Books like Sulwe
By Lupita Nyong'o
For the child who's ever compared themselves to a sibling or classmate and come away feeling like less, this is a gentle, necessary mirror. Tender, quiet, and luminous, with a dreamlike night-sky turn partway through.
After spotting three dazzling mermaids on the subway, a boy transforms his home into a lagoon of imagination, fashioning his own mermaid costume from a curtain and some ferns.
A celebration told through many young voices, each one honoring the beauty of their own brown skin and finding themselves reflected in the natural world around them.
A young girl in Ukraine refuses to eat borsch, no matter how hard the grandmothers of Kiev try to persuade her — but after immigrating to America, she finds herself missing the very soup she once despised.
A girl who left her homeland as a baby must draw it for a school assignment, so she gathers memories from family and neighbors to imagine her way back to The Island.
Voted the most beautiful bird in the forest, a glossy blackbird is begged by the red, yellow, blue, and green birds to paint markings of black onto their feathers so they can be beautiful too.
A witch famous throughout Russia for eating children is secretly a lonely old woman who longs for a grandchild, so she disguises herself as a village babushka to find one.
A rich king who prizes gold above all else is granted his wish that everything he touches turns to gold — until he accidentally touches his own daughter.
A friendly ghost named Leo loves drawing and making snacks, but when a new family misunderstands his attempts to help, he leaves home to find where he truly belongs.
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.
A girl who loves acting out every story she hears sets her heart on playing Peter Pan in the school play, then hears a classmate say she can't — because she's a girl, and because she's Black.
A parent looks at a child and wonders aloud, in rhyme, about all the different people they might grow up to be — brave, clever, silly, wise — no matter what.
A young Hmong refugee girl longs for things her family can't afford — ice cream, a new dress, meat for dinner — until her grandmother helps her see beauty in what she already has.
