Many Things At Once
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In this poignant picture book about family and belonging, the child of a Jewish mother and a South Asian father hears stories about her family history. Sometimes she doesn't feel Jewish enough or South Asian enough, but comes to realize you can feel--and be--many things at once.
Based on the author's own family history, here is a moving story about a young girl from two different backgrounds. The girl’s mother tells her stories about her mother, a Jewish seamstress in Brooklyn, New York. She lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment and sewed wedding dresses shimmering in satin and lace.
Her father tells stories of his mother, the girl’s other grandmother, who liked to cook bubbling dal on a coal stove in Pakistan. They tell stories about how both sides came to America, and how, eventually, her parents met on a warm summer evening in Poughkeepsie.
The girl sometimes feels as if she's the “only one like me.” One day, when she spots a butterfly in her yard, she realizes it’s okay to be different—no two butterflies are alike, after all. It’s okay to feel alone sometimes, but also happy and proud. It’s okay to feel-- and be-- many things at once.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"My parents tell me I'm lucky to be both Indian and American, to be both Jewish and Hindu, to be part of many things at once," says the thoughtful young narrator of this picture book from Hiranandani (The Greatest). After the child's Jewish American mother and Indian American father fall in love and have the protagonist, they tell stories of escape and hard-won success that inform both sides of the child's family tree. But after a scene of an exuberant extended family gathering, portrayed in busily peopled pencil and digital sketches by Alam (The House Without Lights), the story turns contemplative. The narrator describes not knowing "all the words to the Hebrew songs" that some cousins sing or the Hindi that others have learned. Parental guidance ("It's okay to feel many things"); the presence of butterflies, no two alike; and the deep-rooted flowers from which the insects drink prompt a visualization of "all the journeys I'm connected to and grow from" in this book about defining oneself in more than one way. An author's note concludes. Ages 4–8. Author's agent: Sara Crowe, Pippin Properties. Illustrator's agent: Elena Giovinazzo, Pippin Properties.
