Review of Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa, by Sara Andrea Fajardo, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa

by Sara Andrea Fajardo
illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Roaring Brook Press, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written January 23, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Robert F. Sibert Medal Winner

I checked out this book because it was listed on Horn Book Magazine‘s Calling Caldecott blog as a possible contender for the Caldecott Medal (which will be announced on Monday, January 26). And wow! I’d be delighted if it shows up as an honoree (even if my personal favorite is still Cat Nap, by Brian Lies).

Edited on January 26 to add: Hooray! Today this book won the Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book for children! (I’m a little sad Cat Nap didn’t show up in the awards – but very happy about this one.)

This is a picture book biography, and the illustrations, done by a previous Caldecott honoree, are wonderful, making us feel like the featured Alberto Salas is a friendly uncle, foraging through a beautiful countryside.

But his story is also amazing. Alberto Salas was on a decades-long quest to find wild potatoes (papas) in the Andes mountains of Peru before they were gone. Since he was from the mountains himself and spoke both Spanish and Quecha, he could ask locals for help and was better than anyone else at finding specimens.

Alberto brings specimens to the International Potato Center genebank.

Scientists study each papa’s superpowers and create new varieties that can grow everywhere, from salty swamps to icy mountain peaks, maybe even one day on Mars.

But potatoes are under threat. Temperatures are rising, bringing insects and diseases that devour them.

Alberto’s goal is to find them all – and protect them – before they’re lost for good.

The main story is told simply, explaining the importance of these potatoes and Alberto’s skill. Then eight pages of back matter fill in details.

And have you guessed? “Paka Paka” is hide-and-seek. Alberto keeps a playful spirit and plays hide-and-seek with the native potatoes – and everyone wins.

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Review of André, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders, illustrated by Lamont O’Neal

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

André

André Leon Talley – A Fabulously Fashionable Fairy Tale

written by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders
illustrated by Lamont O’Neal

Henry Holt and Company, 2025. 52 pages.
Review written January 7, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’m not even a little bit interested in high fashion, but this picture book biography got me very interested in a Black boy who was, and who grew up to be editor of Vogue magazine.

André Leon Talley grew up in the Jim Crow south, finding escape from bullying by reading Vogue magazine. His growing up years weren’t easy:

At Hillside High School, where French was his favorite subject, six-foot-six André stood out. His voice, his mannerisms, and his smarts rubbed some bullies the wrong way. They beat him up because of how he looked and who he was.

But a little before the halfway point, we get a spread of André’s plane landing in Paris, and the rest of the book is about his progressive success as a fashion journalist in Paris, beginning as an assistant to Diana Vreeland, former editor of Vogue, and progressing to where he was the editor of Vogue himself and giving fashion advice to Michelle and Barack Obama in the White House.

The joyful pictures make this book special. In every spread, André stands tall above others, and we see his sense of style progress – from a teen dressed more meticulously than his peers to the flowing caftan style he proudly wore as an adult after a visit to Morocco.

I wasn’t too happy with the back matter – I would have liked a timeline to at least know when he was born and died, so I turned to Wikipedia. (1948 to 2022. I also found out his years as editor of Vogue were 1998 to 2013.) But I suppose it’s not a bad thing that this picture book biography made me want to find out more.

And this is another one I encourage you to check out for yourself. André described his own life as a fairy tale, and his joy in that journey shines through these pages.

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How Did You Count? by Christopher Danielson

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

How Did You Count?

by Christopher Danielson

A Stenhouse Book (Routledge), 2025. 36 pages.
Teacher’s Guide, 2025. 135 pages.
Review written January 2, 2026, from my own copies, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review
2025 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Children’s Nonfiction

First, my apologies to the author for not reviewing this book sooner. The publisher sent me copies of the book and teacher’s guide when they were first published, because I so loved the author’s previous books, Which One Doesn’t Belong? and How Many?.

I did order copies for my library system and talked my coworker, who selects adult nonfiction, into ordering copies of the Teacher’s Guide. I had to decide whether to write separate reviews for each book and where to put them, but I eventually decided to review the books together and post the review on my Children’s Nonfiction page.

But then I got bogged down and put off reading the Teacher’s Guide, even though I was intrigued by it. I ended up setting aside an hour to finish it off on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, because I knew it was going to be one of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs. (And I only count books I *finish* in the previous year.) So, here, at last, is my review of this book I’m completely delighted with.

Like with his other books, as you might discern from the titles, Christopher Danielson is the master of asking kids questions that don’t have one right answer. And thus masterfully encourages children to explore and to engage in mathematical thinking.

The basic picture book here shows objects arranged in some way – rows, triangles, circles, clusters. Beside the photos, the reader is asked “How many…?” and “How did you count them?”

As usual, he starts with a simple example that helps kids understand what’s going on.

This is a book about counting, but not about right and wrong answers.
There are lots of interesting things to count. More important, there are lots of interesting ways to count them.
Once you know how many there are, count them in another way.
Turn the page to see what that means…

We see a photo of twelve tangerines arranged in a dish. The questions are asked. When you turn the page, across from the text are four smaller images of the same tangerines with lines drawn over them to show how they might have been counted.

Did you count the tangerines as four columns of three tangerines each?
Maybe you saw three zigzags of four tangerines.
Or two groups of six, or maybe you counted them one-by-one.
What other ways can you count the tangerines?

Various collections of objects follow. The most challenging to me was the tetrahedron made of basketballs. That page asked the usual questions, as well as, “Did you count any basketballs that you cannot see?”

At the back, the author says:

I made this book to spark conversation, thinking, and wonder.

It still makes my heart happy that a book about math can indeed spark those things.

Okay, all that’s in the picture book itself. I do recommend the Teacher’s Guide to elementary school teachers, to help you provoke those conversations and to start conversations with kids with genuine curiosity about their thought processes. I enjoyed the stories in the Teacher’s Guide about the conversations the author had with kids when he brought this book into classrooms.

I marked this paragraph in the Teacher’s Guide that shows the beauty of what’s going on here:

How Did You Count? is a book about structures. You can count everything in the book one-by-one. But you can also count by twos or fives, or by pairs, rows, columns, triangles, or squares. The fun is less in knowing how many there are, and much more in making and sharing new ways to know how many there are. How Did You Count? supports a virtuous cycle where the more ways you know how to count, the more new ways you can think of. All of this is in service of a rich understanding of number and operation relationships in arithmetic, which is not only a worthy goal on its own, but it also builds intuitions that support later math learning beyond arithmetic.

I love my job as Youth Materials Selector so much, it’s not often I miss working with the public. But reading the Teacher’s Guide, I got the idea for an awesome library program: Make it a Family Math program. Start by going over pictures from the book. But have a large collection of objects of various sizes and amounts. And ask the families to arrange objects to make their own “How Did You Count?” photos, and invite them to take pictures of the arrangements on their phones (or have the librarian do it for them) and submit them to the author’s website, talkingmathwithkids.com. (Since I can’t do it, maybe I can talk some of my colleagues into doing it.)

(And if that doesn’t sound like awesome, curious, exciting fun to you, I can’t help you.)

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routledge.com

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Review of Toes, Teeth, and Tentacles, by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Toes, Teeth, and Tentacles

A Curious Counting Book

by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 36 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

I’ve long been a big fan of the work of Steve Jenkins and his wife Robin Page, so I was saddened by his death in 2021. I’m glad that Robin Page is keeping his memory alive by creating new books with his art (and it’s not clear how much she’s contributed to the art side).

Steve Jenkins is the one who makes incredibly realistic images of animals using cut paper techniques. Then his books are the ever-popular books full of facts about animals. Yes, I’d already noticed that some of the images have already appeared in other books. In this case, I don’t know how many of the images are new and how many are reused, but whatever the source, the result is delightful.

I tend to think that most animals have similar features to humans – two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. Two arms, two legs, five fingers and toes on each limb. Sure, I know about octopuses and spiders and insects, but there’s a basic pattern, right?

Well, this book disrupts those ideas of mine. It’s a counting book – of animal features.

We start with the one glowing spine on the angler fish, one sac in the nose of the hooded seal, one ear of the praying mantis. Then we look at the moray eel with two sets of jaws and the slow loris with two tongues. Then the squid with three hearts, the tuatara with three eyes, and the Jackson’s chameleon with three horns.

And so it goes. For each number up to ten (which includes the rattlesnake’s rattles and the sea pig’s legs), we’re given four or five examples. Then we’re told about several animals with bigger numbers of things, like the twenty-two tentacles that ring the nose of the star-nosed mole and the 18,000 teeth of the giant African land snail. A chart at the back gives more details and facts about each animal featured.

Books of strange animal facts are always a hit with many kids, and this is a fun and surprising way to organize those facts.

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Review of The World Entire, by Elizabeth Brown, illustrated by Melissa Castrillón

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The World Entire

A True Story of an Extraordinary World War II Rescue

by Elizabeth Brown
illustrated by Melissa Castrillón

Chronicle Books, 2025. 64 pages.
Review written November 17, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

The title of this book is taken from a quotation in the Talmud – “He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” This book is a picture book biography of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who saved the lives of approximately 10,000 refugees during World War II.

Aristides was a Portuguese diplomat who worked at a consulate in France. When refugees poured into Bordeaux fleeing the Nazis, he was ordered not to give any visas to enter Portugal. After talking with a rabbi and three days of soul-searching, Aristides instead began an assembly line granting visas to everyone.

After the Nazis came to Bordeaux, he went to Bayonne to help make more visas. He even helped refugees find a place to cross the border where those visas would be accepted.

And when he got back home to Portugal, he was arrested for defying orders.

This whole story is dramatized beautifully, with a long author’s note and timeline at the back, giving further details. This book celebrates a man who defied his own government to save people’s lives. He faced many consequences of his actions, but said, “I could not have acted otherwise, and I therefore accept all that has befallen me with love.”

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Review of In the World of Whales, by Michelle Cuslito, illustrated by Jessica Lanan

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

In the World of Whales

by Michelle Cusolito
illustrated by Jessica Lanan

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2025. 44 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This stunningly beautiful picture book tells the true story of a free diver who encountered a pod of sperm whales surrounding a just-born baby whale calf with the umbilical cord still attached.

The story is told poetically, with both the diver and the calf having to go to the surface for air periodically.

The whales peer at the man
with egg-shaped eyes the size of tangerines.
Their school-bus-big bodies
with rumpled backs
and bulbous heads
could crush the man in a flash.
Wild animals protect their young.
Is he in danger?

On the next spread, he copies the whales’ movements to be non-threatening, and more whales arrive to the group. Then, after he and the calf breathe:

The mother nudges her offspring toward the newcomers.
One by one,
she introduces the baby to the community.

The man watches in wonder, and hears the clicks of the whales communicating with one another, including the newborn.

It all builds to a doubled-spread with pages that fold out.

Then, the mother nudges the calf toward the man.
She presents her wrinkly baby as if to say,
“Meet the newest member of our family.”

Six pages at the back tell more about sperm whales, more about free diving, and provide resources including this page of photos from the actual encounter in 2014, and this amazing video of the encounter.

The book captures the magic and wonder of the moment, and leaves you, like the original diver, in awe.

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jessicalanan.com
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Review of Butt or Face? Super Gross Butts, by Kari Lavelle

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Butt or Face?

Super Gross Butts

by Kari Lavelle

Sourcebooks Explore, 2025. 36 pages.
Review written November 17, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Kari Lavelle has got a good thing going, and I’m glad she’s not stopping. And I can’t seem to stop reviewing them. The fact is, you’ve already got ingredients that add up to a huge hit with kids for librarians book talking:

— The word “Butt”
— A simple interactive quiz where kids can shout out the answer (Bonus: One possible answer is “Butt”!)
— Photographs of animals
— Intriguing animal facts about unusual animals

And with this third book in the series, she’s added one more sure winner:

— Many of those facts about animals are super gross.

Some examples are the greater short-horned lizard that squirts blood from its eyes, the silver-spotted skipper caterpillar that catapults its excrement at predators, and the tortoise beetle larva that makes armor out of poop.

The format is the same as the earlier books: Show a close-up picture of part of an animal. Then ask: Is it a BUTT or a FACE? Turn the page to see the full picture of the animal and the answer to the question. There are additional text boxes on the picture headlined “Face the Facts” or “Beyond the Backside.” A chart and map at the back shows where each animal comes from, their scientific name, and what they eat.

There are plenty of kids out there who love learning strange or better yet super gross animal facts. This one adds lots of fun to the mix. See if you can resist guessing which pictures are butts and which are faces. (I got most of them right, but not all of them.)

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sourcebookskids.com

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Review of Making Light Bloom, written by Sandra Nickel, illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Making Light Bloom

Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Lamps

written by Sandra Nickel
illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Peachtree, 2025. 32 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is another picture book biography that tells us about something a woman did that men got the credit for. (Pass Go and Collect $200, by Tanya Lee Stone, about the woman who invented the Monopoly game comes to mind, but I think I have reviewed others.)

In this case, the woman is Clara Driscoll. She grew up in the country loving gardens and flowers and art. As an adult, she moved to New York City to do more with her art. She got a job at the company of the glassmaker Louis C. Tiffany.

She joined a team of artists who selected and cut glass to create pictures and shapes in windows.

Clara showed great talent, so she was put in charge of a workshop staffed only by women.

She hired both experienced artists and untrained immigrants. And as she and her new Tiffany girls worked, Clara inspired them all by reading poetry about nature.

They continued to make glass for windows until Clara had a moment of inspiration.

Though her work kept her busy, Clara missed the house on the hill and its gardens.

One day she had an idea of how to bring their bright beauty to the city. She sent her sisters a letter and asked for yellow butterflies and wild primroses.

Once they arrived, Clara sketched them. But not as a window, with light coming from behind. As a lamp, with light coming from within.

She worked with the Tiffany girls to cut the pieces and with the craftsmen to form the glass into a lampshade. It took so much time and effort to make, one of the managers told Clara not to make any more.

But then, Louis saw what Clara had created and said it was “the most interesting lamp in the place.” He asked her to make another to display at the World’s Fair in Paris.

When the lamp won a bronze medal at the World’s Fair, she was asked to make more lamps and windows filled with gardens and landscapes and flowers. And Clara was put in charge of lamp-making.

“Tiffany lamps” became wildly popular and very valuable. Because Tiffany’s name was on them, no one knew that they were Clara’s design – until a bundle of her letters to her sisters and mother was discovered after both she and Louis Tiffany had died.

The art in this wonderful book is done in a style that matches the lamps Clara created, with dark outlines around simple shapes, as if made of glass themselves.

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JuliePaschkis.com
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Review of The Book of Candles, by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Leanne Hatch

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

The Book of Candles

Eight Poems for Hanukkah

written by Laurel Snyder
illustrated by Leanne Hatch

Clarion Books, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written October 13, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

As the title says, this is a book of eight poems for Hanukkah, one for each night of the festival, one for each candle. It’s in picture book form, so in the library, we’ve got it in the Holiday Picture Books section, where we think it will get plenty of checkouts. For Sonderbooks, I’m going to put it on the Children’s Nonfiction page in the Poetry section, because it actually gives good information about Hanukkah, besides the lovely poems.

A couple years ago, a Jewish friend challenged her non-Jewish friends on Facebook to purchase menorahs and light candles in solidarity, and I did so. Now with this book, I have learned more about the holiday. So I recommend it to both Jewish and non-Jewish families. Each poem is lovely, and each is accompanied by “A Thought” for that night.

I especially liked “A Thought for the Fifth Night”:

It’s tradition to avoid doing work while the candles burn, and this goes for everyone! So you can wait until after they fizzle out to do your homework, but you should make sure your parents take a break, too, before they wash the dinner dishes or check their email. The goal is to focus on the light and each other.

That’s far more challenging than spending half a minute to turn on the Christmas tree lights!

The poems and pictures themselves take us through a particular family celebrating Hanukkah together, ending with watching the candles fizzle out.

I also love the Author’s Note at the back:

Hanukkah is a funny sort of holiday. It isn’t like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, when we set aside our lives and disappear into the synagogue. Instead, at Hanukkah, we live our daily lives – go to school, play and laugh as usual, even quarrel (not too often, hopefully).

But then, each night, we set aside time to care, to notice, to light our candles.

Hanukkah doesn’t stop our busy world from spinning, but as we move through each day, we do so with an awareness that something is coming at sunset, something special. Something silly or joyful or peaceful.

And with this book, Laurel Snyder and Leanne Hatch have added a bit of beauty and thoughtfulness to lucky family’s Hanukkah celebrations.

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Review of The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice, by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Anna Bron

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice

How to Discover a Shape

by Amy Alznauer
illustrated by Anna Bron

Candlewick Press, 2025. 48 pages.
Review written October 3, 2025, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

Like another book I recently reviewed, Firefly Song, The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice is a picture book biography of a citizen scientist, a woman who made a notable discovery, even though she didn’t have formal training in that field. Marjorie Rice now has a special place in my heart, because in her case, the field was math.

The biography tells us how Marjorie Rice read an article in Scientific American by Martin Gardner and then got captivated with the idea of finding more five-sided convex shapes that tile a plane. And the stellar art by Anna Bron helps make it clear to the reader what this means.

We learn how she was inspired when a new tiling was discovered – to then search for new five-sided shapes of her own that would work. And she went on to find four of fifteen pentagon types that tile the plane. (Years later, other mathematicians found two more, and then another proved that there were no more.)

This amateur mathematician’s life is especially suited for a picture book biography because her work was so visual – and the artist did a great job of using pentagon tilings throughout the book. Back matter not only tells about the pentagon discoveries after Marjorie, they also give the reader great ideas for exploring shapes, tilings, and tessellations further.

I love that this is the story of a housewife with a curious and playful mind (if perhaps a somewhat obsessive one).

Oh look! I’m ready to post this review and looked up the author’s website. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and also teaches calculus and number theory. This makes me feel like she’s a kindred spirit with me, since I have Master’s degrees in Mathematics and in Library Science – not a typical combination. This explains her excellent picture book biographies of mathematicians. I’m going to keep watching for her books.

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