Martha referred to 2018 (back in this post) as a “year of blockbusters,” and Yuyi Morales’s Dreamers may be the biggest blockbuster of them all. It’s a picture book that has gotten a lot of attention and adoration this year (one professional review calls it nothing less than a “masterpiece”) and is, in fact, already an award-winner. It was also a finalist in the category of Young Readers’ Literature for the 2018 Kirkus Prize. I don’t think it’s received a single review without a star attached to it.

Dreamers is a picture-book memoir: Morales tells her personal story of migrating from Mexico to the United States with her baby son in her arms, and she does so via acrylic illustrations into which she incorporates scanned photographs of things that have special meaning to her (a brick from her house, her son’s childhood drawings, leaves from her garden, her first handmade book, etc.); traditional Mexican fabrics; occasional embroidered text; and much more. Morales finds both refuge and her voice in the public library. It is there that she feels welcome and learns to trust. It is there that her journey to learn to read and speak English begins. It is there that she finds her life’s passion — writing and illustrating picture books. (Unable to read English, she learned to understand the picture books she saw by following the illustrations, which eventually inspired her to make her own books. Readers learn more details about this in her closing author’s note.) The story is in English with Spanish words incorporated — refreshingly, they are not italicized in the way Sabrina Montenigro addressed in this earlier Calling Caldecott post — and a Spanish edition of the book was also published.

This is a powerful story that may endear itself, in particular, to not only immigrants — many immigrants in a new country can attest to the power of libraries — but also book-lovers and librarians. And this is a book that is an ode to the picture book form itself. (For the books in Dreamers that we see on library shelves, Morales even paints the covers of specific picture books from past and present that mean a lot to her.) It gives me happy goosebumps every time I read it, especially when they enter the library and the spare, concise text reads: “Suspicious. Improbable. Unbelievable. Surprising. Unimaginable.” The look of wonder on their faces here, as they realize books are free for the taking, is a thing of beauty.

And, needless to say, on a political level, given the current administration’s immigration policies, the president’s utter disdain for all immigrants, and even this past weekend's horrific tear-gassing of refugees at the U.S. border, it is also a timely book, an emotionally compelling story that asks us to consider what it is like for a mother and son to acclimate to a world foreign to them — with all the fears, anxiety, hopes, and dreams attendant to that experience. To be clear, the committee is charged with looking at the artistic merits of the books on the table in front of them. Period. The book's political significance isn't part of the criteria. At the same time, however, book evaluation doesn't happen in a vacuum. (I suppose this is a complicated topic for a whole new post!)

And though this book is timely, it is also a book for the ages. It is a many-splendored thing, this book. Will the Caldecott committee be impressed? I’d bet my library card that they will be, but the big question is whether or not they think the book will rise above others. Only one book gets the big award. (I don’t envy the committee's task this year.)

There is surely a lot to admire here. There’s abundant symbolism in the creatures of flight/freedom Morales paints, all creatures who migrate from Mexico to the U.S. to find places to feed their young. This includes one or more monarch butterfly on each spread after mother and son cross a bridge at the book’s opening, as well as birds (barn swallows) and free-tailed bats (who migrate north from Mexico to give birth to one pup each). There are also symbols of Mexican mythology — mother and son’s gifts to their new country — including a playful, red-cheeked, smiling skull Morales carries in her backpack, likely representing Día de Muertos, and a Xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican Hairless Dog. In that backpack also sits what looks like a sacred heart of Mexican folk art with an eye on it, as well as a pencil; in other words, she brought with her to this new world her unique vision, her passion, and her talents. Also note that on the second library spread there is someone who has wings on her feet. Could it be a librarian that Morales sees as a winged Mercury, messenger/communicator of the gods? (Note: I wondered about the book's symbols and looked them up, especially the meaning of the creatures; this kind of research is something committees often do. Morales also visited my blog earlier this year to talk about some of these symbols.)

Morales also plays with perspective in meaningful ways throughout the book. When she depicts her arrival in this new country and notes that the “sky and the land” used words that were not “those of our ancestors,” words are depicted as clouds, written backwards in the sky, as if the sky itself is saying them. We are momentarily put in her shoes, struggling to read as she did. We as readers are behind her, as she holds her son’s hand and attempts to read a map that reads very differently if you don’t speak its language. And when they first enter the library, we as readers are placed behind mother and son and see what they see: the shelves of books loom large, and the two see the library as if through tunnel vision. It is both overwhelming and awe-inspiring. (This spread’s composition is slightly imbalanced, but perhaps Morales intended this, as it is not a moment without some tension.)

The colors here are vivid. Morales’s own skirt — composed of what appear to be flower petals oriented vertically, as if she herself is in bloom — is distinctive, and she and her son, who is sometimes diaper-clad, form an indelible image. I think they’re two of the most visually distinctive characters we’ve seen in picture books this year. (I can already imagine them standing in Lolly’s mock voting booth.) Also indelible to me is the opening image of mother and son, stretching toward each other, as she “dreamed” of him. Morales’s vistas here are dreamlike — buildings that look like they’re undulating in fog when they first arrive, a snake outlined in the sky (most likely, a constellation), mushrooms the size of buildings, houses that stand askew — because they are the stuff of memories here, and they are imbued with the emotions she felt at the time, both fear and wonder.

Morales is an artist with a distinctive style. She has a unique way of composing spreads, and we see that here again in Dreamers. Some of her compositions do not have a singular focus; she tends to scatter objects about (as on the “Unimaginable” spread, in which floating around mother and son as they read are objects/creatures we assume are from the books they hold) with not necessarily one path on the page to draw readers' eyes. In Dreamers, I think this is fitting. There is a lot on each page for readers to take in and a lot of intricate symbolism to consider, but this is a transcendent and grand story (every spread is full-bleed, as Morales has a lot to say) about discovering new worlds, about creativity itself, and about finding one’s voice, which Morales manages to make both personal and universal. Will the committee think of her composition choices in this way? We will find out in January.

At the end of her closing author’s note, Morales writes: “Now I have told you my story. What’s yours?” One story that hasn’t been told yet in its 80-year history is the awarding of the Caldecott Medal to a female illustrator of color. If this committee likes what they see here, Morales could be the first. That would be another powerful story worth telling.