I am glad to say that this is a diverse selection, ten books by authors from all over the world.
Duck Duck Taco Truck by Laura Lavoie (Author) Teresa Martinez (Illustrator)
This is a fun book with clever rhymes and illustrations.
“Duck. Duck. Taco truck. Working hard to make a buck.”
The friendly ducks have been working hard to sell tacos on the beach, but soon they will find themselves dwarfed by a goose that sells hamburgers!
Soon the food truck war is on: ducks vs. geese. The battle is fun to watch, and the twist is how Goose will become overwhelmed when trying to encroach on the existing market of hungry beach dwellers.
Could he use some extra wings to help out? It is the perfect summer tale that will leave your kids “hungry” for more.
Duck Duck Taco Truck is on sale since June 11, 2024
Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers
Pages: 32 / Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9780593644638
Up next, this is a special book by my favorite author Mo Willems:
Are You Small? by Mo Willems (Author)
This book was not what I had in mind. I thought it would be about sizes, but never thought it would take us into the direction of the infinite universe.
Are YOU small?
Well… compared to what? A cookie crumb? A water molecule? A speck of sand? A single quark??
I somehow missed the first one: Are You Big?, but this book offers early concepts, expressive art, and real-world science! It may seem overly difficult but reminded me of another Mo book my kids loved: Welcome.
Are You Small? is on sale since June 04, 2024
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Pages: 32 / Hardcover
ISBN: 9781454951452
Up next, it was time we added more food to our alphabet books:
Artichoke to Zucchini: An Alphabet of Delicious Things from Around the World by Alice Oehr (Author)
Alphabet books featuring food items are always welcome. My battered copy of Lois Elhert Eating the Alphabet is a good example.
America has gotten better at food diversity, we now know and want to try all kinds of different things, so, aside the Broccolis and the Beans we can now see Dumplings and Cassava, Apple pies and Zepotles, and many edible nice things in between, from the Asian Pacific, Latino and African American community.
Published by Scribble Us
Hardcover | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9781957363691
The next title is about the future:
Future by María José Ferrada (Author) Mariana Alcántara (Illustrator) Kit Maude (Translator)
This is the second book that Tapioca Stories is releasing by the Award winning Chilean poet Maria José Ferrada. And it hallmarks something we Latin American authors have been dreaming about, which is a simultaneous release both in English and in Spanish for the American market.
It is by no means an easy book, but a challenging one, in a good way: Have you ever pondered the mysteries of the future? The future can be a wonderful place, but it is up to us to envision it.
Future is a book filled with poetry, big illustrations and big questions (much like Are You Small?), there are a few robots and rocket ships, but all in all it is an abstract book with silvery pages and abstract imagery. Who said that illustrated books had to be easy?
Future is on sale since May 14, 2024
Publisher: Tapioca Stories
Hardcover | Pages: 40
ISBN: 9798988749905
This is another great translation coming your way:
Loose Threads: A Picture Book by Isol (Author) Lawrence Schimel (Translator)
Isol is a great Argentinian illustrator, a very well-known and beloved artist who is constantly challenging herself and her readers. When the Palestinian Society approached her, they invited her to use a Palestinian shawl for her next book.
She set to work, and, without uttering a single word about conflict, she manages to make a wondrous invitation to think about life’s different sides.
Young Leilah lives in an idyllic village, on top of the tapestry as you would say, where everything is neat an orderly, as it should be. However, there is an upside down called the Other Side—messy, wild and weird, what you see when you flip a tapestry and watch the loose threads behind. Leilah often visits this place and its inhabitants in her dreams.
There are holes in the tapestry that connect both worlds, and Leilah is convinced her lost things are falling down there. So, she decides to close the gaps, using needle and thread.
But closing gates doesn’t mean stuff stops happening, or that by shutting them out they will just disappear… hidden things tend to overspill and seep through.
But, is this a bad thing?
Loose Threads: A Picture Book is on sale since June 25, 2024
Publisher: Enchanted Lion
Pages: 76/ Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9781592703920
And here comes the Desert and its song:
Desert Song by Laekan Zea Kemp (Author) Beatriz Gutiérrez Hernández (Illustrator)
Another book that is simultaneously published in Spanish, Desert Song records and registers a song that starts slow and just grows and grows, until it encompasses the whole world.
Desert Song starts with the soft drumming of an uncle sitting in a porch, and gets all the family rolling with it, each with its unique talent, until the music seeps out from the porch and calls out to the desert, to the past that the words bring to life and the roots that are never too far behind.
It is a dynamic portrait of music and tradition, by the Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea and the beautiful imagery of Mexican artist Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez.
Desert Song is on sale since June 04, 2024.
Publisher: Neal Porter Books
Pages: 40 / Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9780823453924
Now we step up our reading and start with packed information!
Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall by Lynn Brunelle (Author) Jason Chin (Illustrator)
This book took me by surprise. I thought it was going to be about the life of the whale, how it goes around, how it reproduces, etc., and did not expect the book have the whale die abruptly by page 5 and THEN start the story, (although it was right there in the title).
First its body would swell belly-up like the world’s most giant dead goldfish (and I could anticipate the “that’s gross” and squeals of kids when reading it to them) and then a process known as whale fall will begin.
All kinds of things will feed upon it, and it will slowly decompose, offering food and shelter at each stage to a vast diversity of organisms, over the course of a century and beyond.
It is a bit macabre and reminded me of thousands of Lovecraft imagery, to tell you the truth, but if you can withstand it, it is interesting and has a lot of data about whales, whale falls and ecosystems.
Written by Lynn Brunelle (a Bill Nye the Science Guy writer) and illustrated by Jason Chin, this is a book about death as part of the nature cycle, and I recommend you to test read it first to see if it fits with your audience…
Life After Whale is on sale since June 04, 2024.
Publisher: Neal Porter Books
Pages: 48 / Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9780823452286
The next book is the last picture book and is by one of my favorite Brazilian authors.
Marcelo, Martello, Marshmallow by Ruth Rocha (Author) Ana Matsusaki (Illustrator) Tal Goldfajn (Translator)
This story was originally published in Brazil in 1976 and titled Marcelo, Martelo, Marmelo, written by the great children’s book author Ruth Rocha.
The new illustrations and fun plays on English words are all the great work of Ana Matsusaki and Tal Goldfan, because the original work is all about playing with the language.
Marcelo is curious, inventive and has a lot of questions, especially about words and their meanings.
He wants to know why things are called as they are called, and feels that most answers his parents strive to give him are nonsensical, so he decides to come up with his own name for things, his own vocabulary.
This new, weird form of communication haunts the parents (in a world where divergent was not even a word yet, funnily enough) and confusion really unfolds when an accident happens and Marcelo fails to communicate with them on time.
However, loves lead the path towards understanding, and the family finally got together and understood each other, only for Marcelo’s daughter to start it all over again whe he bceoms a dad in his turn.
This is a fun reflection on the meaning of words and of love and understanding.
Marcelo, Martello, Marshmallow is on sale since June 11, 2024.
Publisher: Tapioca Stories
Pages: 40 / Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9781734783995
The next one is a graphic novel:
The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1 by Pei-Yun Yu (Author) Jian-Xin Zhou (Illustrator) Lin King (Translator)
There are two books on this graphic story, and they follow the life of Tsai Kun-lin, a boy in 1930s Taiwan, who is living under Japanese occupation.
Taiwan was, at first, under Japanese rule, and then under the Chinese rule. It is not an easy story to tell, and by following this individual story we get a nuanced explanation of the conflict.
The kid grows into a boy and then falls into the decade known as the White Terror.
In the 1950s, Tsai Kun-lin is in his second year at Taichung First Senior High School, when he is arrested for joining a book club and then is deported, deprived of his civil rights, and sent to Green Island for “reformation.”
Jonathan Liu has dedicated an entire column to both books if you want to see his point of view. As a son of Chinese immigrants, I feel that his take is much more profound and recommend for you to read it.
The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1 is on sale since November 2023.
Publisher: Levine Querido
Pages: 352 / Paperback
EAN/UPC: 9781646142804
Finally, this is an interesting teen novel:
Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer (Author)
This is the first novel of the author of Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask and it delves deeply into the actions and traditions of the Ojibwe tribe.
It starts on Northeast Minneapolis, where almost 15-year-old Ezra Cloud is immersed in a cloud of grief and rage, having lost his mother to cancer recently. He misses his grandparents and wishes to become a man of the rez, at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation.
He is in such a fit of rage, trying always to control himself, that he punches trough a locker instead of punching the local bully, Matt Schroeder, breaking his arm in the process.
That same night, he has a wild and vivid, violent dream, wakes up feeling cheerful, only to learn that Matt’s house has burned down, (maybe because there was an accident at the secret meth lab his dad had in the basement), his elders are dead and Matt is shocked and blaming Ezra.
Ezra becomes a prime suspect, and fearing that he won’t get a fair deal, his father sends him up to the rez, to hunt moose, to relive the lives of his ancestors and to heal.
Running traplines with his grandfather in a remote part of Canada, Ezra starts to heal all of his wounds, both spiritual and physical, and gets to deal a bit with his frustration and sadness. The Schroeder’s are hunting for him though, feeling that he is guilty, and that he has to pay.
There are few females in this story, and, although they do pass the Betchdel test, the do so by a hair. As I read it, it struck me on how male it was (maybe a bit macho even) with this kid peeing to mark his snares against the wolves and the grandpa and him walking around in what feels like an initiation to him.
Grandfather is smart, strong and loving, and very much approves of the man his grandson will become. They have a bad opinion of the White population, one that is sustained by all the things they’ve experienced with them.
I understand: here the Aymara have those distinct values as well, but having read so many novels about powerful women, like Akata Witch, it brought me back to a time where men had adventures in the snow and girls got stuck at home. I am just glad that that time is over.
Where Wolves Don’t Die is on sale since June 18, 2024.
Publisher: Levine Querido
Pages: 320/ Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9781646143818
