picture book recs (round 7)

Happy 5 years of intentionally reading picture books, to me!

With a 2-year gap since my last rec post! (lol/sob)

***

So, picking up where we last left off (post #6)...

I did power through the remaining 9 of 19 categories in Minh Lê‏'s "Best Picture Books of 2017" before the end of 2018 -- and decided I would not be repeating this exercise in 2019, since the ratio of "books I really liked" to "books on this list" was low. There were some I really liked, though:

• The Blue Hour written & illustrated by Isabelle Simler [Honorable Mention for Best Nature/Environment] the illustrations are so beautiful
• Flowers for Sarajevo written by John McCutcheon & illustrated by Kristy Caldwell [Honorable Mention for Most Powerful] I WEPT
• Super Manny Stands Up! written by Kelly DiPucchio& illustrated by Stephanie Graegin [Honorable Mention for Best Friendship/Kindness]
• Accident written & illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi [Honorable Mention for Best Design]

In post #5 I mentioned Betsy Bird's Caldecott and Newbery predictions -- which while rarely accurate, contained almost entirely books I hadn't previously encountered. I now follow her on GoodReads and consistently get recs from her but got a lot from her "31 Days, 31 Books" lists in December 2018. ... Which I didn't get very far in, because life happened (see also, the fact that it's now been 2 years[!!!] between rec lists), but:

December 1 – Board Books & Pop-Ups (Who knew I would STILL be reading board books after 3 years? I didn't love any of these, but below are ones I would varying degrees of recommend.)

• My First Book of Feminism (for Boys) written by Julie Merberg & illustrated by Michéle Brummer Everett
• Super Pooper and Whizz Kid: Potty Power! written & illustrated by Eunice Moyle & Sabrina Moyle
• My Art Book of Love written by Shana Gozansky [though I liked 2019's My Art Book of Sleep better]
• Before & After [National Geographic Kids Look & Learn] written by Ruth A. Musgrave [counting, nature/science]
• Contrary Dogs written & illustrated by élo
• Will Bear Share? written & illustrated by Hilary Leung

And because I took forever to finish this blogpost (during which time another nibling was born), I have since read some of 2019's Great Board Books and quite liked:

• Pride Colors written by Robin Stevenson
• Lejos / Far written by Juan Felipe Herrera & illustrated by Blanca Gomez Stevenson [second tier]

**

I read a lot of picturebooks about consent -- most of which I was pretty meh on, but I did really like:

• C is for Consent written by Eleanor Morrison & illustrated by Faye Orlove [board book]

**

I read some great books on gender:

• It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity written by Theresa Thorn & illustrated by Noah Grigni
• When Aidan Became a Brother written by Kyle Lukoff & illustrated by Kaylani Juanita (Aidan is a trans boy, and he wants to make sure everything is perfect for his new sibling-to-be -- MY HEART!)
• Stacey's Not a Girl written by Colt Keo-Meier & illustrated by Jesse Yang (trans-masculine kid who may or may not be non-binary, and not-knowing is OKAY!)

Also on the subject of gender, I don't love Maya Gonzalez' work, but They, She, He: Easy as ABC isn't too bad (the purple dancing one, as opposed to the green narrative-less one).

I got the 2019: Discovery! set of Flamingo Rampant books and particularly liked:

• Bridge of Flowers written by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & illustrated by Syrus Marcus Ware -- magic and science, and healing, and...
• It's a Wild World written by S. Bear Bergman & illustrated by kd diamond -- queer animals!
• The Great Space Adventure written by Ryka Aoki & illustrated by Cai Steele -- a kid who contains multitudes goes on a fantastic journey

Feeling very out of it this fall (I had heard of barely any of the GoodReads Best Picture Books Nominees this year), I did some digging for queer kidlit that came out this year and pulled a bunch of books from a Publishers Weekly "Reading with Pride: LGBTQ Books 2020." I didn't love any of the books I read off that list (and could we NOT include a picturebook biography of Ellen? on account of she treats her staff terribly, thinks "niceness" means palling around with politicians who actively worked against her community, etc.), but it did prompt me to read some other queer books that had been on my TBR list.

Which got me one solid Pride book:

• This Day in June written by Gayle E. Pittman & illustrated by Kristyna Litten [published in 2014]

**

Some excellent books for Black kids:

• Sulwe written by Lupita Nyong'o & illustrated by Vashti Harrison
• M Is for Melanin: A Celebration of the Black Child written & illustrated by Tiffany Rose

**

Deciding on picturebooks for M's 4th birthday amidst novel coronavirus and a resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter, I was aware how few picturebooks I had in my recs with East Asian representation. Like, I'd done an okay job of books with African-American protagonists (though it still didn't feel great), but amidst the anti-Chinese backlash, it felt really important to expose M to positive East Asian representation.

In my Internet searching, I learned that there's an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. 15 years of this award, and I had previously read 3 picture book titles on it, all somewhat recent (A Different Pond and The Nian Monster from 2017-2018, and Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music from 2015-2016). So once ILL was a thing again (albeit too late for this birthday), I ILLed the picture book winners/honorable mentions I could get a hold of and hadn't already read.

I'm not sure I loved any of them, but I really appreciated the experience of reading them all in a fairly brief period of time. It made such a variety of representation feel so normal -- contemporary as well as historic/folkloric representation of East Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islanders (Korean, Thai, Chinese, native Hawaiian, Japanese, Indian, Filipine, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Pakistani), in Asia and in the Americas.

While I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to recommend these particular books individually, if these 26 books were the only books you read to your [non-Asian] kid over the course of a few weeks, it could really help shift/expand their sense of what "normal" is.

I did really love this East Asian representation book, though:

• Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando written by Andrea Wang & illustrated by Kana Urbanowicz [male Japanese inventor]

**

In trying to be more intersectional, I finally started intentionally looking for good disability-representation books and prioritized ones with Asian protagonists. I didn't love any of the ones I found, but I did read a few solid ones about white folks:

• We'll Paint the Octopus Red written by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen & illustrated by Pam Devito [child protagonist's baby sibling has Down Syndrome]
• All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything written by Annette Bay Pimentel & illustrated by Nabi H. Ali [a biography of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, a disability activist who has cerebral palsy, focusing on her participation in the Capitol Crawl at the age of 8]
• Why Johnny Doesn't Flap: NT is OK! written by Clay Morton and Gail Morton & illustrated by Alex Merry [autism -- parody, but also not]

**

Another picturebook I loved:

• Vote for Our Future! written by Margaret McNamara & illustrated by Micah Player -- such a good!

***

Reminder to please purchase your books from independent bookstores -- see, e.g., this list of Black Owned Bookstores in the United States. Most will ship to you. And if there are books you can't find at your preferred indie bookstore (though most will special-order for you), you can also shop on BookShop.org -- which has an affiliate program supporting independent bookstores (I first learned about it when my local indie was closed due to pandemic).

***

I've maybe read 946 picturebooks in 5 years?

I exported my library; sorted by Exclusive Shelf to cut down to just "read"; then sorted by Date Read to cut everything before December 23, 2015 (though this barely changed the count, since I rarely read picturebooks an adult before Project Radical Aunt; it's also still weirdly blanking the Date Read on a lot of books, so I left those cells in, since I know a lot of them are picturebooks I've read since I started this project); and then ran a COUNTIF on the Bookshelves column:

=COUNTIF(Q2:Q1494,"*picturebooks*")

Transformative Justice [Super Saturday, October 2020]

Today's Super Saturday "Creating Beloved Community" session with Unity Circles and Families for Justice as Healing was So Good.

The first 3 minutes of this "What Is Transformative Justice?" video are amazing (though it's worth watching the full ~10 minutes).

adrienne maree brown:

• talks about how we've been socialized into "punitive justice"...
• names "restorative justice" as a first step in the right direction: "Harm has happened. How do we restore ourselves back to that relationship that existed before the harm happened?"
• but points out that it doesn't necessarily go far enough, "because if the original conditions were unjust, then returning to those original conditions is not actually justice"...
• says transformative justice goes down to the root system and asks what do we need to do so that this harm is no longer possible?
• notes that the state is so committed to punitive justice that it's not going to be able to help with transformative justice, so the state is not where we should turn for this...

Mia Mingus' bare bones definition of transformative justice is: "a way of responding to violence and harm without causing more violence and harm."

Also, around minute 7, I really appreciate Ann Russo naming cultivating a culture of accountability, how starting that around small things is really preventative of large harms.

Mia Mingus then builds on that, emphasizing skill-building around:

• good communication,
• apologizing well,
• having generative conflict with the people in our everyday lives,
• teaching children about consent and accountability,
• etc.

Mingus notes that with transformative justice, people often rush to the biggest crises and biggest forms of violence -- but that building foundational everyday things is the sustainable work that ripples out and has a larger impact.

Martina Kartman defines transformative justice as: how we prevent violence, how we intervene in violence, and then how we support each other in the aftermath of violence.

Prya Rai lifts up that so much of this work has been done by generations of people who could never rely on people outside of their communities, could never rely on the state (immigrants, queer people of color, disabled people, sex workers, etc.).

***

Also on the subject of transformative justice:

“People think of transformative justice as a lighter and easier way of accountability,” she [Camila Pelsinger, Brown University ’20] adds. “But it’s hard work. It takes months, and lots of vulnerable meetings. It’s seeing the worst things you’ve ever done and looking at them. And you have to reflect without denying it.” She has seen real change in people she works with: “A lot of people didn’t even realize how much harm they had caused, and also how deeply embedded harmful ideas about sex and consent were.”

-"Justice, in Community: A non-punitive approach", Brown Alumni Magazine

***

The Brown article above mentions "pods." More info about that idea (which originated with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective [BATJC] in 2014) here.

In this afternoon's Super Saturday workshop, 2 people roleplayed inviting someone into your immediate circle of support pods, and one of them suggested using a specific emoji to indicate "I need this to be a support conversation right now" and/or having specific hours that you both agree you can call on this person.

I loved this emphasis on being thoughtful strategizing in advance about how you would call on this support, and also in being really thoughtful and honest about what your capacity is to offer support.

As someone noted in chat:

Pod mapping is strategic
and thoughtful
and a process