By Khaled Hosseini; illustrated by Dan Williams

promising them — as many of us promise our children — “Hold my hand, nothing bad will happen.”

In its elevation of the pastoral and critique of a dark reality through the interplay of word and image, “Sea Prayer” calls to mind William Blake’s humanitarian “Songs of Innocence and Experience.” The text’s minimalism complements London illustrator Dan Williams’ gorgeous watercolor and ink illustrations. The loose blue, green, black brushstrokes suggest movement — the refugees’ intense need to seek safety on the savage ocean. Electric white dribbles against a black wash evoke “skies spitting bombs.”

The father says, “I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere.” The refugee crisis is made even more devastating when the fortunate look away, unwilling to bear witness, let alone change policy to ameliorate the crisis, unwilling to see that only luck, the accident of birthplace, separates them from the refugees. Referencing the power of witness, a power that floods “Sea Prayer,” the mother whispers to the father: “Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.”

Anita Felicelli’s writing has appeared in the Rumpus, Salon and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her debut collection of stories, “Love Songs for a Lost Continent,” will be published in October. Email: books@ sfchronicle.com After four years tailing team owners, seeking audiences with stars, attending Super Bowls and other big games, Leibovich emerges as the pro game’s Mencken, tossing out one-liners as barbed as the spiked costumes of the Raiders’ faithful.

Been So Long

Kaukonen, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, comes across just as he does in the affable roots music that has defined his later career: easygoing, unfailingly modest, not prone in the least to delusions of classic rock grandeur.