Books like Alma and How She Got Her Name
By Juana Martinez-Neal
For the kid who asks 'why am I named this?' at exactly the wrong moment — bedtime, the car, the middle of dinner — this book turns that question into something worth sitting with. Quiet, tender, warm as an old photograph.
A young boy travels before dawn with his family to Granny's farm for their annual reunion, where every child must find their own way to honor the family's history — but Lil Alan isn't sure what he'll bring.
When a crocodile egg rolls into her nest, Mother Duck simply hatches it with the rest and raises the little crocodile as one of her own ducklings.
A mother sings the same lullaby to her son from infancy through adulthood, rocking him each night — until he is grown and gently rocks her in return.
A young man leaves Japan to explore California, falls in love with both places, and spends his life torn between two homelands he can never fully choose between.
A Puerto Rican girl grows up surrounded by love and pride in her Taíno and African heritage, but painful treatment from the world slowly dims her sense of her own beauty — until her community rallies to wake her up again.
At the Central Park Zoo, two male penguins named Roy and Silo build a nest together, and a kindly zookeeper gives them an abandoned egg to hatch and raise as their own.
A mother lists the small, specific things she loves about her young son — his morning bedhead, the way he calls out "Mama" at night, his laugh — building a portrait of everyday devotion.
A handmade doll stitched together with love stays by one woman's side through every season of life — storms, celebrations, losses, and finally, a cancer diagnosis.
A six-year-old boy spends his days in his grandfather Luis's towering garden, learning bird names, playful expressions, and reading and writing from a grandfather who never had schooling of his own.
A bricklayer works hard every day building the city, while his son works hard at school and plays at molding tiny clay bricks, until one Saturday his father surprises him with something built just for their family.
A little bird named Choco longs for a mother and searches among all kinds of animals, none of whom look like him, before finding one in a warm, unexpected shape.
A gentle, repeating question moves through the animal world — from kangaroos to lions to dolphins — showing every baby, a joey, a cub, a calf, has a mother who loves it.
