Books to make moving easier on a child
Moving someplace new can be one of the defining moments of childhood — exciting, traumatic, or both in equal measure. When the move comes with extra baggage, whether it’s the need to learn a new language or avoid unknown pitfalls, it can be even harder. Two new illustration-heavy books, one a graphic novel and the other a cartoon-illustrated novel, tackle the challenge of making a fresh start.
In “Pie in the Sky,” 11-year-old Jingwen has just moved to Australia with his mother and little brother — but without his father, who died in an accident. (Ages 8 to 12, Henry Holt, $12.99.) In this layer cake of a book, author/ illustrator Remy Lai writes prose sections that are separated by cartoons portraying Jingwen’s feelings of alienation, sometimes drawing him as an actual alien, unable to speak English and surrounded by an incomprehensible world.
To comfort himself, Jingwen begins baking the cakes his father dreamed of selling one day, searching for a way to remember without pain, and finding that the sweetness of the desserts makes those memories more palatable. “I can’t help but grin at how cakes truly are magic,” he says.
Jingwen is refreshingly real — lamenting that his brother is a “booger,” bumbling through making friends, and categorizing the types of lies he tells to keep up his secret cake-baking. But he’s also deeply sympathetic, living the confusing, frustrating immigrant experience, and finding his way through a new language, new school, new friends, and a new understanding of what he’s capable of.
In “Peter & Ernesto: The Lost Sloths,” graphic novelist Graham Annable returns to his beloved sloth friends, one fretful and one adventurous, as they lose their tree to a hurricane and must set out in search of a new place to call home. (Ages 6 to 10, First Second, $17.99.) Annable, an animator and illustrator, manages to turn the quest of these slow-moving creatures into a fast-paced tale of forest mishaps filled with peccaries, ants, armadillos and a sneaky jaguar.
As bold Ernesto leads the group of sloths, a worried but hopeful Peter sings, “When I dream, I’ll think of that!/Somewhere nice to hang my hat!” The two friends perfectly encapsulate the warring feelings of excitement and fear that accompany a big move — and, together, find not just a new tree to call home, but a new friend to share it with. Caroline Luzzatto teaches fourth grade at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy. luzzatto.bookworms@gmail.com