The Spark in Me

K-Gr 5–A young narrator with brown skin and long braids is full of questions and wants answers: “if the galaxy is packed with stars, why is it so dark?” and “if water is transparent, why is snow white?” When the unnamed narrator shares these questions with classmates, the teacher says that all of these questions can be answered by physics. Readers see the narrator journaling in a spiral notebook and get to peek inside to see what the answers to these questions are. While the concept of a child asking seemingly unanswerable questions is not unique, what the author does well is to plant the seed with readers that nothing is truly unanswerable with science. This book is an endorsement for readers to take a look around, question the world around them, and seek knowledge wherever they go. Whimsical illustrations rendered in ink and watercolor pose a great contrast to the ending glimpse of the notebook; it appears to use handwriting in black and white.