All About U.S. by Matt Lamothe with Jenny Volvovski

The cleverly titled All About U.S. is a sequel of sorts to a personal favorite, Matt Lamothe’s 2017 book, This Is How We Do It. While the original looks at one day in the lives of seven kids from around the world, from what they eat at breakfast to how they get to school, their chores, and where they sleep at night, All About U.S. spotlights 50 American kids, one from each state, each with engaging illustrations by Lamothe.

“Our goal for this book was to create an authentic portrait of the country, showcasing the diversity of its people and the vastness of its natural landscapes,” write Lamothe and co-author Jenny Volvovski in a foreword. “To accomplish this, we looked at data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and Pew Research Center tracking factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, family structure, income, religion, schools and housing across the country. We then did our best to match the demographics of the featured families with those of the United States.”

Gaga Mistake Day by Emma Straub and Susan Straub

So naturally, when I saw Emma and Susan Straub’s new book, Gaga Mistake Day, I was intrigued by this other Gaga. The story, written by a mother-daughter team, follows a free-spirited grandmother babysitting her granddaughter. Gaga calls the cats by the wrong names, plays Connect Four by her own rules, makes wacky lunches, walks backward to the park and reads books upside-down. When the granddaughter, as narrator, notes her parents’ disapproval of Gaga feeding her marshmallows before dinner and adding too many bubbles to the bath, Gaga tells her, “Mistakes are fun, aren’t they?”

My Daddy Is a Cowboy by Stephanie Seales

Stephanie Seales’ new book My Daddy Is a Cowboy is an “absolute joyride,” Booklist declares. In it, a father wakes his daughter before dawn to enjoy a sunrise horseback ride through their city—some cherished “‘just us’ time.”

Seales, a California-born daughter of Panamanian immigrants, set out to put her heritage into her book. Award-winning illustrator C.G. Esperanza beautifully captures the emotions of these characters in his vibrant, thick-stroked oil paintings, and their roots in details like the Panamanian flag on Abuelita’s coffee mug and the mola blanket on a horse.

Seales’ words, which capture the perspective of an adoring young girl, in combination with Esperanza’s vivid depiction of this special father-daughter moment against the backdrop of a sky changing from “midnight black” to “deep ocean blue” to “swirly sherbet colors,” deliver a picture book that, as Booklist puts it, is “sure to delight cowboys both real and imagined.”

Animal Albums from A to Z by Cece Bell

Author and illustrator Cece Bell uses the introduction in her new book, Animal Albums from A to Z, to convince young readers that a handful of recording studios, from the 1940s to 1980s, actually released albums created by animal musicians. Then, she fully commits to the bit, making this fiction a reality.

Sparing no details, Bell designed an album cover and wrote the lyrics to a track for each letter of the alphabet. The album and song titles are alliterative—from “My Aromatic Armpit Is Astonishing to All” on Arnie Dillow’s Accordion Americana to “You Snooze, You Ooze” on the Zydeco Zebras’ Zigzag Zinnia.

But Bell’s creative juices kept flowing. She wrangled more than 60 different musicians to record the songs she’d written. Inside the book, readers can scan a QR code to listen to them. She’s even working on MTV-style music videos..

Ernő Rubik and His Magic Cube by Kerry Aradhya

In honor of the Rubik’s Cube turning 50 this year, I am including science writer Kerry Aradhya’s picture book biography of the puzzle’s inventor, Ernő Rubik, on the list. Ernő Rubik and His Magic Cube tells the story of a little boy in post-World War II Budapest, fascinated by shapes and puzzles, who grows up to become a professor of architecture and design, making models to teach his students about three-dimensional objects. Little did Rubik know that one such model would become a beloved toy, with more than 450 million selling worldwide.

In a simple, straightforward narrative, Aradhya chronicles Rubik’s trials and errors in making a cube consisting of 26 little “cubies” that twist and turn. The inventor experiments with rubber bands, paper clips and fishing line, until observing round pebbles along the Danube River leads to an “aha” moment, convincing him to attach the cubies to one round mechanical core. Kara Kramer’s illustrations, filled with the bright colors of the Rubik’s Cube and loads of shapes and geometric patterns, bring a delightful energy to the tale.