In Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind, author Cynthia Grady pays tribute to real-life Clara Breed, a World War II-era children’s librarian in the San Diego County Library system.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of Miss Breed’s Japanese-American child patrons were unjustly sent with their families to internment camps. The book opens with one patron saying a tearful goodbye to her beloved librarian. Miss Breed gives the girl a stamped and addressed postcard, asking her to write: “We’ll want to know where you are.” Thus begins the librarian’s correspondence with approximately 30 children. They write to Miss Breed about their poor living conditions, the resources they lack, the sicknesses that visit many camps and how happy they are to receive her postcards and books. When the war ends and the Japanese-Americans are released, they “no longer had homes or farms.” In the final spread, we see one girl return, greeting her favorite librarian at the library she never wanted to leave.

Illustrator Amiko Hirao incorporates the children’s postcards into many spreads, all rendered via subdued, soft-focus colored pencils. Both opening and closing endpapers feature World War II-era photographs of Japanese-Americans and the internment camps. In addition to the author’s note, extensive back-matter notes include notable dates in Miss Breed’s life, a selected history of Japanese people in the U.S., a bibliography and more.

This restrained introduction to a painful time in American history serves as a tribute to the power of books to sustain one’s spirit.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

“In the beginning there is light and two wide-eyed figures standing near the foot of your bed, and the sound of their voices is love.”

So begins the much-anticipated new picture book by Matt de la Peña, who won the prestigious Newbery Medal for Last Stop on Market Street, illustrated by Christian Robinson. Now teamed with New York Times bestselling illustrator Loren Long, de la Peña brings his compassionate sensibility to a moving and poetic coming-of-age story—with a twist.

For while the text of Love begins with a baby in a crib and ends with the moment a young person sets off on his or her own, the expansive illustrations go beyond a single child. Instead, each illustration helps to bring alive the author’s poetic exploration of love in all its forms and settings, from cityscapes to flower-strewn meadows. The illustrations embrace 21st-century America as a place of rich, multilayered diversity: We see a child in a wheelchair, a girl in a hijab, a picture of Jesus on a family’s wall, a child fishing with a grandfather and another watching a dad go off to work before dawn.

At the same time, de la Peña and Long don’t shy away from difficult subjects, making this a helpful book for initiating discussions with children. In one scene, a family is glued to the television during what appears to be an unnamed tragedy or disaster; in another, we see a child caught between angry parents.

Love is not simple, but it is enduring. And it is here, around us, sometimes in ways and in places we don’t even notice. Love reminds us of this in simple poetry and evocative illustrations, making it the perfect book to read and return to again and again, whatever age we might be.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Meet the illustrator of Love, Loren Long.

This vertically oriented picture book, first published in Italy in 2015, features a tall tree with a much-coveted nut amid its leafy branches. A small purple mouse stares up at it, declaring that she plans to gobble it up. After she shakes the tree—first to the right and then to the left (expect young readers to excitedly shake the book in solidarity)—a fox, not a nut, falls to the ground. He announces he’ll eat the mouse, who then scurries up the tree.

When the fox shakes the tree in an attempt to oust the mouse, a warthog drops to the ground. The warthog thinks the fox would make a great meal and declares she’ll eat him. Up the tree flees the fox. And so it goes, with a large bear falling from the tree when the warthog shakes it. When all the animals fall to the bear’s feet, the nut falls, too. The animals fear their demise when the bear announces, “I’m going to gobble you up!” Instead, bringing the story full circle, the bear goes straight for the nut.

All the action in Shake the Tree! takes place around the tree, with simple shapes on uncluttered spreads and much top-to-bottom (and vice versa) movement. When each animal faces off with the hungry creature at the bottom of tree, illustrator Silvia Borando opts for horizontal, bright red spreads, the color signifying the danger and alarm at hand. This makes the book’s twist ending all the more surprising for the young readers at whom the book is aimed.

An entertaining and lively read, this one is just right for story-time settings.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

With this wonderful picture book, the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal and her daughter, Paris, encourage young girls to always be bold and fearless.

An advice book of sorts, Dear Girl, is filled with lessons that remind the reader to be inquisitive, to defy gender stereotypes and to love oneself no matter what. But what makes the Rosenthals’ book slightly different from other female empowerment children’s books is that it also stresses the importance of the lesser-known virtues of being bored from time to time, listening to your gut and saying no, and even having a good cry when necessary. Girls can move mountains, but there is no shame in spending a day writing in a journal or staring out the window. Accompanying illustrations from Holly Hatam, a perfect blend of minimalism and whimsy, make this message pop.

Dear Girl, feels like the warm embrace that every parent wants to give their child when the going gets tough. With a sense of wonder, kindness and creativity, this book carries on Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s legacy of being fun and delightful while spreading a message to girls and women of all ages to believe in themselves.

From a young age, we are taught that the Statue of Liberty is a universal symbol for freedom and hope that has stood steadfast over New York Harbor since her dedication in 1886. She has never faltered, never moved—but as author Dave Eggers and illustrator Shawn Harris show us in Her Right Foot, this statue is not exactly stationary.

First, Eggers takes us to France, where absurdist scenes pave the way for Lady Liberty’s creation. (A woman plays a tuba on the street outside a café; the designer of the sculpture emphatically waves a banana.) Through Harris’ cut-paper illustrations and Eggers’ cheeky narration, we follow the statue from her assembly in Paris to her Atlantic Ocean voyage and finally to her arrival at what we now call Liberty Island. Over the course of this 104-page picture book, we learn of her in parts, from her knee to the grim look on her face—a collage to help us see the whole, while also conveying her immense size. But have you ever noticed her right foot?

As a dark-skinned boy and white man look closely, it seems the statue may squash them, as her foot is lifted. “That’s right!” Eggers writes. “She is going somewhere! She is on the move!” Harris plays with perspective as we see Liberty’s shadow looming over people below (you can practically hear the fee-fi-fo-fum) as she strolls through New York City.

“Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue,” Eggers writes. “No! These are things that require action. Courage. An unwillingness to rest.” In the subsequent breathtaking spreads, Harris zooms in and out in perspective to reveal a refugee camp, Liberty looking out over a bay full of boats and planes, and a mother and child gazing down from an airplane window. “After all,” Eggers writes, “the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant, too. And this is why she’s moving. This is why she’s striding.”

With Her Right Foot, Eggers and Harris achieve something truly remarkable: They make a well-loved symbol seem brand new. Lady Liberty is vital, and what readers of Her Right Foot know and understand about her matters now more than ever.

This French import, originally published last year, opens with an epigraph from Serge Gainsbourg (“To make old bones / You have to go easy”), which reflects the story’s suggestion that life is better when we all slow down.

The young girl who narrates the story introduces readers to Boomer, the fat cat that showed up on her doorstep one day and invited himself to live with the family. She explains how lazy Boomer is—unlike her. She’s hyper-busy and overscheduled. “I don’t have time to cuddle,” she tells the cat. “Get out of my way!” She has soccer, painting, yoga, swim class, judo, pottery and much more on her to-do list.

In a hurry one morning, the girl trips over the snoozing cat, and the pair breaks out into surprised laughter. The cat literally having stopped the girl in her tracks, it’s the first time she pauses to relax and enjoy her day. She and Boomer head outdoors to do “nothing at all,” lounging around, watching the clouds and enjoying one another’s company. Readers get the sense that this is something the girl will make a habit of, given her response to her parents when they ask what she did all day. “Nothing,” she responds with a smile, while giving a tender hug to Boomer.

Roussey’s soft, simply drawn illustrations, primarily pastel-colored, exude a childlike innocence and cheer. The narrator’s voice is engaging and genuine and may convince overscheduled American readers to take a cue from her—to put on the brakes, take a breath and enjoy the day. Boomer, after all, knows best.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

A mother sings her restless child to sleep, offering up a story from her own childhood to help ease the transition to bedtime. The mother is Nina Simone, talking about her own girlhood and the discrimination she faced as she came into her own and discovered her love of music.

The adult Nina, looking back, remembers a church performance at the age of 23, during which her proud mother was asked by white people to remove herself from the front row where she planned to watch her daughter perform. Author Alice Brière-Haquet uses a set of piano keys as a metaphor for the racial injustices of the time: “Black people were nothing but half notes on a huge ivory keyboard.” Later, the adult Nina tells her own child that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial harmony helped turn the tide. Here, illustrator Bruno Liance brings readers black and white protesters with signs; young Nina herself holds one that reads, “Young, Gifted, and Black,” referencing her 1970 song that became an anthem of the Civil Rights movement.

Liance’s illustrations—soft-focus and hazy, just as memories are wont to be—are in black-and-white, matching the author’s sentiment: “Music has no color.” There are moments of great drama on several spreads. More than one features lush trees or flowers bursting forth in unexpected places (from a piano, from the bed of the child Nina is lulling to sleep). One features a lineup of white composers (Mozart, Liszt and the like), followed by young Nina, the only black person pictured, who “played all the important men in powdered wigs from past centuries.” A couple of spreads show a defiant Nina, pushing down her anger to sing to her dismissed mother in the crowd.

Stirring and powerful, the book can be an effective conversation starter with children about racial injustice.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.