ALA Award-Winning Picture Books

ꜟVamos! Let’s Go Eat!, Welcoming Elijah, and Miriam at the River all won 2021 ALA awards for outstanding illustration in their categories.

ꜟVamos! Let’s Go Eat! by Raúl the Third, colors by Elaine Bay.  Versify (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2020, 38 pages.

Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 0-4

Recommended for: ages 3-6

(ꜟVamos! Let’s Go Eat! was this year’s Pura Delpre award winner for illustration.)

Little Lobo and his partner Kooky Dooky (a rooster) make food deliveries for special events in their town. Today, there’s a huge event: a Lucha Libre match featuring El Toro y sus Amigos (which even beginning Spanish learners will recognize as “the Bull and his friends.” And soon, no less a personage than El Toro himself is requesting Little Lobo’s help in delivering a big lunch before the big match. All the amigos want something different, so the delivery team needs to get busy right away. An array of food trucks offers churros, jamón y huevos, quesadilla con rajas, kimchi kiosko (Yes! Kimchi!), aguas frescas—you get the idea. Little epicureans will enjoy figuring out what all these types of la comida actually are. But kids whose interest in food doesn’t go beyond hot dogs will eagerly peruse these busy pages chock-full of animals in western dress (even a one-boot snake), cooking, buying, selling, and chowing down on South-of-the Border specialties.

Overall rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail by Leslėa Newman, illustrated by Susan Gal. Charlesbridge, 2020, 30 pages.

Reading Level: Picture book, ages 0-4

Recommended for: ages 2-5

(Welcoming Elijah was a gold medalist in this year’s Sidney Taylor Award for illustration)

“Inside, there was light. Outside, there was darkness.” In the darkness, a lonely kitten watches happy people gather in a warm house, knowing somehow that this night will be different. A boy inside the house participates with his family in the Seder meal, performing all the rituals associated with his people’s escape from Egypt thousands of years ago. But both boy and kitten are waiting for something else to happen. Finally it’s time to open the door for Elijah to enter and announce the coming of Messiah and his reign of peace. It’s the boy’s favorite part of the whole evening, because he gets to open the door. And guess who’s waiting on the doorstep for him?

The colorful, broad-brush illustrations add immediate appeal to this simple story, while the inside/outside refrain sets up a pleasing rhythm. One thing is missing, though: any mention of the Lord. It’s a lovely book for introducing small children to Jewish culture and the Seder meal, but be sure to fill in the principal part of the story.

Overall Rating: 3.5

Miriam at the River by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Khoa Le. Learner Publishing, 2020, 30 pages.

(Miriam at the River won a silver medal in this year’s Sidney Taylor award collection.)

In the blood-red dawn a seven-year-old girl slips down to the Nile with a heavy basket in her arms. In the basket is her brother, who does not yet have a name. But he has a destiny, and that’s why his family is determined to save him from Pharaoh’s cruel death sentence upon Israelite babies. The story is familiar from Sunday school, with a few added elements drawn from traditional Jewish interpretation. Modern-day Christians may look askance at the significance given to Moses’s sister. But in the Bible she was regarded as a prophetess, and this picture book, told in first person, shows her listening to God and seeing visions of the future. The lovely, blue-toned illustrations swirl with the current, where hippos lurk and storks and ibises peck for their food. A young reader (and her mother!) will fear for the little baby until Pharaoh’s daughter arrives just in time. 

Overall Rating: 4

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