“My Words Flew Away Like Birds,” written by Debora Pearson, illustrated by Shrija Jain (Kids Can Press, Oct. 5), ages 4-8, 40 pages, $17.99.
In this helpful picture book, we see immigration from the perspective of a well-loved and generally happy little girl who feels disabled and downhearted after her family moves to the United States. She doesn't speak enough English to understand what's going on, and the kind people who try to help make her feel even more alone.
Before their move, her mother taught her a few proper phrases. We see the child proudly master them. But at her new school, the language clatters and rushes through the air, words colliding with ambient sounds. Child-chatter is unintelligible; syllables crackle and boom from a scratchy intercom.
Even nature seems alien and not like her old familiar trees and sky. In the park she sees something so bizarre she almost can't believe it: a dog wearing a coat and tiny boots. Dogs wearing shoes!
She loses her way in the school building, and the teacher who finds her calls her "the new girl." But she is not new. She is her same self.
At home, the building supervisor misunderstands the family's ethnic origin and tries to match them up with a random immigrant who doesn't speak their language either. Everyone is embarrassed.
Eventually though, through the common sort of unforced encounter in which any "new girl" might find an ally, the child helps another girl who has fallen in the playground. Friendship takes it from there. A strange world becomes home.
This is illustrator Shrija Jain's first picture book. She's a graduate of Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. Ontario is also the home of Debora Pearson, a librarian who has written at least 20 children's books.
Read to Me is a weekly review of short books for young people.