Soñadores

WITH EACH NEW SEASON of children's books, subjects seem to cluster. Not long ago, a slew of sloth books appeared. Then two blobfish books, in the same month. This year it's picture books that wear their hearts on their sleeves, displaying value statements, as titles, on their jackets. Recently, "Be Kind" and "All Are Welcome" have shared space on a Times best-seller list topped by the similarly didactic but less utopian "We Don't Eat Our Classmates!" Now four new picture books, whose illustrators are among America's best, arrive with almost matching titles: "The Dreamer," "Dreamers," "Imagine!" and "Imagine." Until recently, people who imagined were dreamers, more or less; now "dreamer" has taken on an additional, weighty meaning. Two of these four books contend with the dreams that immigrants harbor, while two just celebrate the liberating imagination that informs both art and science. You might guess which are which, and you'd be wrong. CASE IN POINT: Il Sung Na's THE DREAMER (Chronicle, 52 pp., $16.99; ages 3 to 5) has no political overtones. It's about a green pig whose dream to fly with the birds leads him (after running with feathers clutched in his fists doesn't work) to invent the Wright brothers' biplane. Repeated failures turn around only when he accepts help from quirky animal friends (a great pink elephant!), and they all consult with actual birds - lesson being that success requires cooperation and listening. Not stopping at plane flight, the pig sets sights on the heavens, and in short order lands on the moon in a spaceship, then shares his new knowledge communally, so animals in flying vessels soon crisscross the sky. Somehow, Pig still yearns for bird-dom, and the book ends where it began. I must confess to not quite understanding the story's ending. And the rhythm of its language is unsatisfying. There's a popular rule in picture book writing to delete all words describing anything the pictures show, but a pileup of sentences that leave so much unsaid doesn't sound like storytelling. Still, I love the illustrations. Out of Il Sung Na's brush flow the most wonderful shapes and colors; his designs land on the page as elegant abstractions (beautifully using the white of the page as shape and color), yet what registers most are vivid, personable characters. I hope Pig and friends return in a more fully resolved story, but I'm happy to have spent 52 pages with them, and I think children will be, too. WHILE THE CHARACTERS in Yuyi Morales's DREAMERS (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 40 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) aren't the young immigrant Dreamers currently threatened by the United States government, the commonality is clear. All immigrants arrive with a dream, Morales says in her notes. The narrator of "Dreamers" is the authorillustrator, speaking to her baby son: "I dreamed of you, then you appeared. Together we became Amor - Love - Amor. Resplendent life, you and I." You can see that the writing tends to the florid. The art, too, is big, billowy, digitally collaging together copious poetic details of personal significance (and of varying scrutability). Gorgeous display is one of Morales's strengths, fully deployed in glowing scenes before mother and child cross a bridge into a forbidding world, all brown and gray. Despite their cold welcome, the pair eventually find a place of refuge, then delight and the promise of life and growth. This utopia is the library, filled with illustrated books. "Dreamers" is a paean to libraries, to reading and writing and creativity, a value statement I endorse wholeheartedly. "Dreamers" aims for the glorious and the poetic; it's big, passionate, crammed with detail. My own preference is for passion in smaller doses, with more breathing spaces. One element of detail that is not inscrutable is the inclusion of dozens of actual children's books strewn about this utopian library, tiny tributes to work that changed Morales's life, and a lot of fun to pick out and recognize. RAÚL COLÓN'S IMAGINE! (Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, 48 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8) could be seen as surrealist autobiography. It's a follow-up to his award-winning "Draw!," a wordless book that played games with depiction, featuring an artistic boy who draws his way into African wildlife adventures. In "Imagine!," a similar child skateboards from his Brooklyn home to the Museum of Modern Art. There, a character from Matisse's "Jazz" suite steps down from his frame, sets the boy dancing, and the two dancers lure a group of musicians (plus a dog) out of their Picasso, and another musician (plus a lion) down from her Rousseau. Art lover and art form a dancing band that merrily tours New York City (the Statue of Liberty's crown, a ride on the Cyclone, hot dogs from a street vendor) before heading back, jammed hilariously into a taxi. Colón's vibrant tableaus hint at other great art by Seurat or Manet. The story continues: Boy skateboards home, filled with inspiration, and chalks a mural onto the wall of an abandoned building. Late that night his art companions - from the museum, from his mural - float outside the window of this dreamer. This fine book provides not only exposure to art, and an example of art, but also an example of a boy - a boy of color, a boy in America - with a passion for fine art. These are all things that our culture could well stand to see more of. JUAN FELIPE HERRERA and Lauren Castillo's IMAGINE (Candlewick, 32 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) is the perfect complement to "Imagine!": It's about a boy with a passion for words. It's an immigrant story, too, and a poem, pastoral at first: "If I picked chamomile flowers / as a child / in the windy fields and whispered / to their fuzzy faces, / imagine. . . . " On each new spread, a phrase beginning "If I," and ending with the prompt "imagine," carries us through the young boy's move from his rural village to a city, to a school where he will learn English, write stories, sing in front of class. He will fall in love with words, write songs and gradually mature in the pictures - and finally, he will read his poetry atop the steps of the Library of Congress, as the poet laureate of the United States. A question is posed: If he did that. . . . We turn the page, anticipating the word "imagine" that ended each earlier stanza, and are rewarded with "imagine what you could do." It's true: The book's author, Juan Felipe Herrera, is a former United States poet laureate. This "If I could do it, you can do anything" exhortation is standard inspirational speech material, so why did I not find it remotely didactic? Lauren Castillo's perfect illustrations - warm, deftly composed, with the sensual allure of woodcuts (she seems to have combined foam monoprints with ink and digital work) - are so captivating they might on their own overcome a ho-hum story. But this poem is a masterly picture book text: Its precisely chosen words create a world you have to listen to, to think about. When at the end you learn that you were being told this boy's story as a spur to your own potentially amazing one, the surprise and the gratification outweigh any sense of a lesson being taught. PAUL O. ZELINSKY, a Caldecott Medal winner, has written and illustrated many books for children. He is the illustrator of "All of a Kind Family Hanukkah," written by Emily Jenkins, which will be published this fall.

*Starred Review* Yuyi Morales and her son are dreamers the books they read allow them to imagine a new life in a new country that doesn't always welcome them. Based on her own immigration tale, the multi-award-winning Morales' newest picture book recounts the challenges and wonders of living in a new country. She and her son experience discrimination because they don't always know the rules and customs of their new home. English becomes a barrier that makes it difficult for them to fully comprehend the world around them. Despite it all, Morales and her son find hope in the books of their local library, and their voracious reading leads them to create their own books. The narrative text is poetic and full of emotion. Teresa Mlawer's Spanish translation rings true to Morales' message. In classic Morales style, the mixed-media illustrations are breathtaking, created through painting, drawing, photography, and embroidery. The joyous imagination and intricacy of each illustration will make readers of all ages explore them further. The pages with the library, for example, depict the covers of other significant Latinx children's books like Carmen Lomas Garza's In My Family / En mi familia (2000) and Jorge Argueta's A Movie in My Pillow / Una pelicula en mi almohada (2001). This rich offering launches the new Neal Porter Books imprint and can be paired with Duncan Tonatiuh's Undocumented: A Worker's Fight (2018) for its focus on the Latinx immigrant experience.--Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez Copyright 2018 Booklist

Two pairs of eyes shine from the cover of Moraless bookthe infants eyes brilliant with curiosity, his mothers gaze pensive. These two migrantes arrive on the other side, / thirsty, in awe, / unable to go back. Here they meet cultural challenges (customs, language) that are resolved at the San Francisco Public Library, with its welcoming staff and unimaginable wealth of books. These offer paths to literacy, community, even a career: the stellar picture books Morales found there inspired her to create her own. Nicely recognizable in the art, theyre also identified in a lengthy list of Books That Inspired Me (and Still Do). Enriching the artists palette of turquoise, indigo, crimson, magenta, and gold, another migranta vibrant orange monarch butterflyflits freely throughout. Folkloric figures, too, engage in the action, while the diaphanous garment from which the mother seems to emergeits like flowers, feathers, flameprotects and propels her. Occasional Spanish words enrich the succinct, gently poetic text. Back matter includes My Story, setting the narrative in personal and historical context (Morales came to the U.S. in 1994); a note describes the natural and culturally significant materials used in the pen-and-ink, acrylic, and collage art. A wise book and, to praise it in its own words, resplendent, an eloquent vision of the resilience and hope of the dreamers, soadores of the world. Concurrently published in Spanish as Soadores. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.