Patchwork

Gr 2-4–A celebration of children and what they may become as successful adults, written by Newbery Medal-winning de la Peña, beautifully illustrated by Luyken (The Book of Mistakes) and also available in Spanish, Retazos. De la Peña starts Patchwork on a modern note of inclusivity, with a gender reveal party with blue cake filling, which proves all wrong for a child whose paint brush hovers over pink paint and who grows into an artist who loves brown. The book is composed of two- to four-page vignettes that focus on character traits or skills developed in childhood and used in adulthood: math in dance leads to a career in coding, the bouncing of a basketball to the rhythm of poetry, kindness to classmates to a leadership position. Luyken’s art reinforces the message of “mismatched scraps stitched together” into a kind of patchwork with pastel squares of color, and includes children of light to dark skin tones with an effective use of white space through gouache, ink, and pencil. While her artwork follows the words of the text, the vignettes are hard to follow. The theme of affirmation is lost as the vignettes abruptly veer from one child to another without an easily understood common denominator.