Julie Danielson

Author and illustrator Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson, who received both Newbery and Caldecott recognition for their 2015 collaboration, Last Stop on Market Street, team up for a third time on Milo Imagines the World, a nuanced tale about the fallacies of first impressions.

Milo and his older sister take long monthly subway rides together, though their destination isn’t revealed until the end of the book. With notebook and pencil in hand, Milo draws the lives he imagines for the people he sees on the train. These include a “whiskered man” whom Milo sketches returning home alone to a messy apartment, a primly dressed boy and his father depicted as living in a castle and a woman in a wedding dress who celebrates a festive wedding to a man.

When he arrives at the detention facility to visit his mother, Milo sees the boy he drew on the train and realizes that “maybe you can’t really know anyone just by looking at their face.” He begins to envision different lives for the strangers than those he drew on the subway. Perhaps the woman in the wedding dress married another woman or that whiskered man went home to his loving family.

De la Peña’s prose is precise and evocative (Milo is “a shook-up soda” of nerves), full of pleasant verbs (the train “bucks back into motion”). His story respects young readers by incorporating their complex interior worlds and the observant ways they attend to issues of class. When "a crew of breakers" exits the train, for example, and "faces still follow their every move," Milo imagines that the breakers will be subjected to racist micoaggressions when they step outside the subway.

Robinson’s signature collage illustrations bring Milo and his sister’s distinct personalities to life. Milo is bespectacled and wears an eye-catching lime-colored knit hat, and his sister is deeply distracted by her phone. Milo’s own simple drawings capture his childlike sense of wonder without ever patronizing.

A thoughtfully crafted addition to the small canon of books about children with an incarcerated parent, this sweet but never saccharine story is a classic in the making.

Claude and Manman usually walk Papa to the tap tap stop, where Claude sees people from his Haitian community boarding the bus on their way to the beach. The bus’s bright colors always catch Claude’s eye, but he has school and chores, and Manman says he can’t ride the tap tap.

Every day, Claude’s desire to ride the vehicle grows. He sees a woman carrying mangoes and dreams of mangoes; he sees a fisherman and fantasizes about “reeling in a jumbo fish”; he sees a woman carrying straw on her head and hopes one day he can weave a hat for Manman; and when he sees a painter heading to the beach, he longs to paint a picture of his own tap tap. Then one day after church, Claude’s dreams come true when Papa and Manman surprise him with a trip on the tap tap to the beachfront.

Author Danielle Joseph incorporates Haitian Creole words throughout I Want to Ride the Tap Tap, a joyous tale of everyday life in Haiti. Her ear for dialogue is particularly strong. “Bon bagay!” Claude often exclaims. The story provides context clues as to its meaning, though a glossary provides a specific translation (“This is good stuff!”). The days of the week, also written in Haitian Creole, provide the story with a satisfying structure.

Debut illustrator Olivier Ganthier’s images pop with vivid colors, especially in the exuberant closing spreads in which Claude has made it to the shore and finally has the chance to do all the things he dreamed of. These scenes have a palpable energy as they portray Claude’s jubilant Haitian community. Children everywhere know what it’s like to experience a day like this, when the week’s work is done and you can simply spend a day with the family you love.

Two brothers, memorably named Fox and Dodge, are planning their fifth trip to the moon in their spacecraft, the White Dolphin. Built using common household “odds and ends,” they keep the craft hidden behind the chimney on the roof of their house. Their goal for this trip is to build a fort on the moon’s surface, and they prep for this mission at home with models made from wooden blocks.

Told from the perspective of the younger brother, Dodge, A Fort on the Moon is filled with authentic—never patronizing—details that capture how children perceive the world. After the boys tell their mother they plan to build a fort on the moon, they observe that she “gets that look grown-ups get when they think you’re being cute.” Author Maggie Pouncey’s language is also remarkably childlike: The boys’ tools for shipbuilding, for instance, include “two diggers” and “two whackers.” Pouncey’s use of exclamation marks throughout the story is particularly effective in communicating the boys’ wonder—“We load our materials into the ship, things Mama called junk!”—and her occasional use of rich figurative language delights. Walking on the moon, Dodge reflects, is like "stirring the batter of the world’s biggest cake.”

Illustrator Larry Day brings the boys’ adventure to the page via relaxed watercolor and gouache illustrations dominated by a vivid, sapphire blue. His depiction of the White Dolphin is entertaining, constructed as it is with old umbrellas, tires, watering cans, cardboard boxes and the like. The boys, snug in snowsuits, sit in old car seats as they navigate the spacecraft. Expect lots of laughs when sharing this book aloud with young readers.

Though the brothers experience frustration in building the fort (moon dust gets on everything, and they run low on tape), the thrill of adventure dominates the story. Children will delight at the boys’ lunar antics and may even be touched by the brotherly bonding that occurs when Dodge realizes that, if it weren’t for his brother, he would have given up.

A Fort on the Moon marries art and story for a combination that’s truly out of this world.

A young immigrant adjusts to life in America in Thrity Umrigar’s evocatively titled Sugar in Milk. “When I first came to this country, I felt so alone,” the young girl reveals. Though she lives with her Auntie and Uncle, she struggles with loneliness and misses her family and friends back home. Recognizing her niece’s sadness and isolation, her Auntie takes her for a walk and shares a story with the girl:

Once upon a time, some Persian refugees made their way to India but were turned away by the king. Then a brave man dissolved some sugar into a very full glass of milk, creating a visual metaphor to convey how the refugees would “sweeten your lives with our presence” and successfully establishing peace between the refugees and the king. Hearing this story becomes a turning point for the girl, and she begins to appreciate her “new and magical homeland.”

Illustrator Thao Le’s palette incorporates captivating cool tones of teal, copper and crimson as well as rich, beguiling blues. Elaborate borders set off the spreads depicting Auntie’s story and become increasingly detailed with each page turn, marking her ancient tale as separate from the primary narrative and adding a sense of formality to its telling. The book’s opening and closing spreads—that is, before and after Auntie’s story—are a study in contrasts as the girl’s dull, solitary winter days vanish, replaced by spring sunshine and blooming flowers.

Sugar in Milk powerfully demonstrates how a simple story can radically alter one’s perspective for the better. It’s a timely exploration of timeless themes of acceptance and what it means to call a place home.

“I want to be everywhere Mama is,” says a girl as she heads down the stairs one morning in the house she shares with her parents, her brother and her dog, Max. Her love for her family is clear, but she is especially taken with Mama, who sings a good morning greeting, “bright as sun,” to her daughter.

The two spend the day entire together. They comb one another’s hair, take a walk outside, sing and splashing in puddles, read together at bedtime and more—but the book’s central focus is on the particularities of Mama’s world, the details that her daughter takes in over the course of the day. She lovingly catalogs items that belong to Mama, including a fragile, floral-patterned mug, a red toothbrush, an oatmeal bowl, a fuchsia hair barrette and a pair of tall, red boots, comparing them to her own possessions. In a deft touch, the items are featured on the book’s endpapers. When Mama reads to the girl and her brother at night, the girl even observes Mama’s shining teeth as she throws back her head to laugh. She’s deeply smitten, and it’s easy to see why.

Author-illustrator Cozbi A. Cabrera occasionally incorporates evocative figurative language into the girl’s narration as to describe their day. “The clouds outside are wearing shadows,” the girl declares before she and Mama leave for their walk. As they sing to the sky during their rainy stroll, Mama tells the girl that a song is “highs and lows.” At bedtime, a “sleepy sun” turns the sky pink before darkness settles in.

Cabrera brings a joyous Black family and their eloquent yet cozy home to vivid life in brightly colored, highly detailed acrylic illustrations. The book’s pace slows considerably toward the ending, as the girl falls asleep and recalls the day she and Mama spent together. One spread depicts merely darkness with rich shades of blue filling every inch of the spread; it’s a lovely moment in which Cabrera lets the story breathe.

Me & Mama is a picture book love letter that captures the extraordinary bond between a mother and daughter on a completely ordinary day.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Me & Mama's editor/publisher, Denene Millner, goes behind the scenes of the first season of her new imprint, Denene Millner Books.

Written with precision, lyricism and compassion, I Talk Like a River is a story about stuttering drawn from author Jordan Scott’s personal experience.

A boy is ashamed of his efforts to produce words and the resultant facial contortions: “All they see,” he says, referring to his classmates, “is how strange my face looks and that I can’t hide how scared I am.” The boy’s father recognizes that his son has had a “bad speech day” and takes him to a place where they can be quiet. At the river, the pair watches the water as it churns yet is “calm . . . beyond the rapids.” Pulling his son close, the father points to the water. “That’s how you speak,” he says.

Illustrator Sydney Smith (Town Is by the Sea, Small in the City) uses thick, impressionistic brushstrokes that dazzle as he represents the boy’s roiling interior world. In one gripping spread about the boy’s fear of public speaking, we see the classroom from his point of view. Students stare, their faces indistinct smudges of paint, the entire room distorted by the boy’s panic. But at the river—where Smith showcases the mesmerizing play of light on water in a dramatic double gatefold—the world becomes clearer.

Smith also plays visually with some of the book’s figurative language. The boy cites elements from nature as examples of the letters he finds most challenging to pronounce (P, C and M). Smith incorporates them into a striking spread in which pine tree branches, a shrieking crow and the outline of a crescent moon cover the boy’s face.

Without providing pat answers or resorting to sentimentality, I Talk Like a River reverently acknowledges the boy’s hardship. Scott’s story is as much about observant, loving parenting as it is about the struggle to speak fluently, as the boy’s father generously equips his son with a metaphorical framework to understand and even take pride in his stutter: “My dad says I talk like a river.” This is unquestionably one of the best picture books of 2020.

Demonstrating her deep understanding of the preschooler mind, Amy Schwartz’s charming 13 Stories About Harris delivers exactly what its title promises: 13 stories about a child named Harris, though his best friend Ayana figures prominently, too.

These are miniature domestic dramas; the longest story spans four pages, and a very funny one (“ ‘That’s why they call permanent markers permanent,’ Harris’s mother said.”) is just a single page. Most center on Harris’ imaginative play. In one, he draws an exceptionally long dragon’s tail on the sidewalk; in another, he and Ayana role-play worms “taking over the world” by jumping around in their pillowcases. Harris also makes butter with his mother, goes on play dates with Ayana, visits his preschool and more.

There’s a lot of humor here, much of it understated, as when Harris and his mother pet sit for Stanley, Ayana’s hamster, only to discover six baby hamsters in the cage. Another reads, “Harris was standing on his truck and he shouldn’t have been,” then wordlessly reveals the consequences of Harris’ actions after the page turn. The final story, in which Harris and Ayana declare they will hold hands “forever and ever,” wraps it all up on a tender note.

The illustrations are classic Schwartz, with finely drawn, carefully composed vignettes in vivid colors of children at play. The stories’ pacing varies, but each one gets it just right. Schwartz knows when to let her illustrations speak for themselves, such as Harris’ woeful fall from his toy truck, giving readers an opportunity to put two and two together. Put 13 Stories About Harris into the hands of young readers ready for a baker’s dozen of whimsical tales.