Amazing Faces

Review
By School Library Journal

“You can read many things in her face,” says Joseph Bruchac in describing Aunt Molly Sky, a venerable Native American storyteller. Aunt Molly is one of 16 people, varied in age and ethnicity, whose everyday lives are reflected in this picture-book anthology. Faces figure prominently in some poems as Hopkins and Soentpiet celebrate America’s diversity. “Amazing Face” belongs to a chortling Asian baby who is addressed by a blond mother, and the concluding poem, Langston Hughes’s “My People,” is paired with a multiracial crowd waving flags in a city fireworks scene. Some of the voices and warm watercolor portraits are necessarily specific–Chinatown’s child who lives “above Good Fortune/where they catch crabs fresh” or “Latina, abuela, she is everyone/of us come from otherwhere.” Some experiences–dreams, loneliness, the heroism of a returning soldier or a smoke-smudged firefighter–are universal. Varied in shape, each poem is set on an ivory half-page next to a broad scene–sometimes a single child, other times a small group or an energetic crowd. This appealing package of poetry and ideas will be enjoyed by children, parents, and teachers. There are many bits to savor, and the underlying theme is so well executed that it could easily stimulate interest in finding more people in poems.