Give

Arena (Salsa Lullaby) portrays a group of schoolchildren cultivating a culture of generosity in this pay-it-forward picture book. Alongside a starting phrase—“Sometimes bad things happen”— Jomepour Bell (Our Favorite Day of the Year) paints a child whose blue hair ribbon blows away in a rainy gust of wind. Another kid, passing by with a wrapped gift, promptly unties the box’s ribbon and passes it over. “Give what you have,” a line reads. A second spread focuses more closely on the two, conveying the new bond that giving has wrought. They join classmates portrayed with varying skin tones entering a school building in companionable pairs. “Sometimes we get cold.// Give warmth,” accompanies an image of the child with the new hair ribbon draping their own fuzzy scarf around a shivering schoolmate, who later passes their pencil to a teacher to replace one that has snapped (“Sometimes something breaks.// Give something new”). Via simple lines and saturated, stroke-heavy art, the considerate cast places readers in a classroom where mutual care and its pleasures are part of the fabric of togetherness: “The good you do comes back to you.” Ages 4–8. [em]Author’s agent: Jennifer Mattson, Andrea Brown Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Christy Tugeau Ewers, CAT Agency. (Aug.) [/em]