english
4-8 years
friendship
moving
BIPOC Protagonists
Meg Medina & Sonia Sánchez
summary
Evelyn and Daniela are so close, they’re practically twins. The apartments across the street from each other are mirror images, and they even have secret hiding places for treasures that they find. But although today is mostly like every other day they spend together, it ends with Evelyn moving away. As a kid who also moved around a lot, I can relate to Daniela and Evelyn vowing to stay friends forever. Their mothers allow them to feel their feelings, but also assure both girls that they will make other friends.
At the end of the book is a delightful surprise! My childhood BFF Leeann and I are still pals today, and we often chat about how all the time we spent running around in the woods together impacted our lives today. She’s a badass climate justice professor, and I’m not sure that we had our own secret handshake like Evelyn and Daniela, but we did decide on a secret code to tell the other one when we came back as ghosts to haunt each other (I would tell you what it is, but then how else would we be able to know it was really one of us doing the haunting).
Anyone that has moved or had a friend move will definitely relate to this beautiful and tender story. This book was kindly sent by Candlewick Press, but all opinions are my own.
Meg Medina
Meg Medina is a Newbery award-winning and New York Times best-selling author who writes picture books, as well as middle grade and young adult fiction. Her works have been called “heartbreaking,” “lyrical” and “must haves for every collection.” When she’s not writing, Meg works on community projects that support girls, Latinx youth, and/or literacy. She serves on the National Board of Advisors for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and is a faculty member of Hamline University’s Masters of Fine Arts in Children’s Literature. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
Sonia Sánchez
Award-winning illustrator SONIA SÁNCHEZ paints with both traditional and digital brushes using layers of texture in her work to evoke emotion and movement. Her picture book debut, HERE I AM, written by Patti Kim (Capstone / Picture Window Books), received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and a stellar review from the The New York Times. Sonia also had the rare honor of having HERE I AM nominated for the prestigious Eisner Award in the category of Best Painter (interior art). She is also illustrator of THE WONDERFUL HABITS OF RABBITS by Douglas Florian which received an School Library Journal starred review.
She is currently working on several forthcoming picture books including SISTER DAY!, written by Lisa Mantchev (Paula Wiseman Books) and GREEN, GREEN, written by by Marie Lamba and Baldev Lamba (FSG). Sonia lives with her husband and a sleepyhead cat in a blue house near the Mediterranean Sea.