A Hundred Thousand Welcomes

“Tell me your stories, sing me your songs./ Life has more flavor since you came along.” Donovan and Cho celebrate cultural diversity with this tribute to unity, which explores the different ways people around the world say “welcome.” Including salutations in Lakota Sioux, Gaelic, Hindi, Indonesian, Urdu, and many others, the lyrical text emphasizes meeting friends, family, and strangers alike with kindness and generosity. Cho’s watercolor and colored pencil artwork features bright paintings of people of varying abilities, ages, cultures, religions, and skin tones, greeting each other and sharing food. The warm, friendly scenes range from a blonde, light-skinned child beckoning from an inviting sukkah to a Shiba Inu and East Asian–cued family waving atop the balcony of a small house in urban Japan. This openhearted picture book comes to a satisfying close with a blessing and a jubilant spread of the book’s many international families dining together at a page-filling banquet table. Author’s and illustrator’s notes, a note about pronunciation, selected sources, and further reading are also included. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)