A young girl and her parents enjoy idyllic summers by the bay year after year in The Little Blue Cottage, an endearing celebration of summer traditions and the ways those traditions inevitably change over time.

Author Kelly Jordan succinctly conveys the child’s bond to this special place. Days at the cottage are filled with sensory fun—the songs of seagulls, the smells of pancakes and sunscreen, the sight of boats with colorful sails in the distance. The cottage is a home away from home where the girl plays boisterously and, in quieter moments, sits on a window seat in a cozy alcove, gazes out at the waves and tells the cottage, “You are my favorite place.”

Illustrator Jessica Courtney-Tickle’s vibrant art imbues the cottage and its inhabitants with a classical feel while retaining a modern sensibility. The blue cottage gleams beside the bay’s turquoise waves and shimmers amid green hills and grass. Courtney-Tickle’s use of varying frame and image sizes is admirably effective, as in one spread composed of three long, horizontal panels that show the girl growing older and taller each year while befriending a redheaded boy.

Eventually, years creep by with no summer visitors at all, and the cottage grows dilapidated. Then one glorious day, the girl—now a mother—returns with her daughter, her redheaded husband and her white-haired father. Times do indeed change, but readers will find reassurance in this reminder that traditions can endure, even as they are transformed and passed on to new generations.

The image on the title page of Love, Sophia on the Moon immediately establishes the story’s stakes. Sophia is in time-out for having broken a vase while playing rambunctiously inside the house. So she heads out the door, towing along her pink backpack and pet cat, having left behind a note for her mother: “I’m running away. . . . From now on, I live on the moon.” The note kicks off a flurry of communiques between mother and daughter in this tender, funny epistolary tale.

Spreads alternate between Sophia’s adventures on the moon with her new friend, a unicorn named Frurgbert, and her unperturbed mother at home, straightening up Sophia’s bedroom. Observant readers will spot clues in the room—such as a stuffed unicorn and a night light that projects stars onto the ceiling—that hint that Sophia’s journey may be more imaginative than astronautical. All the while, Sophia’s mother patiently reminds Sophia of the good things that await her, including her favorite bedtime story and homemade cookies, should she decide to return home.

Illustrator Mika Song conveys the ups and downs of Sophia’s interior world with soft, relaxed watercolors. Hand-lettered notes between mother and daughter add intimacy to their communication. 

With clear affection, author Anica Mrose Rissi (best known for her Anna, Banana series) captures the determination and obstinacy of children and the steady, unwavering love of a parent. In one of her letters, Sophia’s mother provides a memorable expression of this unconditional love: “Even when you’re mad, I love you to the moon.”

Author Suzanne Slade has penned numerous picture book biographies about visionary women (A Computer Called Katherine and Dangerous Jane). In Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, she turns her attention to the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Though Brooks grew up in poverty, her family’s home was lined with shelves that held books of poetry, a “great treasure.” They valued the written word, and writing “became like eating and breathing” for the young Brooks. She wrote her first poem at the age of 7 and was published in a magazine by the time she was 11.

Slade explores the impact of the Great Depression on Brooks’ family, as well as her misfit status at school. Through it all, her poems kept flowing. During college, marriage and motherhood, money was always tight, but Brooks continued writing and dreaming of a better future. Finally, Brooks secured publication for a collection of poetry.

Slade writes that Brooks’ words “helped people better understand others,” likening them to “bright, brilliant clouds.” Illustrator Cozbi A. Cabrera incorporates warm, luminous clouds repeatedly throughout the book. The final spread shows the exuberant moment in which Brooks learns that she has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Cabrera depicts Brooks dancing for joy with her son in their home on the South Side of Chicago, their living room window framing a brilliant sunset and wispy blue clouds.

Exquisite quotes frequently from Brooks and her work, a smart choice by Slade that allows readers to experience for themselves the poet’s extraordinary voice. This vibrant portrait is a fitting introduction to a groundbreaking poet.

A young indigenous girl learns the importance of water from her elders, then unites with her community and its supporters to defend it in Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade’s inspiring new picture book, We Are Water Protectors.

The unnamed girl’s grandmother teaches her that water is sacred, “the first medicine” that nourishes human life both in the womb and on Mother Earth. The girl’s community believes in a prophecy about a black snake that will threaten the water. Illustrator Goade depicts the snake with a series of angular turns that call to mind the oil pipelines which have been the subject of protests in recent years; the snake’s forked red tongue and red eyes are a menacing touch. The girl strikes powerful poses and holds hands with others to stand against the snake. Together, the communities confront the snake, fighting it on behalf of all the lives that depend on the water.

Throughout the book, Lindstrom, who is Anishinabe/Metis and tribally enrolled with the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, employs a powerful refrain that asserts the continued presence and ongoing commitment of indigenous peoples: “We stand with our songs and our drums. We are still here.” Her prose is powerful, timely and mesmerizing in its lyricism. Goade, who is an enrolled member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, employs deep blues, purples and aquamarines to create enchanting waterscapes that envelope human figures whose skin she represents in a variety of hues. She weaves symbols from Ojibwe culture into the vibrant scenes, which blend images of people, animals and nature together into a striking and precious tapestry of interdependent life. It all adds up to a gorgeous and empowering picture book with an urgent environmental plea.

“Once we were part of Outside and Outside was part of us,” opens Outside In, a lyrical and sensory exploration of the artificial separation between indoors and outdoors from author Deborah Underwood (The Quiet Book) and illustrator Cindy Derby.

A girl sits in the back seat of a car that drives toward a house, and Underwood reminds us that often, even when we are outside, we are still inside. Yet the Outside uses light, insects, noise, weather, enticing smells and much more to nudge us and ask us to step out and explore.

For much of the book, the girl remains indoors, where she experiences how the natural world supports us even while we’re in our houses, providing us with berries to eat, cotton clothes to wear and wooden furniture to sit on. Underwood also points to the ways nature enters our homes, through faucets that run with water from rivers and streams, and through windows that mark our days with the rising and setting sun.

Cindy Derby’s wispy, delicate illustrations toy evocatively with light and shadow. Her atmospheric spreads are never cluttered, leaving lots of open room for young readers to imaginatively inhabit the girl’s world. In a spread about how the Outside “sends the sunset and shadows inside to play,” Derby paints the girl on the verso and her cat on the recto; between them lies abundant space for readers to rest their eyes, and for those enigmatic shadows to dance.

Outside In is a beguiling, thought-provoking book that thinks outside the box.

From once-green leaves turning brilliant hues each autumn to our own eventually graying hair, our brief time together is marked by constant change. Pausing to reflect on life’s transience may inspire sadness, but in Things That Go Away, author-illustrator Beatrice Alemagna reminds us that change isn’t always an occasion for sorrow. 


Things That Go Away uses simple, image-driven language and engaging artwork to explore its titular concept. Between each spread of Alemagna’s signature oil paintings is a sheet of sparsely illustrated onion paper. With each turn of this translucent paper, Alemagna reveals things that vanish or are transformed, from the relenting pounding of rain that gives way to sunshine to music that fills a room only to dissolve into silence.

While the loss of a friend may cut us to the quick, other changes in our lives can be welcome, even joyful. Among the many transitions Alemagna includes are acknowledgements of the sweet solace that comes at the end of a fear-filled night and the relief we experience when the dense fog of dark thoughts finally clears. Through illustrations of steam unfurling from a morning cup of coffee and soap bubbles blown into the wind that drift upwards beyond the reach of giggling children’s fingertips, Alemagna suggests that we might find everyday transformations wondrous, rather than mundane, if we would only take the time to stop and consider them.

In spread after spread, Alemagna meditates on the wide range of changes we face as we live our lives. If this were all Things That Go Away accomplished, it would be enough. But in its ending, the book achieves much, much more. In her book’s final moments, Alemagna pivots from reflecting on things that change to show us, instead, something that endures. In a world adrift in change, Alemagna seems to say, something must anchor us, and for her, that something is love.

Brook’s Mimi isn’t “just a grandmother,” she’s also “a grand friend” who weaves “words into everything.” The same could be said of The Keeper of Wild Words, Brooke Smith’s celebratory picture book that delivers an urgent plea to young readers. 

Brook hopes to find something interesting to bring to show and tell on the first day of school, but on this late summer day, Mimi also has an important mission. She takes Brook on a hike and asks her to be her Keeper of Wild Words, a protector of the words Mimi fears are disappearing. She gives Brook a piece of notebook paper with wildlife words such as drake, monarch, starling and wren. As they walk through woods, meadows and streams, Brook and Mimi marvel at the natural delights they find. “Do wild words dance like this every morning?” Brook wonders.

In an author’s note, Smith explains that her story was inspired by The Oxford Junior Dictionary’s removal of more than 100 entries to make room for words like database, MP3 player and vandalism. The resulting tale is an inspirational commemoration of such “lost” words. Its final page contains a built-in pouch for readers, along with an appeal: “You can be a keeper too. Your wild worlds will stay safe inside this envelope.”

Madeline Kloepper’s vivid illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to Smith’s rallying cry. Her pages are bright with red poppies, swooping starlings and beavers frolicking in a pond near a grassy shore. Readers will practically feel a puff of wind as Brook blows a cascade of dandelion seeds into the air, and they’ll hush to Mimi’s shushing as the pair passes a doe snoozing amid the ferns. Every spread is filled with wonder and warmth, not just for the natural world but also for the bond between grandmother and grandchild.

The Keeper of Wild Words is an irresistible invitation to a wild and wonderful linguistic crusade.