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.

In what he describes as “an imagined biography,” Allen Say humanizes the troubled and determined American artist James Castle.

Born premature in 1899 in Idaho, Castle was deaf, autistic and probably dyslexic. Undiagnosed for years, he and a sibling were eventually sent to a school for the deaf and blind, to which Castle never acclimated. Sent back home, where he lived in an empty shed or even, at times, a chicken house, Castle was isolated and spent his life creating drawings and handmade books with found materials and soot, using spit as a fixative. He also made cutout dolls, the only friends he had. “He drew from memory and in secrecy,” Say writes. His work is now revered as that of an original artist, one whose art was his vocabulary.

Say tells this fictionalized biography from the point of view of Castle’s nephew, using much creative license. He also varies his style and artistic mediums throughout the book, often drawing with his nondominant hand when recreating Castle’s “unschooled” works. And there’s nary a reproduction to be found; Say faithfully reimagines many of Castle’s pieces using the same materials Castle did—sharp sticks, soot, spit and shoe polish.

This is a haunting story, filled with the stark, striking images of Castle’s memory: faceless teachers with whom he was unable to communicate; children who taunted him; the view from the open door of the attic, where he was often forced to stay as a child; and much more. There was an orderliness to Castle’s art, and Say’s beguiling compositions, which include small vignettes, reflect this. This is an utterly fascinating work.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Allen Say for Silent Days, Silent Dreams.

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

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Children may be familiar with the name Harriet Tubman, and they may even know some of the story of the Underground Railroad. But they probably don’t know Harriet the person—from her days before she led slaves to freedom.

In a clever and poetic take on the life of this famed figure, the dynamic team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and her husband, James E. Ransome, goes backward in time. The book opens with a powerful portrait of a wizened Tubman, tired and worn from her decades of fighting for freedom. With every page turn, short verse takes readers further back, to when Tubman was a suffragist, a nurse, a Union spy, an aunt, a slave known as Minty . . . and a little girl known as Araminta.

It’s important to remember Tubman’s contributions, but it’s even more important to realize that she once was a young girl, full of strength, courage and the will to do something. This is a powerful and poetic biographical sketch ideal for elementary school readers.

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Winter Dance, from Newbery Honor winner Marion Dane Bauer and British illustrator Richard Jones, is a gentle tale of the coming of winter in the forest. The lilting language, soothing colors and finely textured artwork engage young readers in a fox’s wonder as snow covers the ground, softening the world around him.

When the fine red fox feels the tingle of the first snowflake settling on his nose, he ponders how to pass the cold winter days ahead. Plenty of creatures are happy to advise him. A caterpillar suggests a cozy chrysalis, but the fox knows a cocoon is not for him. A turtle suggests a dive beneath the cool, snug mud as he disappears into the pond, but the fox isn’t big on ooze. The bats whirring above his head tell him to dip into a cave and hang upside down by his toes, but that won’t work either. The fox decides he should stay put, even as the geese overhead leave for warmer climes.

A snowshoe hare suggests he try the magic trick of turning white to match the “whitening world,” but the fox likes his red fur. Even the great black bear curls up for a long nap, leaving the fox quite alone.

Awake in a sleeping world, the fox feels energized, but the wind soon calms him with a hush. When a low whistle calls, he’s delighted to meet another fine red fox who finally shares what foxes do in winter. They dance!

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.