Author-illustrator Kenesha Sneed is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist who mines her own artistic background in her evocative first picture book, Many Shapes of Clay: A Story of Healing.

Eisha lives with her mother, a clay artist whose studio is in the basement of their apartment, and their cat, who loves long naps. When Eisha wonders why her mother leaves her molded clay shapes on the shelves instead of playing with them, her mother explains that the shapes are fragile, then gives Eisha a piece of clay to experiment with.

As Eisha moves the clay in her hands, it evokes ideas and memories, including a day last summer when she picked lemons with her father. Eisha molds her clay into the shape of a lemon and paints it yellow. She brings it outside to the apartment stoop when she and Mama take a break from their hard work. “Sweat drips down from the top of her head to the tip of her chin. Mama misses Papa too,” Sneed writes, offering the book’s first indication that Mama and Eisha have suffered a terrible loss.

Outside, Eisha notices that when she taps on the clay lemon, it makes a musical sound, but she taps a little too hard and it breaks, shattering into many pieces. “Each piece reflects the sadness she feels,” Sneed writes. Eisha’s mother acknowledges her daughter’s grief and helps her to create something new from the broken pieces of clay that will help carry her memories and love for her father with her into each new day.

With its subtle and perceptive depiction of grief, Many Shapes of Clay stands out among children’s books that deal with this topic. The story unfolds gently as Sneed slowly reveals the intensity of Eisha and Mama’s loss. Eisha’s contemplation of her inability to put her broken pieces of clay back together is particularly moving: “What Eisha feels is hard to describe—like something that is too heavy to lift. Like something that might last forever.” Sneed’s spare, lyrical prose and earth-tone illustrations come together beautifully to depict the uneven, uncertain process of healing.

Many Shapes of Clay heralds the arrival of a talented new picture book creator.

Wishes begins as a mother and her three children pack in the middle of the night. They say a tearful goodbye to the family members who will remain behind, then wait in a long line to board a small boat for a perilous journey across the ocean. They survive crowded conditions, hard winds and rain, the turbulent sea and the searing sun, all in the hope of a new life.

Author Mượn Thị Văn structures this tale as a poetic series of wishes made by one of the children. As the girl watches her family pack food into a yellow knapsack, she imagines that “the bag wished it was deeper.” As a storm tosses the tiny boat, “the sea wished it was calmer.” The child herself holds dear a poignant and heart-rending wish: “And I wished . . . I didn’t have to wish . . . anymore.” This wish is revealed over the course of four spreads set against a brightening sky as a large vessel spots their boat, welcomes its passengers aboard and takes them to the shoreline of a grand, gleaming city.

Victo Ngai’s illustrations do much of the heavy lifting here, extending Văn’s spare, lyrical text in concrete, cinematic ways. Ngai doesn’t hold back, never once shying away from the journey’s traumatic elements. Sorrow, fear, distress, life-threatening danger: It’s all here. One spread, drenched in washes of red, puts readers right on the boat as people cling to one another, the narrator embracing her family with tears in her eyes. “The heart wished it was stronger,” Văn writes.

A closing note reveals that this powerful story is personal for Văn. As a child, she left her grandfather behind and traveled with the rest of her family from southern Vietnam to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, eventually settling in the United States.

This rich and nuanced tale illuminates the closely held wishes of refugees the world over. It’s unforgettable.

The Night Walk opens with a mother’s tantalizing invitation to her two children: “Wake up. . . . Let’s go, so we get there on time.” It’s the middle of the night, but the sleepy children get ready for an adventurous journey to an unknown destination. Perfectly paced page turns capture the family’s trek and the wonders that await in the world after nightfall. Therein lies the joy of this picture book: Both the journey and the destination are delightful.

One of the children narrates as the family walks with all senses on alert. They hear crickets chirping and a train “slicing through the darkness.” The narrator notices not just the train’s “shrieking” wheels but also the “still silence” that follows its departure. They smell honeysuckle on the air, feel the lingering warmth of the pavement and notice glowing lights inside buildings. The big hotel gleams “bright like a chandelier,” while the last house in their village has “one eye open,” an upstairs window aglow.

When they leave their village behind to enter a “whispering forest,” Dorléans’ mastery of language (with superb work from translator Polly Lawson) is especially apparent. Her sensory details are remarkable and vivid. “The earth was damp,” she writes, and “the bark smelled comforting.” A palette of dusky, spectral blues envelops the family on their journey, interrupted only by pops of pale yellow from bedside lamps, porch lights, flashlights, the train’s headlights and the moon. When they finally reach the summit of a mountainous slope, the expansive vista and the revelation of their ultimate objective is breathtaking.

Never hurried, this eloquent story is a beautifully measured tale not unlike one giant inhale (the journey) followed by a long, happy exhale (the closing spreads). Pick up a copy and make a night of it.

There’s hardly a more intriguing or renowned family of creatives than the Wyeths. Patriarch N.C. Wyeth was a painter and illustrator who, with his wife, raised five talented children in their famed home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Henriette, Carolyn and Andrew all followed in their father’s artistic footsteps, while Ann became a composer and Nathaniel an engineer and inventor.

Writer Beth Kephart invites readers into the Wyeth family’s busy life, depicting an imaginary day narrated by young Henriette. With paint box, easel and canvas in hand, Henriette eagerly follows her father on a ramble through the countryside to paint the sprawling landscape. Along the way, they pass the other Wyeth children, each busy in their own little world, and Henriette ponders Pa’s advice to “awaken into your dreams.” When Henriette and Pa reach an open meadow, they set up their easels and, in a wonderful spread, begin to paint side by side.

And I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World is a sensitive, satisfying portrayal of an adoring daughter spending time with her father. It’s also an inspiring glimpse into the careful cultivation and blossoming of a child’s creative spirit. Kephart’s writing is full of marvelously specific detail, from “the slosh of the creek” to “the green growing into the cap of a strawberry” to Pa’s coat, which “smells like apple cores and packing moss and turpentine.”

The text echoes with an unspoken sense of the past that’s reinforced by Amy June Bates’ mixed media illustrations. Her muted palette of pastels lends a dreamy mood to the spreads and recalls the spirit of the Wyeths’ worlds. She nimbly alternates between broad landscapes and close-ups of singular items (acorns, a bouquet of flowers) that echo how N.C. and Henriette observe and paint subjects both big and small. Her illustrations also incorporate small pencil sketches—a leaping squirrel, birds in flight—that highlight another stage of the artistic process.

Though the narrative is enriched by biographical information included in the backmatter, this beautiful picture book stands well on its own for readers unfamiliar with the Wyeth family and provides a fascinating look at one of its often overlooked members.

Victoria Peckham, Annie Yolkley, Rosie Van der Beak, Pearl S. Cluck: All of these delightful monikers have two things in common. They are all, of course, pun-derful plays on chicken-ness, but they are also all past winners of the Golden Feather Award for Chickentown’s Best Hen of the Year.

That’s a very big deal in Chickentown, a fabulously feather-strewn village created by Spanish author-illustrator Albert Arrayás as the backdrop for his fantastical and funny The Chickentown Mystery. Rather than being relegated to backyard coops, Chickentown’s hens live with people in their houses. They play checkers, take luxurious bubble baths and sleep snugly in their beds. Nigella “Minnie” Cooper even appears to drive her very own car.

Arrayás captures Chickentown and its denizens in delicate pencil and watercolor illustrations filled with pinks and oranges that convey a sense of warmth and whimsy. Indigo blues introduce an air of mystery when—what the cluck?—hens start to go missing mere days before this year’s Golden Feather competition. Will Mayor Cockscomb’s search parties locate the missing chickens? Or will local witch Miss Henrietta and her hen, Lucinda, need to assist?

Arrayás sprinkles clues throughout, transforming tastefully decorated bedrooms into crime scenes for budding forensic investigators. Once the gasp-inducing finale reveals the perpetrator and readers recover from their upended expectations, they’ll rush right back to the beginning to scrutinize the book’s pages anew.

While Arrayás’ themes are clear—doing the right thing is rewarded, and we shouldn’t believe everything we see—he leaves plenty of room for imagination as well. His art offers tantalizing hints about the enigmatic chickens’ inner lives, and his story is a thought-provoking blend of mystery, comedy and magic that will have readers looking at their feathered friends with heightened appreciation and a healthy dose of speculation.

A girl and her abuela find an injured bird, bring it home and nurse it back to health in this unassuming tale. Inspired by one of Blanca Gómez’s own childhood experiences, Bird House is quietly delightful as it depicts an act of true kindness.

The girl narrates with gentle pacing from the moment the pair first notices the sunny yellow bird on a snowy day. After Abuela mends the bird’s wounded leg, they release it from its cage and allow it to fly around the living room. Their pet cat seems especially curious about the new guest. When the bird has fully recovered, they set it free, but it returns after the snow melts and spring arrives. “Abuela, can we keep it?” the girl asks. “No, darling, the bird doesn’t belong to us,” Abuela tells her.

Gómez reduces the story to its essentials, both verbally and visually. There are no feats of linguistic acrobatics; the text is plain-spoken and conveyed in short sentences: “It was fantastic,” we read as the girl watches the bird fly around the living room. Yet a sweet but never cloying tenderness pervades the story. The girl treasures the time she spends with her grandmother, observing that “everything was always fantastic at Abuela’s house.”

In spacious, uncluttered spreads, Gomez’s textured paper-collage illustrations contrast muted colors, such as Abuela’s charcoal gray cardigan and the powder blue of her tiled bathroom wall, against bright reds and yellows found in the furniture and living room floor. As spring arrives, gloomy winter makes way for the vivid greens of the plants on Abuela’s back porch. This is a story that breathes, and its artwork exudes a simple, timeless charm.

Some books offer a chance to escape, while others provide space for contemplation and reflection. It’s the rare book that does both. Bursting with insight, Shawn Harris’ Have You Ever Seen a Flower? transforms a trip to the mountains into a spirited voyage into our very consciousness.

The book begins with a tiny, colorful child, the only pop of brightness amid an intricate graphite city. Buildings tower around her, looming and glum. When the girl gets in a car and travels down a dark road away from the city, gray buildings give way to white emptiness before the book explodes with color. The vibrant hues that once gilded only the girl now surround her, with fields of warm-toned flowers and triangular mountains filled with all the shades of the rainbow. The illustrations grow and bloom surrealistically, as outstretched arms become the leaves of flowers, reaching toward the sun, and a drop of blood from a pricked finger becomes a meadow of crimson blossoms. 

All the while, Harris addresses readers directly in a series of wide-eyed observations and imaginative questions. “Have you ever seen a flower using nothing but your nose? Breathe deep . . . what do you see?” His language is playful and sprinkled with subtle moments of alliteration and assonance. 

Composed of sweeping colored pencil strokes, Harris’ art has a simplicity that belies its expert use of negative space and perspective. The illustrations don’t just carry the book’s narrative; they also deliver a beautiful metaphor as Have You Ever Seen a Flower? builds to an astonishing, all-encompassing declaration of connectedness: We are all flowers.

Have You Ever Seen a Flower? is an invitation to pause and take a moment to feel, imagine and experience the worlds around us and inside us. Its joy, color and hopefulness will ignite the imagination of anyone lucky enough to experience its magic.

Author Andrea Wang’s childhood memory of picking watercress by the side of the road serves as the inspiration for this emotional powerhouse of a picture book, which she describes in an author’s note as “both an apology and a love letter” to her parents. 

Riding with her family in an old Pontiac, a Chinese American girl describes the embarrassing moment when her parents stop the car to enthusiastically pick bunches of watercress growing in a ditch near the road. Dinner that night includes the watercress, served with garlic, but the girl refuses to eat. When her mother reminds her the meal is free, the girl withdraws further: “Free is hand-me-down clothes and roadside trash-heap furniture and now, dinner from a ditch.” 

Her mother responds by leaving the table to find a childhood photo and sharing, for the first time, the story of her own brother, who died as a boy during a famine in China. After hearing this story, the girl feels remorse for being ashamed of her family, a moment that Wang captures with care and subtlety. 

Wang’s writing is tender and detailed, describing the watercress as “delicate and slightly bitter, like Mom’s memories of home.” With raw honesty, the book’s first-person narration allows readers to see through the girl’s eyes. We experience both the sting of her shame and her newfound understanding alongside her. 

Caldecott Honor illustrator Jason Chin’s soft, expressive watercolors lean on sepia tones, an appropriate choice for a tale that serves as a recollection of memory. Along with depicting the self-conscious girl with a photorealistic eloquence, Chin incorporates occasional images of the mother’s memories of her life in China. The spread in which she shares her memories of the famine is especially haunting. On one page, the mother describes how they ate anything they could find, and her family listens from the dinner table with expressions of sadness; on the opposite page, her brother’s chair at the table is empty. 

Watercress is a delicate and deeply felt exploration of memory, trauma and family. 

A young girl from the Dominican Republic relates the uplifting story of how she and her mother made a new life in Brooklyn in Starting Over in Sunset Park.

“My first trip in an airplane was from the Dominican Republic to New York City,” the narrator begins. Though she is homesick, she’s also awestruck by the beauty of New York, where she and her mother move in with her aunt and cousins. Eventually, they are able to find their own apartment, which the girl is excited about, though she still spends time reflecting on the home she left behind. In a moving spread, she remembers time spent with her abuela. Authors José Pelaez and Lynn McGee write the girl’s grandmother’s advice to her in Spanish, then translate it in a parenthetical, a technique they use throughout the book.

The girl struggles at school, where her English skills lag behind other students’, but she finds unexpected common ground with her teacher, who emigrated from Poland as a child. From that deeply felt experience, along with what she learns from her upstairs neighbor and a new job involving lots of cats, the girl gains confidence and begins to settle into her new home: “This strange new place began to feel a little magical.”

The unnamed girl’s first-person narration, one of the book’s strengths, is consistently authentic; she is vulnerable but tough, and her experiences reflect those faced by many immigrants to the United States. Illustrator Bianca Diaz’s bright, eye-catching palette radiates warmth with sunny yellows, brilliant reds and pinks, verdant greens and appealing blues and purples. A story full of vitality and compassion, Starting Over in Sunset Park will speak to all readers but will resonate most strongly with anyone who has ever made a home in a new country.

In a small town, near a playground, inside an abandoned mailbox, under a tree, there lives an extremely shy bunny named Willow. She leads a quiet, creative life in her little metal home; it’s a comfort zone tucked away from boisterous children and errant soccer balls. Sometimes she allows the tippy-tops of her extra-long ears to poke out of the mailbox slot, engaging with the world just a little bit.

One day, a surprise breaks Willow’s quiet solitude when a small blue envelope floats down into her comfort zone. Inside is a note addressed to the moon. A little boy wants to surprise his mom on her birthday. Will the moon shine extra brightly at midnight as a special treat for her?

Willow is charmed and decides she must deliver the note—and quickly, since midnight’s coming soon and the moon is very far away. She gathers her nerve and embarks on an amazing and suspenseful adventure. There’s mountain climbing, tree scaling and hitching a ride on a bird, plus tumbles and frights, too. Will Willow make it to the moon in time?

The deft and appealing visual storytelling in Shy Willow will ensure that shy and gregarious readers alike understand that Willow’s action-packed journey isn’t easy for her, but with its struggles come rewards. Shyness and courage can coexist, and it’s OK to have your own way of relating to the world. After all, friendships can be forged in a library just as easily as on a playground.

Author-illustrator Cat Min’s sweet characters and luminous artwork make Shy Willow a memorable and moving read. Her pastel-hued illustrations, composed in pencil and watercolor with a digital finish, are a lovely mix of realistic and fantastical. A warm pink glow throughout underlines the warmth of the characters’ kindness, as well as the book’s hopeful nature and its quiet, supportive heart.

Sunday has been feeling overworked and underappreciated, so she walks off the job, leaving the remaining days of the week wondering how they’ll fill her shoes. The auditions to find her replacement quickly descend into hilarious chaos as the proposed successors grow more far-fetched; even “UnicornsWithFlashlightsForHornsDay” gets an audience. Monday through Saturday are run ragged from evaluating potential days full of sweets, dogs, hats and superheroes, while in the background, a group of frustrated cats continues their campaign for “Caturday.” How will the days of the week ever find the perfect seventh day?

Bestselling author Brad Meltzer’s eclectic text is peppered with clever asides and loads of playful language as it bounces between narrative and dialogue, delivered energetically via speech bubbles. Pop culture and historical references run the gamut from Shark Week to Elbridge Gerry (James Madison’s vice president, for whom the practice of gerrymandering is named), sure to earn a laugh from readers of every age.

Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat (The Adventures of Beekle) illustrates A New Day with all the energy and bustle of a zany animated movie. Cheerful and colorful, every page is eye-catching, entertaining and full of enticing details. Saturday rocks a beige cardigan that recalls Jeff Bridges’ iconic Big Lebowski character, but its pattern is formed by knitted letter z’s. Children gobble boxes labelled “CAN-D” and “SHOOGR.” The anthropomorphized days are instantly recognizable characters with the appearances and personalities we’d expect from them. Monday has a tie and holds a clipboard; Thursday has a laid-back, almost-end-of-the-week smirk; and Friday wears a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts and flip-flops.

While A New Day begins like a rough day at the office and unwinds like a sugar-high explosion, it never loses its sense of purpose and teamwork. An enormously fun read with a heaping side of silliness, A New Day doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s an earnest reminder that, with a little creativity and thoughtfulness, we can make each day a day worth celebrating.

Freckle-faced Frankie McGee loves tractors, but his obsession finally tips his mother over the edge, sending her into a humorous meltdown at the public library in All of the Factors of Why I Love Tractors. Kids will get a kick out of this hilarious role reversal, especially when Mom is shown perched upside down in a chair, with her head on the floor and feet in the air. As Mom pleads with Frankie to branch out with his reading choices, he mounts an entertaining defense in rhyming prose that’s guaranteed to grab the attention of young vehicular enthusiasts.

His arguments unfold in a series of full-page spreads in which Davina Bell’s text and Jenny Lovlie’s art fall together like seeds in a newly planted field, brimming with possibility. Tractors fill a cascade of countryside scenes that show male and female drivers busy with different tasks that readers will enjoy identifying. Lovlie’s art strikes a perfect balance between healthy doses of technical detail (for instance, comparing Massey Fergusons with John Deeres) and a cornucopia of kid-friendly curves and colors.

Mom’s urgent protests are comical; with a talk-to-the-hand gesture, she turns away from her son’s lecture. Their good-natured give-and-take ramps up the tension delightfully. When Mom reminds Frankie that he used to like trains, he quips, “How boring—I’m snoring just thinking of that.” Meanwhile, readers will be energized by every colorful page, whether it’s a town scene that shows the path Frankie and Mom take to the library or a spread brimming with all sorts of things that go, including a hot air balloon, a tugboat and a cement mixer. 

At its heart, All of the Factors of Why I Love Tractors is a rollicking love letter not just to tractors but also to libraries, where books are waiting for people with many different interests. The kind librarian, Miss Squid, tells Frankie’s mom to “Hush!” while reassuring Frankie, “Well you know yourself best. / When you want something different, just come and find me. / A kid who likes books is a nice thing to see.” 

My First Day is a captivating story that depicts one child’s journey to school.

“Today is the first day.” A young Vietnamese boy, his backpack resting snugly on his shoulders, heads out. Mama told him he’s finally big enough to do this alone. Paddling where “the great river, mother Mekong, tumbles into the endless sea,” the boy cuts a striking figure as he stands resolutely in his boat while tall, foam-crested waves in rich shades of green and cyan swell around him.

The book’s language is both plain-spoken (“I set out upon the waves and begin my adventure”) and evocative (“I paddle out into the floodwaters, past yesterdays and all the things I didn’t know”). Author-illustrators Phùng Nguyên Quang and Huỳnh Kim Liên draw seamless parallels between the boy’s travels and the first day of school that awaits him: “There is still a world to learn,” he says as he first leaves home. Later, he likens his journey to the “unfamiliar hallways of the forest” and refers to the “blackboard” of the river.

With resilience, the boy endures rough waters, rain, crocodiles and pythons—some real, some imaginary. These darker spreads, filled with menacing, beguiling shadows, eventually make way for exquisite, light-filled pages. Coral-hued rays of sunlight break through clouds, and the sky fills with brilliant colors and “a dance of storks and new worlds.” In one thrilling spread, Quang and Liên provide an underwater perspective: The boy floats on the surface as we look up at him alongside schools of fish who move gracefully through the water.

Fluid, energetic lines, compelling page turns and a forward momentum as the boy steadfastly paddles through the water make My First Day a particularly propulsive, cinematic story. Readers everywhere who know the thrill of the first day of school will delight to see other children arriving in their respective boats at the book’s close, though they may be sad to see the boy’s adventure end. The book’s back matter includes a note reminding readers that children go to school in many different ways and that some children are “even heroes on their journeys!