In Toronto in 2000, Rosalind (Roz) begins her morning by stepping on the scale before heading off to high school. It’s a dizzying time, with friends applying to college and talking about prom, the latter of which causes Roz to fantasize about a slimmer version of herself attending. But at home, her mother, Lydia, chastises her for her eating habits and claims Roz “inherited my slow metabolism and bad genes.” Then Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, appears unannounced from Hong Kong after an absence of 10 years. This thin but clearly unhappy woman offers nothing but criticism to her daughter and granddaughter.

Two additional timelines, following Roz’s mother and grandmother in their own youths, are naturally woven into this present narrative. Readers travel to Hong Kong in 1972, where 16-year-old Lydia loves to dance but faces nonstop barbs about her weight: “Get your head out of the clouds,” Mei Laan advises. “A girl like you can’t be a star.” Thankfully, a family friend, Auntie Ping, provides encouragement and guidance. In scenes from Guangdong, China, 1954, miserable Mei Laan works in the fields and is always hungry. When she complains, her anguished mother cries, “We didn’t survive the Japanese only to have our family ruined by a big mouth!”

“I wanted to make sure each place was a character in its own right.” Read our Q&A with Rosena Fung here. 

The graphic novel format is the perfect medium to succinctly convey Age 16’s heavy themes of inherited trauma, and how Roz, her mother and grandmother share dreams, doubts and difficulties as they make their own way regardless of absent fathers and husbands. Fung’s lively art makes each generation’s needs feel urgent and relevant. She expertly glides between time periods, making Roz the focus, while examining how all three women’s behaviors are tied together by their shared history. Roz is a likable, realistic character who dreams of going to art school, perhaps becoming a photographer. Alongside her, a cast of high school girls, including Roz’s best friend Victoria, worry about their futures—especially their prom dreams.

With its unique multigenerational approach, Age 16 expertly tackles perceptions of weight, self-worth and parental conflict. In the face of seemingly impossible relationship repair and resolution, Fung offers an engaging, naturally evolving conclusion. As Roz’s mother explains, “When things get tough and you feel like you don’t belong, you can make the world fit you.”

With its unique multigenerational approach, Age 16 expertly tackles perceptions of weight, self-worth and parental conflict.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Until You Find the Sun

Review by Alice Cary

By day, Aminah stays busy seeing friends and eating mangoes while basking in the sunshine of her tropical home; at night, she enjoys cozy times with her grandfather, Da, as he reads aloud stories of great adventurers. Aminah’s world suddenly changes, when her parents announce they are moving and Da will stay behind. “I am always with you,” he advises. “You will find sunshine wherever you go.” Debut author Maryam Hassan, a first-generation child of Pakistani immigrants, writes in a realistic, reassuring way about displacement in Until You Find the Sun, a story that will appeal to a wide audience of young readers, whether the changes they face in their routines are big or small. 

Despite Da’s encouragement, Aminah struggles to find any sunshine in the cold, bustling city of her new home. Her only source of joy comes from calls with Da, to whom she yearns to return. Anna Wilson’s buoyant art energizes every page, highlighting the stark contrast between Aminah’s hometown—bathed in bright colors and “full of sparkles”—and her dreary new world, drenched in dark blue shadows. Eventually, a new winter coat, as bright as the sun, gives Aminah “a new glittering glow in her heart,” while an overnight snowfall opens her eyes to fresh types of beauty and joy. 

A new friend further rejuvenates Aminah, allowing her to start enjoying her situation. Wilson uses patterns and shades of bright orange and yellow as motifs that connect Aminah to both her native land and to Da. Toward the end, Aminah gazes with anticipation at her vision of a wintry, icy-blue castle high on a hill, a symbol of new adventures waiting to be discovered.

Until You Find the Sun is a joyful book that celebrates new adventures while acknowledging the challenges that transition may bring. It’s also a reminder of the powerful bond between grandparent and child, which remains even when distance keeps them apart.

Until You Find the Sun is a joyful book that celebrates new adventures while acknowledging the challenges that a big move may bring.
NonfictionPhotographyLifestyles

The Heirloomist

Review by Alice Cary

If you are the sort of person who can’t bear to part with sentimental objects—“That belonged to Mamaw!”—this book is for you. Packed inside The Heirloomist: 100 Heirlooms and the Stories They Tell are photographs and stories of 100 items belonging to everyday as well as famous people, including Gloria Steinem, Rosanne Cash and Gabby Giffords. Their treasures might be a Rolex watch or a Rolleiflex camera—or simply scribbled notes, ticket stubs and even a plateful of spaghetti and meatballs.

After becoming curator of her family’s important items, Shana Novak turned to other people’s stuff. Her photography and storytelling business, The Heirloomist, has documented over 1,500 keepsakes since 2015. No matter their financial value, she writes, “all are priceless, precisely because their stories will play your heartstrings like a symphony.” Take, for example, the daughter of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11. Several years after that tragedy, she and her mother opened a toy chest and found an old Magna Doodle, on which her father had written: “Dear Tiana, I love you. Daddy.”

The Heirloomist is meant to be shared with loved ones, especially those who harangue you to declutter. They may even start rummaging through basement boxes with a freshly appreciative eye.

Shana Novak’s gorgeous, poignant The Heirloomist documents 100 treasures beloved by everyday and famous people.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Swift River

Review by Alice Cary

“This isn’t a mystery or a legend,” Diamond Newberry says. “It’s a story about leaving.” She’s the 16-year-old narrator of Essie Chambers’ debut novel, Swift River, a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in what was once a sundown town, where residents threatened violence towards nonwhite people after sunset. In 1987 in the fictional New England mill town of Swift River, Diamond—the only nonwhite resident—lives with her unemployed white mom. They have been alone since the mysterious disappearance of Diamond’s Black father seven years ago. He was presumably the victim of racial violence, although the town rumor mill churns out sightings of him from time to time.

Diamond and her mother inhabit her deceased grandmother’s decaying house, which may be repossessed at any moment. Now that enough time has passed to have her missing husband declared legally dead, Diamond’s mother is counting on his life insurance money to turn their lives around. Meanwhile, Diamond yearns to escape and is secretly taking driving lessons. She and her mother hitchhike to get around, especially after Diamond, who weighs 298 pounds, allows her bike to be stolen because it had become too difficult to ride.

Diamond feels like a misfit in both society and her family, noting of her maternal lineage, “I am a break in their pure Irish stock; the first Black person, the end of the whites.” Chapters set in 1980 explain the events leading up to her father’s disappearance; at that time Diamond told her father, “You ruined my skin!” Her understanding of his family blossoms when the teenager receives a series of letters from Southern relatives. Black people once ran Swift River’s mills, until escalating racist hostility forced all but one to flee to Georgia during an event that became known as “The Leaving.”

While Diamond may sound like a down-and-out, tragic character, she’s anything but. This gutsy girl has a keen intellect, a beautiful singing voice and an irrepressible, hopeful outlook. Her often-humorous narration is the novel’s central, propelling force. She befriends a white girl, Shelly, and their page-turning misadventures offer sharp insights into friendship, class, racial bias and discrimination, and coming of age.

With finely crafted prose, never a saccharine moment and a plot that skillfully weaves together past and present, Chambers masterfully delivers the message of Swift River: “Our instincts, our deepest intuitions, are really our ancestral memory; our people speaking through us.”

Swift River is a mesmerizing account of inherited trauma in a “sundown town,” propelled by the insightful and often-humorous narration of 16-year-old Diamond Newberry, the town’s only Black resident.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Mouse on the River

Review by Alice Cary

After sharing a year with Mouse in Mouse’s Wood, young readers can now enjoy a day on the river with Mouse on the River: A Journey Through Nature, a quiet picture book full of charm. As the titular hero spends the day rowing down a river that eventually meets the sea, the most dramatic event is a passing rainstorm—making this a good choice for a soothing bedtime tale.

William Snow’s rhyming text moves the story along as Mouse begins his solo journey early in the morning, while fellow anthropomorphic friends wave goodbye from the dock. This is very much an experiential book, with a multitude of details to scour, beginning with the full-spread map showing Mouse’s planned route. Numerous die-cut flaps encourage keen observation as they reveal cozy, detailed interiors of buildings along the way, including a floating house, a café and a treehouse. Additional fold-out flaps appearing as trees enhance the sense of Mouse’s ongoing progress, enlarging several scenes beyond the book’s borders. Once the journey is complete, an illustrated list of Mouse’s equipment—as well as depictions of flora and fauna encountered along the way—will encourage enthusiastic readers to go back and find these items. 

The star of this show is Alice Melvin’s rich illustrations, which are chock-full of details: squirrels having tea inside a bright cafe; a fox waiting on a customer in a well-stocked bakery; Mouse camping snugly in the rowboat underneath the stars. The book brings to mind another one that quickly became a favorite in our house when my girls were young: Welcome to Mouse Village, written by Gyles Brandreth and illustrated by Mary Hall.

Mouse on the River is a well-planned, enchanting adventure worthy of repeat enjoyment.

Mouse on the River is a well-planned, enchanting adventure in which the most dramatic event is a passing rainstorm—making this richly illustrated picture book a good choice for a soothing bedtime tale.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Challenger

Review by Alice Cary

Adam Higginbotham’s international bestseller, Midnight in Chernobyl, chronicled the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine that was caused by a Soviet program plagued with a toxic combination of unrealistic timelines and dangerous cost cutting. His new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, describes a surprisingly similar catastrophe that very same year, this time at the hands of NASA: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that killed all seven people aboard. Hefty, compelling and propulsive, Challenger overflows with revelatory details.

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. One can’t help but hear a drumbeat of dread while getting to know the astronauts—Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael Smith—and their families. Details will stay with readers long after they close the book: McAuliffe’s appearance on The Tonight Show, her husband’s increasing anxiety at launch time, the horror and disbelief of the families as they watch their loved ones die, the grim details of the recovery efforts and the attempts of professionals both to warn against the mission and to bring to light why it failed.

Among the latter is engineer Roger Boisjoly, who, over a year before the explosion, wrote a memo voicing fears to senior management, stating, “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action . . . we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch facilities.” Unbelievably, in the hours just before the mission commenced, Boisjoly and a team of 13 other engineers unanimously advised against the launch, yet their concerns were not even voiced up the command chain. After the explosion, physicist Richard Feynman sought to bring clarity to the commission tasked with investigating the tragedy. The scientist noted that “the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.”

Higginbotham excels at delineating not only the science, technology and history of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, but also the bureaucratic snafus and mismanagement that led to the catastrophe, including economic pressures and a nonstop race to get people into space. As with Midnight in Chernobyl, Challenger proves Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, demonstrating an unflinching ability to pierce through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.

Challenger proves Adam Higginbotham is a master chronicler of disasters, piercing through politics, power and bureaucracies with laser-sharp focus.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Safiyyah’s War

Review by Alice Cary

In 1940, Safiyyah lives in the Grand Mosque of Paris with her parents, grandmother Setti, toddler sister and several other families. Smart, curious and spunky, she loves exploring the city—especially the map room of the nearby library, as she dreams of becoming a world explorer. Her carefree ways quickly change, however, as Nazi soldiers approach and invade, plunging her orderly world into the chaos of World War II. Setti warns Safiyyah, “There will come a day when you have the choice to use what you’ve been given in one way or another. . . . There is no use in a million maps unless they lead you to light.”

Hiba Noor Khan’s debut novel, Safiyyah’s War, is a beautifully written, well-plotted work of historical fiction based on the heroic efforts of Mosque activists who forged identity documents for Jews, hid them in the mosque and led an estimated 500 to 1700 through the catacombs to safety. Khan does a particularly good job at making Safiyyah not only an eyewitness but also a bold heroine who dives into action, risking her life for others. 

As Paris becomes increasingly dangerous, Khan introduces a diverse, multigenerational cast that enriches the soul of this novel. There’s Setti, who longs for her native Algeria, which she was forced to leave as a teenager; Safiyyah’s father, who tends to Mosque business and taught Safiyyah to always help others; Monsieur Cassin, an elderly, well-known botanist who shows Safiyyah the wonders of an adventurous life; Timothée, a refugee shepherd boy from northern France; and Hana, a Jewish classmate whose parents have been captured by the Nazis and who comes to live with Safiyyah’s family. 

Khan builds an intricate drama around these characters, ramping up the tension with each chapter as Safiyyah carefully observes what is going on outside in the city as well as within the confines of the Mosque. Adept at investigating, Safiyyah soon finds herself helping the resistance out in unimaginable ways, especially during the novel’s thrilling climax. 

Safiyyah’s War brings WWII Paris clearly into focus as it shows how people of all ages—from different cultures and religions—can band together in the face of evil. Khan is a writer to watch, and Safiyyah is a heroine worth remembering.

Hiba Noor Khan’s debut novel, Safiyyah’s War, is a beautifully written, well-plotted work of historical fiction based on the heroic efforts of activists at the Grand Mosque of Paris who led Jews to safety.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Amil and the After

Review by Alice Cary

What happens to a family after a dangerous, life-changing and historic journey? That’s the focus of Veera Hiranandani’s wonderful Amil and the After, which follows 12-year-old Amil and his family, who, during the Partition of India in 1948, have just migrated to Bombay from what would become Pakistan. It’s a worthy companion novel to Hiranandani’s Newbery Honoree The Night Diary, which tells the story of that journey through the perspective of Amil’s twin sister, Nisha.

Amil and Nisha’s Hindu father tells them, “Everything is broken. Pakistan and the new India are like two eggs sitting on a ledge, having no idea what they’re going to grow up to be.” Similarly, his children are also in a precarious state before transformation. While Nisha flourishes on schoolwork and writing, Amil is dyslexic and loves to draw. Amil begins making a series of drawings about their new life as a way of honoring their Muslim mother, who died in childbirth. 

“I thought we were over the bad stuff here in Bombay,” Amil confesses. “We’re safe and getting back to a normal life, I guess, but I’m still sad a lot of the time.” Everyone is trying to find their way, from their father to their homesick grandmother and Kazi, their beloved Muslim cook. Nisha is slowly emerging from selective mutism, and both Amil and Nisha help each other through occasional panic attacks stemming from their harrowing escape. Hiranandani depicts the twins’ relationship exceptionally well, deeply developing her characters as they bounce their thoughts and fears off of each other. 

This is an excellent work of historical fiction, seamlessly and sensitively integrating the personal and the political. A particularly empathetic young man, Amil wonders why he and his family managed to survive their migration while others perished or ended up in refugee camps instead of a comfortable apartment. After befriending Vishal, who is homeless and without family, Amil wonders why his new friend is “a boy exactly like he was, just unlucky instead of lucky.” 

With Amil and the After, Veera Hiranandani masterfully presents a powerful, unvarnished examination of difficult subject matter while paving the way forward with hope and love. 

With Amil and the After, Veera Hiranandani presents a powerful, unvarnished examination of difficult subject matter while paving the way forward with hope and love.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

You Broke It!

Review by Alice Cary

In her first picture book, You Broke It! (Rise x Penguin, $18.99, 9780593660409), New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck takes an irreverent look at the endless barrage of reprimands that parents routinely fling at their offspring—“Sit still!” or “Get the hair out of your eyes!”—and twists them in ways that will leave both parents and young children with smiles.

A different parent is featured on each spread, admonishing their young in ways that will make readers laugh out loud. The featured chastisers include various animals and natural forces. A whirling tornado tells their child, “You’re making a mess!” while a worm issues a “Stop squirming!” decree. My own favorites are the cat’s “Stop playing with your food!” to the kitten eyeing a nearby mouse, and a crocodile who warns their toothy youngster, “Stop biting!” 

Finck’s lively illustrations consist of minimalistic line drawings with one burst of muted color on each spread—a pink mouse, a blue tornado, a bit of green on a turtle. In true cartoon style, this artistic simplicity nicely focuses the reader’s attention on the irony at hand, helping kids immediately tune in to each joke without visual distractions.

You Broke It! is a book that parents and children are likely to relish and remember, especially in the midst of those inevitable nagging sessions that occur. Both young and old will enjoy poking fun at popular admonishments, and each will perhaps leave with renewed understanding about the loving aspect of such conflicts. Finck’s final pages certainly bring this message home when an octopus says, “Keep your hands to yourself!” and the child responds, “I am just being me.” With that, You Broke It! concludes with the perfect illustration: a parent and child embracing in a big octopus hug.

You Broke It! is a book that parents and children are likely to relish and remember, especially in the midst of those inevitable nagging sessions that occur in parenting.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The Women

Review by Alice Cary

“Some women had worn love beads in the sixties; others had worn dog tags,” Kristin Hannah writes in The Women, her salute to American women who were nurses in the Vietnam War. It’s a book she has long wanted to write—since 1997—but didn’t feel ready to tackle until now. As she’s done before in runaway bestsellers like The Nightingale, The Great Alone and The Four Winds, Hannah demonstrates her knack for blending broad sweeps of history with page-turning plots to immediately engross legions of readers in even the most difficult of subjects.

The story covers more than 20 years, beginning in 1966 when 21-year-old Frankie McGrath impetuously joins the Army Nurse Corps, hoping to follow her beloved brother, Finley, to Vietnam. Her well-to-do parents live on Coronado Island in California and are very much concerned with keeping up appearances. Frankie’s father keeps a “Wall of Heroes” in his office filled with portraits of their family’s military veterans, even though he, to his shame, was declared ineligible to serve. Frankie’s life changes when one of her brother’s friends tells her, “Women can be heroes.”

Frankie arrives in Vietnam as a clueless, newly minted nurse, but she rises to the horrific circumstances and ends up finding her calling in life, as well as a turbulent romance. She slowly grows into a highly skilled surgical combat nurse, and the scenes of her working are particularly immersive, showing readers the traumatic experiences that soldiers, nurses and doctors experienced on a daily basis.

Over 265,000 women served during the Vietnam era, including about 10,000 American military women stationed in Vietnam during the war, most of them nurses. And yet, after the war, these women were met with remarks like “There were no women in Vietnam.” That’s the reaction Frankie gets when she returns home, and the last half of the book deals with her struggle with Americans who have little idea of or respect for what she’s been through. Her parents compound her feelings of shame and confusion when they reveal that they explained her absence to their friends by pretending Frankie had been studying abroad. Amidst so much misunderstanding, she relies on the support of two lifelong nursing friends as she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and depression.

In true Hannah fashion, The Women delivers a compelling read as well as a new understanding of the Vietnam era.

Kristin Hannah demonstrates her knack for blending broad sweeps of history with page-turning plots in this salute to military and civilian women who served during the Vietnam era.
NonfictionHistoryBlack History

Medgar and Myrlie

Review by Alice Cary

When civil rights activist Medgar Evers met the love of his life, Myrlie Louise Beasley, the 25-year-old had graduated from college and fought in World War II. Myrlie, 17, was a gifted singer and pianist. They married a year later, on Christmas Eve 1951, forming a bond that is the heart of Joy-Ann Reid’s moving biography, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America.

Readers familiar with Reid’s MSNBC show, “The ReidOut,” will recognize the passionate voice that fervently guides the narrative. This love story, she writes, is also about Medgar’s “deep and unfaltering love for Mississippi,” as well as “the higher love it took for Black Americans to love America and to fight for it, even in a state that butchered more Black bodies via lynching than any other.” The Everses could have easily joined the northern exodus of many Black families to more hospitable places, but the couple wanted to raise their children in their home state, fighting to obtain the basic human rights that they were denied.

Reid argues that Medgar’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by the many events and assassinations that took place after he was gunned down in his carport in 1963, leaving the quiet, formidable Myrlie to raise their three children and carry on her husband’s legacy. But after reading this book, readers will long remember Medgar’s courage, as well as Myrlie’s devotion and bravery—especially since the couple knew he was likely to be the victim of an assassination attempt. The details are searing: Their house had no front door because that might have left them too vulnerable, and the children regularly practiced shooting drills in their own home, diving to the floor and crawling soldier-style to the safety of the bathtub, preparing for the horrors that soon arrived on their doorstep.

Reid draws on a variety of sources, including her own recent interviews with Myrlie. She portrays a sweeping history of Civil Rights activism, describing clashing strategies and factions, including the fact that the national office of the NAACP refused to provide Medgar with the security protection that might have saved his life. Myrlie never stopped fighting to have her husband’s killer prosecuted. It took 30 years for Klansman Byron De La Beckwith to be convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in prison; without Myrlie, justice would never have prevailed.

Page by page, Medgar and Myrlie paints unforgettable portraits of two American heroes who faced American racism with unimaginable courage.

Page by page, Joy-Ann Reid’s Medgar and Myrlie paints unforgettable portraits of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, two American heroes who faced American racism with unimaginable courage.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Harriet’s Reflections

Review by Alice Cary

A lion dies, and his lonely, bored reflection goes in search of something new to represent. Such is the unusual premise of Marion Kadi’s fanciful Harriet’s Reflections, which follows a girl who learns valuable lessons about herself in the process of becoming attached to this strange alter ego. Kadi’s spare, humorous text gives momentum to this fun, surprising romp. 

After the lion’s reflection scouts around—nixing the idea of reflecting a flower or a duck—he spots Harriet and leaves behind a trail of puddles (a lovely detail) as he makes his way to peer in her window. The next morning, as Harriet heads to school, the beastly reflection is waiting and pounces with wild abandon into Harriet’s reflection in a water puddle. It’s a great scene, as the unsuspecting Harriet remains oblivious with her nose in her book, while her own reflection reacts with wide-eyed shock.

Kadi’s boldly colorful, swirling art is the star of the show, lending energy to each scene and adding oodles of personality to the lonely, soul-seeking lion as well as to Harriet, who at the start of the tale is miserable at school and sports a big frown. Each page bursts with vibrantly contrasting oranges, blues, greens and yellows; Kadi’s style is reminiscent of Matisse in both style and color, and the lion’s swirling mane and adorable, mischievous expressions are endearing. 

Harriet initially finds that her fierce new reflection makes her happier at school. However, problems soon arise, as she and her reflection begin romping “around the schoolyard like wild beasts” and “devouring their lunch and showing off their fangs.” Harriet comes to yearn for her own reflection and devises a clever way to reclaim it. 

Harriet’s Reflections is a creative tale about trying on new personalities as well as finding one’s true self. Young readers will enjoy every humorous step of Harriet and her lion alter ego’s search for a balanced coexistence.

Marion Kadi’s boldly colorful, swirling art is the star of this fun romp, lending energy to each scene and adding oodles of personality to the lonely lion as well as to Harriet.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Like You, Like Me

Review by Alice Cary

Tulsi, a girl in the mountains of northern New Mexico, became pen pals with Vanessa, who lives by the sea in Tanzania. Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw’s Like You, Like Me, which is based on the real-life friendship between her daughter Tulsi and her pen pal, Vanessa, shows how alike two girls and their worlds can be, despite living in very different places. Through collages made from painted papers and oil sticks, Kostecki-Shaw has created a vibrant exchange that celebrates global connectedness. It’s a delightful follow-up to her earlier book, Same, Same But Different, which featured two pen pals in India and the United States.

On the title page spread, the words that each child writes form a curving, yarn-like thread that crosses the page, stretching from one to another. The endpapers feature bright collage maps of New Mexico and Tanzania, along with a number of geographical facts about each place that will ground young readers and perhaps inspire them to seek out more information. Children will enjoy the intriguing local details of each girl’s home: Tulsi describes ponderosa pines that “smell like butterscotch candy” while Vanessa writes, “my city wears the sweet smell of frangipani.” They compare notes on pets, siblings, school and pastimes in spare prose that is both informative and authentically childlike. Kostecki-Shaw enlivens her cheery, earthy collages with patterns and stamped textures, from the multicolored feathers of a red-tailed hawk to blue spots on a galloping cheetah. An imaginative sense of dreamlike wonder pervades the book from time to time, such as when Tulsi flies on the back of a soaring hawk while Vanessa clings to a cheetah’s neck.

“My life has definitely gotten a lot more beautiful because of people I’ve met.” Read our interview with Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. 

The girls repeat a refrain, “Like you, like me,” to each other as they discover similarities between their lives, and Kostecki-Shaw finds a variety of creative ways to accentuate these connections. The first spread, for instance, features Tulsi on the left-hand page, sitting on a couch as she writes to her friend, with snow-covered mountains visible past her window. On the right-hand page, Vanessa also writes from a couch, while an ocean sparkles outside her window. In the center of this spread, each couch seems to blend into the other. Elsewhere, the two girls’ shadows merge across the pages as they each play different musical instruments. By the end of the book, the friends gaze directly into each other’s eyes, saying, “I see you!” and “I see you too!” Like You, Like Me is a wonderful celebration of global friendship.

Through collages made from painted papers and oil sticks, Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw has created a vibrant celebration of global connectedness based on the author’s daughter and her real-life pen pal.

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