Black Girl You Are Atlas

Renée Watson, illus. by Ekua Holmes. Kokila, $18.99 (96p) ISBN 978-0-593-46170-9

something of a dare. As a brown-skinned child and their dog stand on a porch and gaze up at the sky, text reads, “There’s a bird/ outside your window/ with a song that’s full of sky,/ and it wonders why/ you stay inside/ when you are free to fly?” Subsequent spreads, whose decorative style resembles translucent, feathery cyanotypes and printmaking techniques, show a cast of children portrayed with various skin tones, while imperative rhyming couplets invite each to contemplate, explore, and observe the outdoors. “Feel the tickles of tadpoles/ as the stream cools your feet,” finds a child perched on a rock surrounded by a profusion of flowers, carefully dipping a pointed toe into turquoise water dotted with tiny black figures. As the seasons change, and the settings move from meadows to a city park, the predominating message is clear: come outside—and come as you are. “You are part of the wonder/ and joy Nature brings,/ of the beauty and magic/ in all living things.” Ages 4–8. (Feb.) dynamic characters with complex histories to riveting effect. Cia is at once a brave and vulnerable, trusting and wary heroine whose empathy propels this suspenseful mystery thriller. Main characters read as white. Ages 12–17. (Feb.)

Watson (Maya’s Song) crafts a semiautobiographical collection that speaks to the girl she was in her youth and the expansive experience of Black girlhood as it cycles toward womanhood via sharp and loving poetry. Accompanied by striking and vintage-feeling multimedia collage artwork by Holmes (Coretta), the poems evolve in step with the protagonist they portray as priorities shift, detailing new fears surrounding never having seen snow before (“snow for me was new/ because I was only three when we left Paterson/ and my tiny feet didn’t know snow”), meeting her father for the first time, learning about injustice, and practicing self-love (“Be a best friend to yourself. Be an enemy only to injustice, to hate .... Be your own hype crew”). Watson utilizes myriad poetic styles to address various topics, such as growing up Jamaican American in Portland, Ore. A series of haiku on sisterhood highlight the poet’s deep admiration of her ancestors, future descendants, and the Black women she grew up with, and poems “A Pantoum for Breonna Taylor” and “A Tanka for Michelle Obama” mourn and laud Black women in equal measure, making for a tender ode to universal yearnings for safety, love, and justice, as well as a celebration of Black girlhood. Ages 12–up. (Feb.) things her former crush claims they did. Still, rumors spread like wildfire throughout her tight-knit Sudanese community. Now labeled a “bad girl,” her strict mother upends Samira’s vision of a perfect summer by placing her on indefinite house arrest, the monotony of which is only broken by Samira’s attending a teen poetry workshop that her aunt drives her to and from. When social media posts of her classmates enjoying the summer and the distance between her and her mother become too much, Samira looks to an online poetry message board for connection. There, she meets an older, magnetic poet named Horus. For the first time, someone is complimenting her poetry—and her. But as their relationship develops, Samira is forced to keep secrets that jeopardize her reputation, her relationships, and herself. In perceptive verse, Elhillo (Home Is Not a Country) navigates hard-hitting topics such as grooming, predation, and sex shaming. Samira’s journey of self-discovery—and the external forces trying to dim her light—are sensitively and richly wrought, culminating in both a mesmerizing verse novel and a gripping exploration of the hyperpolicing of Black girls’ bodies and sexuality. Ages 12–up. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary. (Feb.)