Books like The Day of the Dead / El día de los muertos
By Bob Barner
For families sharing Día de los Muertos traditions with a young child, this bilingual celebration turns remembering loved ones into something warm and joyful rather than something to fear. Warm, festive, and reverent, with bright collage colors and a lyrical, bilingual rhythm.
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.
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 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.
Across generations, the women in one family pass down the art of quilting — from a seven-year-old girl sold away from her parents who sewed secret maps to freedom, to daughters who carried her knowledge through segregation and into the fight for literacy.
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 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.
With a baby on her hip and laundry still waiting, a no-nonsense creator demands light and dark, earth and sky, and every living creature into being — then sits back satisfied with what she's made.
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.
A young girl, her waitress mother, and her grandma save every spare coin in a big jar, hoping to finally buy a comfortable chair after a fire destroyed their old furniture.
A lyrical, free-verse journey traces enslaved Black Americans' path to freedom, from the moment shackles fell in 1865 Galveston, Texas to how Juneteenth is honored today.
A child, her mother, and her grandmother travel together across India to Kanyakumari, where three oceans meet, sharing meals and memories along the way to the end of the earth.
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.
