Books like Big Momma Makes the World
By Phyllis Root
For families who love a big personality running the show, Big Momma turns the creation of the world into one woman's brisk, joyful to-do list. Down-home, rhythmic, bighearted, and unhurried despite the scale of the job.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A simple food connects generations of a Native American family, as fry bread becomes a lens for exploring food, time, nation, and identity across communities from coast to coast.
A girl from the Muscogee Creek Nation dreams of jingle dancing at the next powwow, but her dress has no jingles — so she turns to the women in her family and community to borrow theirs.
A true portrait of an enslaved man in 1800s South Carolina who became a master potter, shaping massive clay jars and carving his own poetry into them despite the world telling him he had no voice.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
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.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
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 young Japanese American artist grows up determined to draw, even as her family is sent to a WWII internment camp — and she goes on to create groundbreaking picture books that show children of every race together.
A father speaks love to his child from day one — through truth, comfort, joy, and pride — guiding them through monsters both imaginary and real, and toward a better world.
