Three picture books, all read via online reader copies, that everyone should have in their collections (be you teacher, parent, child, student, or other) are the below.
Johnny Tunes and the Gandy Dancers by Pamela M Tuck, Joel S Tuck, Jerry Jordan (Illustrator) (due September 2026).
The Northbound Train: A Story of the Great Migration (A Picture Book) by Leslie Johnson Piotrowski, Tonya Engel (Illustrated by) (due January 2027).
Solar Mamas: The Story of Sanjit “Bunker” Roy and the Grandmothers Who Became Solar Engineers by Jyothi Nookula, Nabi H. Ali (Illustrated by) (due late September – early October 2026).
The first two titles are fiction based on real events. Johnny Tunes is about a young boy who has a disability but determined to help his family. One day he follows his brothers to the railroad tracks being built. He notices the men are out of sync, unable to get the job done. So he does one thing he does well: sing. His singing makes a rhythm for the men, making things easier. Of course, it’s never simple and issues happen, but eventually the men will work to Johnny’s tunes. Based on the real workers who were called Gandy Dancers (the afterwards explains this term) this is an interesting piece of history. It might not be “earth shattering” (he didn’t make speeches, civil rights, teach) but it’s important to how the country was literally built.
With the Northbound Train we might have heard of the Great Migration of southern people of color moving North for a better life, but what about those people who went? What were they thinking? Feeling? Seeing? We follow a young girl as she sits in the train car with her family where there are unspoken rules of what she can say, do, even sit. She tells about why her family is moving, what she is feeling, what she’s left behind and the powerful moment when an invisible line is crossed and a new life can begin. It is an innocent look at a powerful and not so innocent reason why this trip was necessary. Lyrical prose softens the emotional journey we watch unfold.
And last, but not least, Solar Mamas is based on true events. This story is about how the grandmothers of a village, who have little to no education, would create light for their villages. We then see how once word got out, how they would help spread this knowledge across the world. And despite their impact, these women were not the first choice, but the men of the village where, but once they were taught how to build solar panels that would create electricity, leaving the dangerous kerosene lanterns a thing of the past, would leave to get better jobs elsewhere. So it was up to the women to keep things moving and take care of the family. It is sweet, powerful, even a smidgen humorous at times. It is truly a lovely story of determination and inspiration what people can do when they let nothing (poverty, sexism) stop them.
All three picture books have a variety of styles for their illustrations. They range from an old fashioned, lightness, to a rich realism to something in between. They all are well detailed, well colored and terribly expressive. They fit the tone of the story and are the perfect characters and companions to the stories.
