Being Home
by Traci Sorell; illus. by Michaela Goade
Primary    Kokila/Penguin    32 pp.
5/24    9781984816030    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781984816047    $10.99

Caldecott-winning Goade (Tlingit Nation) evokes a unique mood in each book she illustrates. Here she uses gray and dull browns and blues in her mixed-media art to show city scenes, but leafy green to depict the rural ancestral lands of a family’s home, to which they are returning. Brilliantly, she employs hot pink as the signature color for the narrator, a girl who happily moves away from the city without looking back (“I’m ready”). In the first pages, that pink appears as a kind of decorative, clashing overlay, as if the girl’s imagination is doodling over her nondescript surroundings. As they drive home, though, more warm pink colors appear contextually in ­flowers, furniture, clothing, food, and the sunset—the girl blends in ­naturally with her new environment. The progression of colors matches the spare text by Sorell (Cherokee Nation), which describes the family’s change in location as a change in rhythm and tempo: “Singing­, / shell shaking, / storytelling, / stickball playing / all offer different beats.” This story beautifully captures the joy of returning home and reuniting with family.

From the November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.