Toto
by Hyewon Yum; illus. by the author
Primary    Porter/Holiday    40 pp.
1/25    9780823453894    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823462322    $11.99

“Toto” isn’t the young protagonist’s name but rather what she calls the large birthmark on her forehead. Opening lines read, “Sometimes I wonder how I would look without Toto.” Despite loving support from family who ascribe positive meaning to the birthmark—it means she has superpowers, or that an angel kissed her, and it is her grandmother’s favorite spot to kiss—the girl can tell that “sometimes people only see Toto, not me.” Yum’s limited palette of sepia, gray, black, and white in the mixed-media illustrations effectively reflects this worry by contrasting with the pink of the birthmark, making it stand out. Before school starts, the girl’s mother gives her a haircut with bangs, covering Toto. Once at school, she quickly befriends a girl named Niko, and all is well until she hangs upside down on the monkey bars and her bangs fall aside. At this vulnerable, climactic moment, Yum slows the story’s pace to devote several spreads to the narrator’s anguished embarrassment and Niko’s kind response. “The birthmark on your face means that you have another life!” Niko exclaims, sharing something that her aunt (who “knows everything”) told her. Niko’s excitement and wonder allow the narrator to adjust her perspective, rightly concluding that Toto makes her “extraordinary” and that without it, “I might not look like ME at all.”

From the ">January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.