Desert Song

A desert sunset cues a large family to make music alongside “the coyotes, the cicadas,/ and the giant barn owls....// a chorus in need of a band,” in this lyrical picture book written by Zea Kemp (A Crown for Corina). As a rich, warm sunset palette slowly gives way to the deep, beautiful blues of nighttime, Uncle Eduardo drums his hands on his jeans, Aunt Ofelia plays the flute, and other family members take up percussion and stringed instruments, until, “when my mother opens her mouth to sing,/ a hush falls over the desert.” After the moon rises and Mami sings of memory, the child’s father acknowledges that the Latinx-cued family plays “your great-great-grandfather’s vihuela and my godmother’s ocarina. To remind us that they’re still alive between the notes. That when we sing to them, they’re listening.” Amid naïf-style scenes of the family collaborating with each other and the natural world, digitally finished acrylic gouache and colored pencil illustrations from Gutiérrez Hernández (Benito Juárez Fights for Justice) visualize the child’s forebears in this work about connection that ends with “the glittering sky overhead, an audience of our ancestors”—and a development that sounds like applause. Creators’ notes conclude. Ages 4–8. (June)