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PICTURE BOOKS
Sorell, Traci

Being Home

32 pp. | Penguin/Kokila | May, 2024 | Trade ISBN 9781984816030 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 9781984816047 $10.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Michaela Goade. Caldecott-winning Goade (Tlingit Nation) evokes a unique mood in each book she illustrates. Here she uses gray and dull browns and blues in her mixed-media art to show city scenes, but leafy green to depict the rural ancestral lands of a family's home, to which they are returning. Brilliantly, she employs hot pink as the signature color for the narrator, a girl who happily moves away from the city without looking back ("I'm ready"). In the first pages, that pink appears as a kind of decorative, clashing overlay, as if the girl's imagination is doodling over her nondescript surroundings. As they drive home, though, more warm pink colors appear contextually in flowers, furniture, clothing, food, and the sunset -- the girl blends in naturally with her new environment. The progression of colors matches the spare text by Sorell (Cherokee Nation), which describes the family's change in location as a change in rhythm and tempo: "Singing, / shell shaking, / storytelling, / stickball playing / all offer different beats." This story beautifully captures the joy of returning home and reuniting with family.
Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2024

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