Are Your Stars Like My Stars?

Leslie Helakoski is the author of Sterling's Hoot & Honk Can't Sleep, Big Chickens (the Michigan Reads Picturebook for 2007, Great Lakes Great Books Award, and a GLBA finalist), and Woolbur (a Book Sense pick for 2008, Florida Reading Assoc. Honor Book, and nominee for nine state book awards). Most recently she wrote and illustrated Fair Cow. Leslie lives in southern MI. Twitter: @helakoski.Heidi Woodward Sheffield was a recipient of the 2017 SCBWI LA Mentorship Award and the SCBWI NY Portfolio Award (Honorable Mention), along with numerous other SCBWI awards. She lives in Northville, MI. Twitter: @wwwheidibooks.

No matter how different our lives are, some things are the same. A child’s world is full of color—and, if they look closely, full of wonder. Most double-page spreads of this picture book feature rhyming verse set on the left-hand page that describes in developmentally appropriate language how a child narrator sees a color. Gold, for example, is ‘warm’ and ‘full of sparkle,’ whereas blue is ‘deep, wide, and open.’ Each stanza ends with versions of the same question, which concludes across the gutter or after a page turn: ‘Is your gold… / …like my gold?’ creating a repetitive pattern that will delight young readers. The text is accompanied by rich illustrations of diverse children from all around the world, including South Asia, Latin America, East Asia, and Western settings. The final page features a black child and a white child sitting arm and arm on a hilltop, looking at the same star, driving home the message that our similarities bring us together and our differences make us more beautiful. The best feature of the book is the highly textured, collage-style illustrations, many of which contain soft strokes of color that give the images a pleasantly dreamlike quality. . . . the book’s timely message of universality among diversity is a highly relevant one. —Kirkus