What Love Looks Like

Obuobi pens a whimsical bedtime tale featuring Afia, a Black girl resistant to falling asleep “when the June evening sky made the world seem wide awake.” Instead of tucking in, Afia calls out to Papa, asking him what love looks like. When he suggests finding out, “a gentle wind twirled Afia and her papa,” first to a warm desert, then to a chilly mountaintop, and then to a seashore and a forest. Each landscape offers an experience of affection, from the desert’s “skin-tingling touch of love” to the mountain’s “delightfully cool taste of love.” Cunha’s expressive colorblock art portrays each background with hazy detail, giving a dreamlike quality to her rosy-cheeked characters’ journey. And when the two head home with new knowledge about what love looks like, they’re certain too in the knowledge that “love looks like you and me.” Ages 4–8. (June)