In Which Noodle Discovers Art

Twig Friends – written by Andrew McDonald, illustrated by Ben Wood
Bright Light (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing), 2024

Twig Friends Go Wild – written by Andrew McDonald, illustrated by Ben Wood
Bright Light (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing), 2025

I’ve already written about the two other volumes in the Twig Friends graphic novel series. The first book by Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood introduced the woody characters, Ziggy Twig, Noodle Twig, Red Twig, and the rounder and more pessimistic Stump, in their habitat, and here I review that book and a fourth book in the series  In Twig Friends, Red Twig states his sense of superiority because of his unusual red color, but his conviction is really only skin, or bark, deep.  When Red’s attempt to surprise Ziggy results in the near destruction of Ziggy’s snail zoo Red experiments with other surprises. He learns that surprises are just generally not appreciated, at least not when they involve sneaking, flinging, or otherwise interrupting important plans. However, the natural beauty of leaves turning color, or a generous gift of additional snails, will be welcome.

The theme of color continues when Noodle’s friends collaborate in helping her to create works of art. They brainstorm ideas for subjects, and Stump offers advice on finding natural pigments: green beans, red berries, yellow leaves. He even becomes a kind of stamp pad by dipping his round foundation in the paints and leaving an image on the ground. The pictures in this chapter have bright shades, reflecting the characters’ joy in learning that “there are no rules with ART. You can do whatever you want!” 

The title of Twig Friends Go Wild may seem redundant. After all, the first book had affirmed that “All twigs are wild,” a fact affirmed by every one of their adventures. Noodle’s absorption in art is an inspiration to Red, who, nevertheless, discovers that he needs to find his “OWN thing,” and that this journey involves frenetic flings between different potential interests. Knitting, boating, and board games, all seem like possibilities. A collision with Stump brings on the inevitable bout of Stump sadness, but Red is thrilled to learn that he has magical powers that can transform his friend’s mood.  Even if his superpowers turn out to be intermittent, his friend’s acceptance turns out to be more important than magic.  Red’s hyperkinetic need to fling himself into flight, like Stump’s sadness and Noodle’s creativity, are what make each one of them unique.

Remarkable Quest

The Magic Library of Waterfall Way – by Julie Abe
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026

Imagine that you’re a child whose fate will be determined by your membership in one of the following categories: Extraordinarily Remarkable, Quite Remarkable, Slightly Remarkable, or Unremarkable. Of course, those harsh judgments often seem to be part of any childhood. In Julie Abe’s middle-grade novel, Lyra Hunt is an orphan on a quest. In order to avoid the dreaded fate of her status, she will need to find a guild that will accept her. As in many of the classical works of children’s literature that seem to have inspired the author, Lyra’s sensitive and bookish nature is paired with courage. With the help of mentors and friends, she will determine her fate.

Guild matchers are responsible for placing everyone in the Alterran Empire in their appropriate niche. With each child’s status unalterably decided by the age of one year, at a Prophecy Reveal event, there seems to be no escape from this rigid practice. Not surprisingly, high-status people seem to perpetuate their own privilege, as the Slightly Remarkable but utterly inept boy who is accepted into the Guild of Warriors when his parents make a donation. Lyra has no such option available. Her parents had been members of the now defunct Guild of Paperweights; even the lowly Guild of Pinecone Collectors rejects her.

This dismal scenario is rendered even more difficult by the constant propaganda emanating from the Guild of the Crown News, an official organ of the regime. Some chapter titles are derived from its lies, while others are countered by the truth. “Books must be protected at all costs. And I must protect those who will read them, too,” is The Chronicles of Lyra Hunt. Books matter, and so does having the courage to speak out and defy authority.

Sensory descriptions of the idyllic magical village where Lyra finds refuge enhance the narrative. (“From the bakery across the street, a whiff of freshly baked baguettes washed over us.”). Judicial use of magical elements also lends a cinematic touch, with inanimate objects assuming lifelike powers: “’The faucet’s upset. My apologies.’ When it noticed me, the water began to stream ominously.” Brief, but powerful, statements reinforce the source of Lyra’s strength, as when the generous and wise Gemini, Master of the Guild of Scholars, explains that books have been a key to her survival, especially in a world where “most prefer the, well, simplicity of the Guild of the Crown’s newspaper and books.”

By the end of the novel, Lyra and those who support her quest have subverted categories and gone some distance towards replacing acceptance with skepticism, both about official lies, and the sense of helplessness those lies are meant to engender.

Perishable, but Lasting

My Best Friend Is a Butternut Squash – written by Heather Smith, illustrated by Kass Reich
Tundra Books, 2026

It’s hard to see how the title of Heather Smith and Kass Reich’s new picture book could not be intriguing.  Is it literal, or a metaphor?  Children sometimes develop attachments to unusual toys, or, in psychological parlance, “transitional objects.”  In My Best Friend is a Butternut Squash, a boy named Alex adopts the vegetable of the title, and grants it personhood with crayons and imagination. Soon he is taking it out for walks in a stroller and identifying him, when asked, as a two-month-old baby.

Like a purely imaginary friend, the butternut squash can be a different age on different days. One day Alex cradles it in his arms; the next day they are twins, dressing alike and anticipating one another’s thoughts and words. Alex’s mom is really good-natured, even bestowing a kiss on this beloved companion. There is no limit to the possibilities for dramatic entertainment, including a “spectacular sword fight” that is completely harmless. Reich’s gouache and colored pencil drawings capture a child’s point of view, but they are also sophisticated, matching the expression on Alex’s face with that of his endlessly flexible friend, who can be a fairy, a pirate, or even a doctor. The doctor scenario has a bit of heartbreak.  Like all children, Alex experiences anxiety, answering the squash-doctor’s question about his symptoms with the troubling answer, “It’s my heart…Sometimes I think it’s shrinking.”  The squash wisely advises Alex not to worry, reassuring him that he has “a very big heart,” a quality the reader has already suspected about this sensitive boy.

The butternut squash has a backstory. His original home was Alex’s grandfather’s garden.  Maybe uprooting him has created problems that Alex had not suspected, like being excluded from games in the schoolyard. Other children don’t necessarily share Alex’s “big heart,” in accepting the inevitable square peg who won’t fit the round hole, especially if he is an item of produce in a human world.  When Alex meets Trudy, he learns that her special object is an old alarm clock, with the disturbingly personified accident of broken hands.  Then the other shoe drops, with Alex admitting that the butternut squash’s eventual fate is to be compost.  Uh oh.

Just when adults reading this charmingly idiosyncratic book with children might become concerned, the kids work it out.  Alex and Trudy find a solution to the transient nature of squashes, clocks, and maybe everything.  They defy convention and create their own universe of play, where art supplies and affection are more important than fitting in. 

Creation and Compassion

The Children of the Sun – written by Micaela Chirif, illustrated by Juan Palomino, translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2026

Based on a traditional creation story of the Inca civilization, The Children of the Sun incorporates evocative language to tell children (and adults) about the origins of this Andean culture.  Micaela Chirif’s text, in a lucid translation by Lawrence Schimel, approaches the reader with a sense of wonder.  “At first, when the world was new, without even a scratch on it, people didn’t know how to get dressed, comb their hair, or greet one another with a ‘good morning.’” Juan Palomino’s illustrations employ both a wide and narrow focus, showing the grandeur of the environment and the smaller-scale images of newly created humans.  What begins with a moody deity ends with scenes of cooperation and gratitude.

Instead of a somber tone, potentially fitting for a record of how the world came to be, Chirif inflects the traditional legend with accessible details. “And, as is so often the case with gods,” the author writes knowingly about Inti the sun god, “there were days when he behaved ruthlessly.” When Inti’s reflection in Lake Titicaca creates a fire in the water, a man and woman emerge. (image) They are Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, siblings who set forth and take in the world. At first pictured as tiny figures within a circle of wavy lines both beneath and above the water’s surface, they are soon observing such miracles as “the blue of the sky, the smell of the grass…guinea pigs, viscachas, foxes, pumas, vicuñas, condors…”

Inti assigns them the foundation of a city, but the path to realizing this goal is confusing. “The earth is as round as a watermelon and, compared to it, humans are much smaller than ants.” An Edenic peacefulness of gathering food and lighting fires eventually confronts obstacles This transition is reflected in the difference between carefully composed groups set against a blue and white background of angled spaces, to a darker and depiction of high mountains, with one orange sun in the distance. When settlements of people who had been alerted to the approach of Inti’s offspring finally see them, these humans are filled with to new emotion of compassion. The black and white drawings of people in the foreground of one page are placed directly under a curving orange line leading to the small fire in the midst of their gathering.

The following two pages are an expanding whirl of people linked together, with intermittent small touches of red, as they engage in various actions.  They need a home, as much as Mánco Capac and Mama Ocllo need to build their city.  Cusco is founded as the capital of the Incas soon developing from an idea into a concrete reality. Houses, crops, and purposeful tasks become the concrete result of human involvement with gods, generated by a sense of unity.

An informative afterword and glossary of terms are a helpful guide to the story.

Cinematic Love Story

Mint to Be – by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc
Scholastic, 2025

I don’t want to give up away any keep developments in my review of this wonderful young adult, or adult, novel.  Mint To Be is the second in a series from Katie Cicatelli-Kuc, set in Briar Glen, a New England Village whose competing coffee shops debuted in Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice. It has a Scratch and Sniff sticker on the cover, and it also features a romance potentially fraught with conflict.  If readers find that the novel evokes a holiday movie, no brand mentioned, they may feel validated when the heroine’s mom, after comparing a new romance to a five-month-old baby, admits that her optimism may be partly rooted in watching such staples: “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been watching too many holiday movies. But I’ve always thought that you and Aidan would end up together some day. It’s a parent thing.”

Aidan is Aiden Cooper-Gallo. He and Emma Sherman have been friends forever, literally, since their early childhood.  Neither character is a cloying stereotype. Aidan has some difficulties with anxiety, but is never diagnosed with a specific, reductive, condition. Emma is accomplished and ambitious. It’s clear that she intuitively understands Aidan’s vulnerabilities and is always there to help him. She is also obsessed with New York City.  Her acceptance as a transfer student to a private high school there, panics Aidan. But he is not the kind of friend, regardless of his intense feelings, to undermine Emma’s dreams. Chapters alternative between Emma and Aidan’s voices, and flashbacks, both recent and longer ago, build consistent characters.

Emma is somewhat reluctant to decode her own feelings, which makes her easy prey, or, to use a much less judgmental term, vulnerable, to finding her first boyfriend at Easton Academy. His name is Sam, and he privileged and arrogant. No, he’s not a monster.  He even seems to be sincerely attached to Emma, and makes some effort to understand her attachment to the small town which is her home. He doesn’t relate to dogs, unlike Emma and Aidan. Aidan’s dog, Mackerel, is mildly personified, not enough to be silly, but he is a character in the novel. 

Going back to Emma’s mom, her “parent thing” is wholly positive. None of the adults, or almost adults, close to Emma, including her parents, older sister Kerry, and Jo of the eponymous Cup o’ Jo café, try to force decisions on her. The same is true for Aidan, whose grandparents are also supportive and kind, although Grandma has a welcome, acerbic touch:  “Like I said, I’ve seen his type a million times.” Both Emma and Aidan need to reach their own conclusions.

Even when Sam reveals his true colors, one of which is a definite shade of controlling, there is nothing exaggerated about either his actions or Emma’s response.  Even if everyone in Mint to Be follows a certain course, it is not, regardless of the title, completely predetermined.

Jewish American Readers Are Still Here

It is halfway through May. I am posting a follow-up to my recent comments on Jewish American Heritage Month, and Asian American Heritage Month, at School Library Journal.  Please find that post here, which includes links to previous attempts to understand that publication’s policy about celebrating both communities in May.

After my recent post, I did contact the editors of SLJ, and their parent company, Media Source Inc., about their April features on the upcoming month of May, when Asian American Heritage Month is observed.  My previous post lists all the articles. In addition, I found this one from Edith Campbell’s SLJ blog in May, specifically referring to the history of Asian American Heritage Month.

I also noted that Library Journal, but not School Library Journal, did acknowledge Jewish American Heritage Month with one list.

They also posted about Asian American Heritage Month with book recommendations:

Apparently, the journal dedicated specifically to books for children and young adults has a different policy regarding Jewish American-themed books, which may be of interest, and certainly importance, to all readers.  The purpose of paying specific attention to a particular group’s heritage is not only to highlight resources for the use of that group, but to educate everyone about the group’s heritage.  We all benefit from this show of intellectual curiosity, literacy, and a truthful approach to the broad spectrum of American culture.

To use an outdated expression based on antique technology, I feel regret at sounding like a broken record.  Nevertheless, I need to reiterate the most important component of my distress. If SLJ were just determined to avoid the volatile issue of Israel and Palestine, they could focus exclusively on Jewish American-themed books not rooted in that part of the Jewish experience. In fact, these books compose the majority of Jewish-themed children’s and young adult books! The only explanation, as I have written before, is an intrinsic prejudice against Jewish Americans, as part of the Jewish people. Apparently, SLJ is uncomfortable with our presence within the wonderful array of American children’s books reflecting our country’s diversity.

Dad, Grandma, and Fixing Cars

Sarabeth’s Garage – written by Melanie Florence, illustrated by Nadia Alam
Tundra Books, 2026

Books about grandparents and grandchildren fill a special role.  Children’s books that emphasize the right for girls to push boundaries and find their place in the world, without regard to restrictive gender norms, are also promising. Of course, literary and artistic excellence are never superseded by ideology. In Melanie Florence and Nadia Alam’s picture book, Sarabeth’s Garage, a lively text and expressive pictures show a believable child pushing back against the expectations of her beloved grandmother.  By the end of the story, love and loyalty strengthen their relationship.

There are picture books that create an entire world peopled by the main characters as well as secondary ones, and all the essential items that make them seem real. This is one of those books.  Sarabeth’s family is bicultural; her father and grandmother are of South Asian ancestry.  Their background is not directly addressed, but it is implicit in some of the values that her grandmother holds, although it is never claimed that her ideas are exclusive attributable to her age or ethnicity. (“In my day, little girls played with dolls, not cars and trucks.”) This is not one of those books. It’s a book about individuals and context, woven together.

The book opens with an essential fact: “Sarabeth loved cars.” The richness of Alam’s illustrations draws the reader’s attention to so many elements. Sarabeth’s bright red apron has a brush and pencil sitting in its pockets. She is wearing beaded bracelets, and has a band aid on her arms. Gripping a pliers, Sarabeth works on a contraption, maybe a design for a vehicle. All the objects on her worktable are carefully composed against their white background. A tape measure is partly extended. Cookies on a plate have bites taken out of them; pencils and tools seem to be pointing towards one another. The scene captures the process of creation.

Metaphors are part of Sarabeth’s imagination, as in a scene where she compares cars and their engines to animals in motion. But one person, ironically, slowing her down, is the family matriarch, Grandma. Sarabeth’s parents are fully supportive of her dreams. Her mother, curled up on the sofa with a book, one hand on her beautifully pregnant belly, is proud of her daughter’s skills. Sarabeth’s father, a mechanic, is her role model.  They even wear matching blue coveralls while working in his shop. Grandma is important to Sarabeth; she cannot simply ignore the older woman’s stern statements.  The assumption that these prejudices are based on a lack of understanding is reasonable, but Grandma believes that Sarabeth is the one who does not understand.

The two-page spread of their complete family shows both togetherness and independence.  Dad and Grandma sit close together. Mom, curled up on the sofa with a book, one hand on her beautifully pregnant belly, is absorbed in her reading.  Sarabeth’s brother is completing his math homework, and she herself is constructing a cardboard mock-up of an invention.  Their dog is asleep at her side, and other accessories; a cup of tea, a set of paints; reflect the fact that conflict over Sarabeth’s passion for cars exists alongside other aspects of their home life. A poignant picture of Sarabeth trying to scrub the industrial dirt off herself indicates that she is trying to accommodate herself, to some degree, to her grandmother’s expectations. Pink and blue bubbles float above the tiles. She is standing on tiptoe, wearing one white sock. But her face is still marked by the grease spots of her future profession.

One difference between this book and some others about grandchildren and grandparents is its honesty about friction.  A family dinner indicates visually that generational differences are not easily bridged. (image) A vase of flowers sits in the center of the table, but Sarabeth and her grandmother are both frowning intently.  Mom tries to diffuse the situation by minimizing the importance of “a little grease stain.” But Grandma is not inflexible. When a problem with her car, which she avidly still drives, leads her to need help, she knows where to find it. This outcome is not improbable.  Grandma’s apparent stubbornness is part of her strength. When Sarabeth gently reminds her that “in my day, girls can do anything they want, Grandma,” there is no sense of disrespect, or even triumph. Her car is up and running again, “and she revved the engine softly to make it purr like a kitten.”  Now the two of them share a metaphor.

A Deal Not Made in Heaven

Rumpelstiltskin – retold by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Carson Ellis
Orchard Books (Scholastic), 2026

Folklorists and authors, from the Brothers Grimm to Jane Yolen, have been drawn to the story of Rumpelstiltskin, the calculating little man who tries to deprive a woman of her child.  Artists, from the classic illustrators Arthur Rackham and Walter Crane, to Paul Zelinksky and Paul Galdone,  have depicted its characters in strikingly different styles. Now, Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis have created their own response to this haunting tale.

As many fairy tales do, this one begins with a poor girl and her struggling father. Older readers familiar with the genre may anticipate a change in social and economic class, but younger ones may not.  This girl is highly capable, “climbing trees and whittling sticks and catching tadpoles with her bare hands.” Ellis shows the young craftswoman intent on her work, with her father a distant figure in the background.  He is a miller, but, although that is his professions, Barnett gives him a distinct, and irritating, personality. He has a “big mouth” and he brags. Life cannot be easy for his daughter.

The miller is either so socially inept or so bold, that he strikes up a conversation with the king, who is passing through town. This king is no more humble than his working class subject; Barnett reports that he is “chewed on a pheasant wing,” and “took a sip from a chalice,” as he casually strikes a deal with the miller to, possible, marry the laborer’s daughter.  The king is a hard man to impress. Neither beauty nor personality strike him as unusual. But when the miller claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold, the king is sold.

Soon the girl is living in a castle, where she learns that there are two possibilities for her future in this nightmarish scenario of the patriarchy. She will either produce the gold or be killed.  Before long, Rumpelstiltskin shows up, although she knows him only as “the little man.” Psychologically, he isn’t diminutive, but, rather, truncated.  Taunting her with his amazing ability to actually turn the straw into gold, he demands successively greater payment for saving her life. Eventually, his price is her first-born child.

As people will do, the girl, now a queen, puts this terrible eventuality out of her mind. She has a little boy, and her love for him is so absorbing that she cannot imagine that her tormentor will force her to make good on her desperate promise.  Among other elements, Rumpelstiltskin is a story about the power of language.  The man returns, and tells the queen that she has three days to guess his name.  Of course, he assumes that she will never be able to come up with his odd moniker, and the three days allow him to indulge his cruelty. Barnett and Ellis weave words and text together in a cascade of colorful guesses. “Cuthbert, Argyle, Ludvig, and Boniface,” are all possibilities, rolled out on Ellis’s elegant scroll of cursive words.  The list grows to three pages, placed against white space for maximum effect. “Nidnod, Sheepshanks, and Lancelong” are all rejected. The queen’s son has the modest name of Tom, after both his father and grandfather, which, as Barnett points out, would not seem to deserve the honor. 

Improbable events happen in fairy tales.  The queen’s final guess causes smoke to spew out of Rumpelstiltskin’s ears in rage. The combination of fantastic and plainspoken words and imagery gives this version of the tale an inimitable twist.  The queen survives, even if the men in the story are never held accountable for their stunning selfishness.

Brilliant, Lovely, Compassionate

Audrey Hepburn: An Illustrated Biography – written by Eileen Hofer, illustrated by Christopher Longé, translated from the French by Christopher Bradley
Abrams ComicArts, 2025

The subject of Eileen Hofer and Christopher Longé’s meticulously thorough graphic biography is portrayed as embodying the trait know as imposter syndrome. This incredibly gifted actress, stunningly beautiful woman, devoted mother, and tireless humanitarian actress was not convinced that she deserved any of those accolades.  While not an uncommon human problem, in general, it may be less prevalent in those who achieved her phenomenal level of success.  One of the many outstanding feature of this book, which is actually aimed at an adult audience but is completely appropriate for young adult readers (there have been several picture-book biographies of Audrey for younger readers, such as the ones I reviewed here and here and here and here) is its unassuming, but convincing, tone.  Laying out the facts of Hepburn’s life, from her childhood in war-torn Europe to her death (1929-1993.)  Every vignette and conversation included supports a consistent interpretation, while leaving room for the always unanswered questions about any life.

Author and illustrator avoid melodrama in chronicling the painful nature of Hepburn’s early life.  Her British father, Joseph Ruston Hepburn, was something of a manipulative con artist who saw marriage to her Dutch aristocrat mother, Ella van Heemstra, as a route to social and financial success. Worse, he was an ardent supporter of fascism; Hepburn’s mother, for a time, joined him in his alliance with this brutal movement.  Hofer pays careful attention to part of Hepburn’s history, including Dutch collaboration and virulent antisemitism.  Her participation in resistance activities is placed in context, existing alongside her ambition to become a ballet dancer.

After the war, Hepburn continued to study ballet, but the interruption in her training, and her tall height, closed off that field to her. Throughout her life she expressed disappointment about this turn of events, which seem also to have sensitized her to a sense of failure. But ballet’s loss was an unparalleled gain to theater and film. From bit parts in The Lavender Hill Mob and Monte Carlo Baby, she went on to the starring role on the stage in Colette’s Gigi and the movies that have become indelibly identified with her legacy.  Hofer and Longé approach both analytically and lyrically, this timeless series of images of Hepburn’s dramatic transformations, in Sabrina, My Fair Lady, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, How to Steal a Million, Two for the Road, and more.

Longé’s illustrations assume a particular vision of Hepburn and those who shared her life. Rather than photographic realism, they combine different aspects of her character and experience to create a believable image.  Neither Hepburn, her parents, her husbands, nor her directors and co-stars look exactly as readers may remember them. Instead, with minimalist strokes in black ink he captures the essence of who they were and how they behaved.  Ultimately, her father’s calculating oppressiveness, husband Mel Ferrer’s controlling nature, and second husband Andrea Dotti’s duplicity, all unfold in a balanced vision. There is almost a resigned sense of people’s imperfections in the book, making Hepburn’s commitments seem even more worthy of wonder.  Even if you have read other books about Audrey Hepburn, this one deserves careful attention. If the young adult readers in your life are unfamiliar with her life, here is an opportunity to correct that unfortunate gap.

Jewish American and Asian American Heritage Month

Once again, it’s May, and School Library Journal appears to be facing their annual conflict about Heritage Months. In May, Jewish and Asian Americans share the month. That is absolutely appropriate. Both groups are featured, as only one prominent example, on the New York Public Library’s website. April was both Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage Month; the NYPL announced that fact every day of April.  I have written about past attempts by SLJ to avoid including Jews in their Heritage Month coverage. (link to all previous blogs about this.).

As they did last year, SLJ began presenting articles and lists about Asian American books in April, rather than waiting for the official schedule to begin. 

Some of the posts, dating to as early as the third week in April include “14 Engrossing YA Books with AANHPI Protagonists and Themes,” “6 Inspiring Nonfiction Works for Young Readers About the Asian American Experience,” “6 Kid-Friendly Middle Grade Titles with Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Protagonists,” and “Listen to These 19 Audiobooks in Honor of Southwest Asian and North African Heritage Month.”

The last article on this list, dated April 13, explains the nomenclature of the category and the list of countries encompassed by it. These include, among others, Jordan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, and Israel.  Not every country on the list is represented. Israel is not, although it is clearly a major focus of one book, Every Moment Is a Life: Gaza in the Time of Genocide. I have no issue with including this particular, or any other book on the list.  That is the editors’ choice, covered by freedom of the press and intellectual freedom. Most of the Asian American books highlighted are of high quality, artistically, historically, and as literature. In the case of Every Moment Is a Life, the glaring absence is that of any works detailing the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which would have provided a context for readers.

As I have written before, SLJ can choose to opt out of the Heritage Month system. It would be easy to argue that consistent coverage of everyone’s culture is much more important than the potential tokenism of a month-by-month categorization. But singling out Jewish American Heritage Month as an illegitimate one is abhorrent.  I understand that SLJ may yet post some Jewish-themed books, as they did last year, late in the month.  It is notable to compare that possibility with the rich list of Asian American books that appeared as early as April, which covered a broad and inclusive number of themes, countries, and genres, as compared to, for example, one or two books exclusively about the Holocaust. (I do not agree with the proposition that there are too many books for children about the Holocaust, but they need to be part of a spectrum of topics.). Finally, if SLJ wishes to avoid discussing Israel and Palestine, they may easily choose among dozens of Jewish American children’s books excluding that subject.  Of course, many Jewish holiday books, including ones about Hanukkah, Passover, and Shavout, are predicated on Jewish presence in ancient Israel, but there are a wide range of books, both fiction and nonfiction, that are unrelated to that connection.  I am not advocating that choice, but it would be one way for SJL to circumvent what they perceive as controversy. I will update this post as SLJ continues their coverage of books in May.