CCBC Choices 2019 Join the Friends of the CCBC! The Friends underwrite the cost of this annual CCBC Choices publication and support the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in numerous other ways. Please consider joining if you aren’t a member! (See Appendix V for more about the Friends.) Individual Memberships $10 Student/Retiree $20 Personal $30 Household $50 Supporting $100+ Patron $500+ DistinguishedPatron Institutional Memberships $75 Honor (2–5 individuals) $150 Award (6–10 individuals) $500 Distinguished (11–15 individuals) $1,000+ Corporate Make check payable to: Friends of the CCBC, Inc. Mail to: Friends of the CCBC, P.O. Box 5189, Madison, WI 53705 (You can also join online at ccbcfriends.org) Name ________________________________________________________ Position ______________________________________________________ Address ______________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ City ______________________ State ________ Zip Code______________ Telephone (w) _______________________ (h) ______________________ Email _______________________________________________________ (Most communication about Friends news and events is done via listserv at various times throughout the year.) Please do NOT add me to the Friends listserv. CCBC Choices 2019 Kathleen T. Horning Merri V. Lindgren Megan Schliesman Madeline Tyner Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education University of Wisconsin–Madison Copyright ©2019, Friends of the CCBC, Inc. ISBN: 978–0–931641–29–9 CCBC Choices 2019 was produced by the office of University Marketing, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cover design: Lois Ehlert This publication was created by librarians at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Funding for the production and printing was provided by the Friends of the CCBC, Inc. CCBC Choices 2019 3 Contents Acknowledgments ............................................. 4 Introduction ..................................................5 Organization of CCBC Choices 2019 ..............................8 The Choices Science, Technology, and the Natural World .....................12 Seasons and Celebrations ....................................19 Folklore, Mythology, and Traditional Literature. 20 Historical People, Places, and Events ...........................22 Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir ........................29 Contemporary People, Places, and Events .......................33 Understanding Oneself and Others ............................35 The Arts .................................................37 Poetry ..................................................40 Concept Books ...........................................42 Picture Books for Young Children .............................43 Picture Books for School-Age Children .........................55 Books for Beginning Readers .................................67 Books for Newly Independent Readers .........................68 Fiction for Children ........................................69 Fiction for Young Adults ....................................89 Appendices Appendix I: Checklist of Books in CCBC Choices 2019 ............107 Appendix II: Informational Nonfiction Titles in CCBC Choices 2019 113 Appendix III: About the CCBC .............................115 Appendix IV: The Charlotte Zolotow Award ....................116 Appendix V: The Friends of the CCBC, Inc ....................117 Author/Illustrator/Title Index ..................................120 Subject Index ...............................................127 4 CCBC Choices 2019 Acknowledgments The Friends of the CCBC, Inc., underwrites the cost of publishing theCCBC Choices booklet each year, making Choices available free of charge to Wisconsin librarians, teachers, and others in the state. The Friends are able to make this significant commitment to the CCBC and to the Wisconsin library and education communities thanks to revenue from memberships, and from their biannual book sale. Thank you to the hardworking Friends board of directors, all committed volunteers, for their work. Thank you, too, to Friends members in Wisconsin and beyond for your support. (For more information about the Friends of the CCBC, see Appendix V.) Thank you to those who provided critical feedback on one or more titles we considered. Participants in our book discussions, held monthly March–December, also provided valuable insights. Thank you also to the staff in Creative Services at University Marketing who worked on this edition of Choices: Angela Barian, Kent Hamele, Danielle Lawry, and Preston Schmitt. Our capable and dedicated student staff members handle many day-to-day responsibilities during the creation of Choices and throughout the year. They also help with proofreading and other critical work in the final days of Choices production. The following individuals worked at the CCBC during 2018 and early 2019: Gabrielle Draxler (2018), Susannah Duncan Gilbert, Alee Hill, Melissa Juvinall, Katie Killian, Jess McCarlson (2018), Heather Phelps, Emmon Rogers (2018), and Charmaine Sprengelmeyer-Podein. Finally, thanks to our partners, spouses, and families, for understand that yes, we have another book to read. Kathleen T. Horning, Merri V. Lindgren, Megan Schliesman, and Madeline Tyner Bios of the Choices authors are available on the CCBC web site at ccbc.education.wisc.edu/about/staffbio.asp CCBC Choices 2019 5 Introduction Everything we do at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), a library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, begins and ends with books. They are the focus of most of our reference work and they form the basis of our outreach services. They are the work we take home almost every night, and often what we talk about when we return the next morning. The CCBC serves as a statewide book examination center, and we received review copies of approximately 3,500 new books for children and young adults published in 2018. This included the majority of the trade books published in English by large corporate publishers in the United States as well as books from some smaller U.S. and Canadian trade publishers, some U.S. educational publishers, and some small-press and independently published books. CCBC librarians read extensively—although we can’t read everything—to create CCBC Choices (and the thematic bibliographies on our web site based on Choices recommendations). Our goal is to develop an annual list of outstanding titles for youth from birth through high-school age. As we read throughout the year and begin to build the Choices bibliography, we are looking for books that stand out for literary and artistic quality; we are also looking for accuracy and authenticity. We may choose a book because it offers unique or unusual content, especially when we know there is a need for and interest in books on its topic based on our discussions with individuals working directly with children and teens. Our goal is to create a diverse list of titles that offers something for everyone; as well as a list that reflects the many and varied experiences and identities of children and teens today. Each one of us brings different experiences, tastes, and perspectives to our reading. There are many books one or more of us appreciated that are not in this edition of CCBC Choices. Some are titles we didn’t all agree on; others are books we liked, just not quite enough to make them a Choice. Sometimes a book arrived too late for us to consider it for inclusion. Sometimes, we simply missed a great read. Publishing in 2018 As we read hundreds of books to consider for inclusion in this edition of CCBC Choices, and as we examined and documented each of the thousands of 2018 titles that arrived at the library, we noticed a few things worth commenting on. We noticed, for example, that there were a number of exciting children’s and young adult literature debuts from authors and illustrators of color and First/ Native Nations. Among them were Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X), Hilda Eunice Burgos (Ana María Reyes Does Not Live in a Castle ), Kheryn Callender (Hurricane Child), Maxine Beneba Clarke (The Patchwork Bike), Adib Khorram (Darius the Great Is Not Okay), Henry Lien (Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword), Oge Mora (Thank You, Omu), Dawn Quigley (Apple in the Middle), Randy Ribay (After the Shot Drops), Mary Louise Sanchez (The Wind Called My Name), Jamillah 6 Introduction CCBC Choices 2019 Thompkins-Bigelow (Mommy’s Khimar), Ngozi Ukazu (Check, Please!) and Kelly Yang (Front Desk). And that’s only some of them. We noticed smaller publishing endeavors continuing to make critical inroads in responding to the ongoing need for books that accurately and authentically reflect many aspects of diverse cultures and identities today. We are grateful to the contributions of publishers like Alaska Northwest and SeaLaska Heritage Institute, whose “Raven” tales included in this edition of Choices also kept the 398 section of our shelves from being bare as folktales were hard to find this year. We continued to notice how many picture books feature brown-skinned protagonists with no specific cultural or ethnic identifiers as part of the depiction, and wonder whether these books truly serve as what critic and scholar Rudine Sims Bishop calls “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors.” We’re skeptical, even as we appreciate many of them for their stories, and for the decision to not default to white protagonists.