Indigo Dreaming

Two Black girls play on the beaches of their respective island homes, each imagining there’s another just like themselves: “Every morning at day-clean,/ I wonder if somewhere there’s a girl like me,// who spends every day beside the sea.” One girl wades into the surf to talk to birds and leaps across the sand on the beach; the other seeks out sweetgrass to weave baskets and listens to the ocean in a seashell. Both wonder all the while, “Is there a girl across the sea who imagines me?” An author’s note contextualizes this story from Johnson (H Is for Harlem), which, via images of two girls leading similar lives an ocean apart, draws parallels between members of the African diaspora: “Communities in the United States and Sierra Leone have discovered all that they still share.” Saturated, layered art by Cunha (Fly) employs visible textures to add depth to each illustration. In concert with playful, dreamlike prose, which details events over the course of a given day, motion-filled landscapes offer images “of the two of us playing/ in the same sun/ in the same sand,/ hand in hand.” Ages 4–8. (Oct.)